Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn’t worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they’re not staying true to the spirit of the character and the franchise. The creator noted that if developers want to pour their life experiences into their work, they should do it with new IPs and characters.
It may not be the work he wanted, but it was a positive direction. I know nothing about his other works, but new-kratos is a much expanded character and successful continuation on the original work. Not a hamfisted cash-in like so many sequelizations do.
Honestly seeing kratos grow up is what makes the new games that much more impactful. The series when taken as a whole just really makes kratos’s character that much better. Imagine 2018 GoW without the original trilogy, it would not be nearly as close to perfect of a game as it was
The original Kratos was basically one big long revenge story. Almost all of it justified and satisfying, but basically wiping out the Greek Pantheon was his ultimate goal.
His actions were reckless and fury driven, but often went over the top, both in violence and in actions.
My favourite example is from GoW: Ragnarok, when certain characters are reflecting on Kratos’ past, and how the one story of him killing the Sisters of Fate must truly be myth, then he corrects them saying it was true and how they deserved it. The third character then shines a present light on the fact that he did that in the past and says, “that’s the most dangerous and irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard.”
I think that sums up Greek Kratos in a nutshell.
the Original God of War Kratos had all the depth of a puddle.
nuKratos is by far the superior character.
Modern Kratos wouldn’t be nearly as impactful or enthralling if we didn’t intimately know his past and what he is capable of. Replacing him with another character who acts identical and had a similar background revealed in flashbacks would just undercut how Kratos acts now.
We see him show restraint his younger self was incapable of, and how when hes holding back, its not for his benefit, but for those who are antagonizing him and his friends. HE knows he is a monster, doesn’t view himself as redeemable in the slightest, but has no intention of returing to his old ways while he has the ability to help those he’s come to care for, and also show his son a better a path than the one laid out for him.
So while yes, ps2/ps3 kratos had all the depth and bredth of a puddle, modern Kratos is built entirely off that puddle and wouldn’t hold its own weight without the previous foundations.
as someone who’s only played GOW 2018 I still thought he was a compelling character 🤷♂️
There were innumerable opportunities for kratos to develop character beyond raging angry guy of rancorous fury. Every betrayal and every reconciliation was so bland after a while. The originals were one long soap opera.
Maybe that’s what made the games successful and entertaining.
Worked for the first two games then went steadily downhill. It’s honestly incredible how they managed to ressurect that franchise as GoW was just a boring crappy series of sequels by 2017.
What made them successful was marketing and copying and simplifying devil may cry. GOW’s voice acting and tactility of gameplay were far above the norm, which brought people back for a sequel. Its story was par for ps2, which is to say tolerable.
Meh. Not everything need to be deep. It’s a video games. Nobody is asking what the DOOM character backstory is. He’s there to shoot some hellspawns and that’s fun.
There’s a place for both, really.
My friend, you’re missing out on the batshit insane lore of DOOM Eternal. The game itself is amazing, but the lore is even better!
My favorite part of the lore is how doom guy doesn’t give a shit about the lore.
Not every franchise needs to be deep, and doom eternal kind of suffers for being more story focused.
Really? I enjoy the lore very much, but it seems more than easy enough to ignore - most is told through collectibles, so you can just breeze through everything without reading pretty much anything.
Not every franchise needs to be deep
I kind of disagree - I like it when a lot of thought has been put into things. I’d rather have it available and be able to ignore it than not have it available at all.
To repeat myself from a response to another user:
You don’t even need the deep lore hidden text and recordings for Doomguy. The show-not-tell storytelling is fucking amazing in Doom 2016.
Like they don’t need any deep lore dumps or in depth explainations. The simple and casual disregard of Samuel Hayden for the lives of his employees and everyone else on Mars is in direct contrast to how deeply it’s immediately obvious that Doomguy DOES care about those same dead scientists and colonists just from a few simple actions.
No long-winded explanation necessary. Those 10 seconds were a masterpiece of visual storytelling. It lets us know the stakes, it shows us that Doomguy cares about the lives lost far more than any ostensible greater good or Hayden’s justifications.
There’s a place for both, really.
Sure, but when someone whines “Why did they give this character depth? They could have made them shallow and boring!” I’m not going to give that person much credit.
Also, DOOM guy does have some backstory for those that care to look for it in the games. Easily ignored for those that don’t.
You don’t even need the deep lore hidden text and recordings for Doomguy. The show-not-tell storytelling is fucking amazing in Doom 2016.
Like they don’t need any deep lore dumps or in depth explainations. The simple and casual disregard of Samuel Hayden for the lives of his employees and everyone else on Mars is in direct contrast to how deeply it’s immediately obvious that Doomguy DOES care about those same dead scientists and colonists just from a few simple actions.
No long-winded explanation necessary. Those 10 seconds were a masterpiece of visual storytelling.
100% my biggest issue with modern games right now is there’s too much damn lore. I need to know a hundred different things to understand the game, and I generally don’t know those things.
I’m a huge fan of Doom Eternal, and it’s one of the few single player games I’ve finished in the last few years. Too many games now end up needing to spend half my play session in conversations or cut scenes, and I realized I don’t have fun playing games like that.
A buddy of mine got me to play Dark Tides and I had fun, but he kept telling me I needed to look into the lore of the Warhammer universe.
Looked into it and realized I don’t have the time or interest to get into such a fictional universe that feels like it has more depth than most religions. I feel like there could be a degree track for Warhammer historians…
Not hating on people who are into it. But it’s too overwhelming for someone like me who just wants to play games to clear my mind and distract myself. Also socialize.
I have friends that are deep in the tabletop 40k universe and know all the lore. I couldn’t give two shits about the story and have still enjoyed many sessions, plus the computer games: vermintide, darktide, etc.
It’s possible to play and ignore all that.
Oh yeah, I was doing just that. I wasn’t saying the lore interfered with the gameplay at all. I was just relating to feeling like I can’t be bothered by extended universes.
Honestly, I liked him better when he was just an angry sad revenge monster man. The way the games were structured made so that was never a crutch.
That said, David Jaffe needs to disappear already.
He wasn’t deep but he was Metal AF.
You mean like this exact comment? 👀
I know the new gamers like to try find deep things in everything.
And the story of a dad/son (which is also basic as shit) touched them somehow.
Do you want something deep? I’ll give you: maybe your crappy relation with your beloved one (in some cases he probably went out to buy cigarettes) touched you and made you see things and give importance to a damn video game character, that nobody cares.
Ok, we’ve reached the end of our time, you can pay at the exit, lousy commenter!
Found David Jaffe’s account.
When everything’s deep, shallow is a breath of fresh air
You’re not wrong on that. But look at all pretentious gamers here, downvoting you in mass. 😅
I guess it’s mostly old fellows that are way past their teenage years of angst and thus had lots of time to reflect, rather than pretentious gamers. But hey, I’m just an internet rando
I understand Jaffe not being happy that the games are going in a different direction than he imagined, but he’s also the guy who thought Drawn to Death needed to be made.
David Jaffe is a fucking idiot whose opinion doesn’t matter anymore.
David Jaffe is unhappy that his generic revenge puddle of spit character has actually grown in depth and is truly interesting now.
Instead of just “man literally too angry to die.”
I mean on the one hand you have a story of a father and son grieving over loss while finding themselves…
And on the other you have gratis in a hot tub fucking bitches with my rhythm-based mini game.
I really do wonder what he thought was so great about the character before?
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Well he can fuck right off, God of War 2018 was amazing
Was Ragnarok less loved? I got a bad feel for it with some comments so left off playing it. Then I got it and loved every second of it.
Literally every person I know that played it loved it more than the 2018 reboot, which is saying something since the 2018 GoW put the franchise back on the map after its years long downturn.
Wait until the franchise falls into decay like what happened to the to Tolkien’s work after TLORs massive success.
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Why are shilling so hard for a has-been whose most noteable works had to taken away from his creative control to actually develop into something beyond a juvenile revenge fantasy?
The same reason why you guys are shilling for a Dad of War story, that most real, non childish adults don’t care for?
Have you ever thought (it’s rhetorical) that some people just want a basic and funny hack n slash game, and don’t give a shit about the story? There plenty is games that fill that void.
Not every game needs to have a background story or even a story at all!
If thats your take away you’ve clearly never played the games and only read reviews about them second or third hand. No one is saying the og trilogy was bad, but according to Jaffe they were writing epics… Which frankly is a far cry from the truth and they only got better as he had less and less involvement to GoW3 being cslled the best of the trilogy, ironically the game he’s not involved in making.
that most real, non childish adults don’t care for? You are simply making things up. The reboot sold incredibly well, about 5 times more than the originals in fact, and received universal acclaim. People have grown up with the character and were happy to see that evolution. The original creator and you have become out of touch with the reality of this franchise.
Your expectation for things to never evolve and grow says more about you than you seem to want to face. But the same as you think that there are plenty of games that fill the void of deep narrative action games, I can say there are plenty of basic hack and slash games to go around, just go enjoy another one.
Not every game needs to have a background story or even a story at all!
The original GoW games had a lot of story. They didn’t add more story to the new games, just better story.
The year before GoW 2018, he released Drawn to Death… PS Plus release that had some cool style but otherwise crap game! He was relevant back in the late 90s and early 2000s… but now his opinion hardly matters and he’s a bit of a drama queen. I don’t really give a shit what he thinks.
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David Jaffe is kind of a nut these days though. Like what has he done in recent years?
The last thing I saw regarding him was him being unable to comprehend how secret rooms in Metroid work. It was painful.
Hahahahah. Thank you for this.
Brutal. He’s so wrong and he has no idea.
Which is something super common in Metroid too.
Hell he probably hasn’t figured out you can shoot up and just tries to jump to fire horizontally at enemies instead.
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This isn’t the criticism you think it is. People can have opinions on things they don’t create.
I kinda wish the article has expanded on what he said, if anything. Does he still think they are well made games even if he doesn’t like the direction?
Like, I don’t like the new Zelda games, I don’t think they have stayed true to the original Zelda (not you Zelda II) games. That said, I cannot deny that a lot of care and polish went into them, I just don’t like the direction.
Sure, the new God of War games are not the original avatar-of-rage Kratos but they are still exceptional games.
As someone who has played from the beginning, and seen the entire storyline unfold through the multiple directors, I was so disappointed…in nothing absolutely at all whatsoever about the new games.
I thought it was really cool how they stitched the story back to GoW3 and developed the new character so thoughtfully. Christopher Judge seemed to take the character much further while adding depth, and being thoughtful too.
If Jaffe doesn’t like that Kratos isn’t a mindless rage machine, different strokes I guess. He’s definitely in the minority and I think every subsequent game director did an overall better job than he did in GoW 1. *shrug
Sounds like Jaffe does not akree
“You people turned the Ultimate Badass into a touchy, feely pussy! Kindness is for queers!”
I’m pretty sure this is less about the quality of the game and more about ppl working on his creation without him. You can see this a lot in comic books
Creators will be pissed that ownership has continued work on something they created without them.
Pretty much why Allen Moore hates comics so much. Or even why John McAfee hated his anti virus program.
Something about the new games that really bothered me was how it handled puzzle rooms. You’d walk into a room and start to look around then your kid would yell out “hey I think we should shoot that target up there which should knock down this bridge for us”. Golly thanks, guess I won’t get to attempt to figure things out myself then. I pretty much fell off about 10 hours into the first one because I found that so frustrating. Does that go away after a while?
Not from what I’ve read elsewhere.
I can’t think of any times he did that when I played. Most things I either figured out right away or missed quickly. I went backtracking while he was in his rebellious phase and he was mostly useless as a tutorial prompt. Any scenes out of order that required him to be cheery made him seem mentally unstable too.
I mean, I too would be unhappy with the new games’ stories. They’re not very good stories overall.
But, they’re better than the vast majority of video game plots, because that’s a low bar.
Still, Jaffe seems to imply the old stories in GoW were any better, when they were pure drivel. I might still be very underwhelmed by the story in the two new God of War’s, but I at least like that they’re trying (even if I think the direction of relying heavily on animation and visual flair is the wrong one, as far as telling good stories goes).
Jaffe always struck me as a perpetual adolescent. The two GoW games he worked on were great for the time, but the stories were shallow excuses to showcase as much gore as possible. His other big property, Twisted Metal, was genre-defining gameplay but any narrative was just edgelord violence and/or crass humor.
The last “big” project I remember coming down the pipe from him was Drawn to Death, which took his signature juvenile tastes and combined them with horrible gameplay and eye-blistering art direction. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t worked on a game since.
I’m not saying the new GoW games are perfect, but I wouldn’t say Jaffe has a trusted critical eye.
Oh, so he never matured at all then, huh?
Went and watched the original.
Seems like he just doesn’t like the direction and it’s a ‘different strokes for different folks’ kind of thing. I think his point about Ragnarok is fair, the writing is a bit all over the place and that can make characterization suffer.
