Why God of War Challenged Fate, Then Did It Again

Additional Editing by Isaac Holland
Additional Footage from Razbuten

Media Used: God of War, God of War 2, God of War 3, God of War: Ascension, God of War (2018), God of War Ragnarök, The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Resistance: Fall of Man, NBA 2K7, Tabletop Simulator, Mission Impossible 2, Hercules

Music Used (Chronologically): Main Titles (GoW 2), Enthroned on Mount Olympus (GoW), Svartalfheim (GoW R), Waking the Sleeping Giant (GoW 2), The Summit (GoW 2018), Giantess of Ironwood (GoW R), The Isle of Creation (GoW 2), A Son’s Path (GoW R), Phoenix Rising (GoW 2), Remembering Faye (GoW R), The Bathhouse (GoW 2), Giantess of Ironwood (GoW R), Palace of the Fates (GoW 2), To Forgive or to Kill (GoW R), The Isle of Creation (GoW 2) Ragnarok (GoW R), Dark Tavern (Walt Adams), God-Like (George TraGiC, GoW 2)

Thumbnail Credit: Annie Maynard
Description Credit: Memorial by Alice Oswald
Additional music by Epidemic Sound

[ColinColtrane]

wouldn’t be a jacob video without the iconic phrase ‘i think about this moment a lot’

[av_]

I love how much Jacob seems to just enjoy stuff. Mans considers the world around him so deeply and its a joy to watch.

[JD-qqfz]

...and then in the fourth one Kratos can be a pirate for no reason and it'll be unironically a really good pirate game but everyone will wonder why it's still also a God of War title

[Versailles]

Jacob has a humongous brain. Every video he says "This moment has sat on my mind for years." or something of the like.

[dolores]

As a Scandinavian i really like the games take on the Norse gods. They feel so Scandinavian, like the crew watched a bunch of Danish black comedies and based the characters of them.

[Yeetbc]

Holy hell the parallel with the Kratos cave painting and Atreus holding Odin at the end is something I didn’t notice until this video and had me dumbstruck

[anactualpigeon]

Honestly one of the biggest feats of GoW Ragnarok is that the entire game is telling you Odin is the villain but yet him becoming violent at the end still feels like such a surprise

[littlegoblin]

the jumpscare that mustache gave me will forever be etched in my memory

[fieryshrimp]

never played a god of war yet I will deeply enjoy having the entire series spoiled in this YouTube video essay. thank you Jacob, very cool

[SirChris]

12:00 talking about the camera while climbing the wall, this is something I really love about the more recent assassin’s creed games. They take care to pull the camera further back the higher you climb and gradually present you with a sense of scale for what you’re achieving. a little minutia I really appreciate.

[yunglimez]

“To grieve deeply is to love completely. Open your heart to the world as you have done to me and you will find every reason to keep living in it.” Ragnarok is made entirely by this line for me. it’s not due to some largely thought out lit analysis reason, but it just feels right. this one line hit me at a perfect time for me to be receptive to it, and it almost has the same grounding effect of the resi 4 save room theme, but on an emotional standpoint. reminds you that everything is okay, even if it’s not. there’s so much love for you to give to the world, even when you think you have none left

[phalamy]

I really love the Nourns of God of War ragnarok.
They are very interesting, and even more interesting is their view of the future.
They don't read the future, they read people, down to every single fibre of their very being. And so they know what you will do. And what you will choose.
Changing your fate technically isn't hard, and yet completely impossible. Because changing it would require you to not be you. You need to change so fundamentally that by the end, it technically isn't even your fate anymore. Because you would be someone else.

[timetuner]

Wow they had some specifics planned out in advance. I just noticed that the prophecy mural isn't Atreus grieving Kratos' death. It's Atreus singing Kratos to sleep like he ended up doing to Odin.

[loadeddice]

There is so much sympathy and honesty that you radiate... in all of your Videos. I even love to watch your sponsored ads. This is absolutely unbelievable in comparison with any other Channel on YouTube. Your channel is truly my favorite one. Keep up the amazing work.

[Vyruz]

I just love how intrinsically Jacob can deconstruct any game's theme's and everything around it and explain every detail about the why's and the how's and the humanity of it all.
Amazing, bravo.

[RoryStarr]

I am glad you didn't go into the Ludonarrative dissonance. For one, as you said, it really doesn't impact things as much as something like uncharted.

However, I think it deserves more credit than that. Yes, violence is a fundamentally a personal action, and so Kratos' violence stands at odds to his God of peace image. But the narrative is very careful about where that violence is directed, how it impacts the characters, and how it affects their goals. No one reads essay YT comments, so the short version is that Kratos is almost always in a defensive position against offensive monsters. When that monster is just a creature doing what any of us would do, Kratos goes out of his way to address that to Atreus ("she is just defending her home" etc). This means Kratos does not use people as things or do violence to reach almost any of his goals, which is a tremendous contrast to the early games where he only reaches his goals with violence.

Again, depending on how you view violence, that may be a meaningless distinction. I think it at least addresses the biggest issue with the old games: violence is a tool to reach satisfaction there, and here, in Ragnarok, we are heartbroken to be forced to use it on Thor--knowing it is completely unnecessary and won't accomplish anything. That's a canyon of difference.

[stranded]

really wish you got to talk about the ps2 sex minigame, such a sadness the die rolled that way.

[aiwash]

As someone who’s first god of war game was god of war 2 and subsequently went on to play every single god of war game before the 4th one came out having played the Greek games added massively to the 2 Norse games, it made the Norse games an even better experience honestly

[purplehaze]

If I had a nickel for every time a second God of War game could be played on tech that was outdated by the time it was released, I'd have 2 nickels. It's not much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[olekmy]

It's beautiful how the recent DLC plays so well with this video essay.