Video Gamers Podcast - Glorious God of War - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Gaming spartans Josh and Paul are bringing you an episode fit for the gods in this week’s amazing gaming deep dive. We delve into the realm of Midgard as we break down God of War. We chat the story, the action, the design and everything you could want to know about God of War in an episode filled with gaming Valhalla (keeping it topical here). Will God of War be the game that finally shakes up the Leaderboard?!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, it's Josh and I'm back with another Gaming Quick Takes bonus episode. Ha! Tricked ya! This is just an intro for our regular episodes, but if you wanted to hear that sweet, sweet intro on those bonus episodes, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com where you can sign up to support the show. You get two bonus episodes every week, some killer Discord perks, and our eternal gratitude. We couldn't do the show without the support of our listeners and you too can join those ranks over at multiplayer squad.com hey guys thank you for listening to the multiplayer gaming. We are a podcast run by a group of friends that are all dads. We love to talk about games and we release two podcasts every week.

And additionally, if you want access to a third and a fourth podcast every week, you can come support us on Patreon. Check us out at MultiplayerSquad.com and you can start off support at $5 a month and that'll get you access to those additional episodes and it will also help fund our show. Also make sure to rate us five stars and leave us a review if your podcast app allows. Today is a Deep Dive Monday, which means we are going to be spending our entire episode talking about a single game, which today is the critically acclaimed and winner of many Game of the Year awards, God of War from 2018. I am your host, Paul, and joining me,

I'm going to cut off your head now. It's Josh. Paul, that intro took forever because I am dying to talk about this game. I literally almost interrupted you. It took every ounce of self-control I had to not just jump in while you were doing the intro to the show. I don't know that I've ever been more hyped for an episode. I thought you might just start chanting, God of War, God of War. Oh, man.

Now, I will note here that even though we just recently announced that we now have our third permanent co-host, Michael Butler, he is not joining us today because you and I had already been putting... He's already slacking. He's failing us already. No, no. Since Michael just joined us, he was not playing God of War like you and I were in prep for the show. So Michael will join us with our regular episodes moving forward. But if you're curious as to why Michael popped up and all of a sudden he's not here today, that is the only reason why. All right. Now, before we jump into breaking down God of War, we do have a little bit of housekeeping. We do have two new Patreon supporters that we are so excited to give a shout out to. We've got Andrew Doyen, and we also have David Kelly. Both of them are rare supporters,

so we really wanted to say thank you so much. We really do appreciate that support. And we also passed the one-year anniversary of Ace of Shame supporting us on Patreon. So I know Ace gets a lot of shoutouts on the show, but since we've had a whole year of support, we wanted to thank him for that as well. So yes, thank you so much for your guys' support. It really does mean the world. Yeah, it really does. And I don't know if you've noticed, but we've been thanking people fairly consistently for a while now. This is what we talk about. If you want the best gaming community out there, if you want people that are kind to each other, play games together, recommend stuff,

if you want to just show up and lurk and watch conversation because that's your thing, we keep mentioning this. But honestly, the listeners in the community that we are building and continuing to build are honestly second to none. So if you've been on the fence about joining the Discord server, or you kind of go, oh yeah, I keep meaning to do that. What are you waiting for? It's honestly an amazing group of people. I cannot imagine... In my mind, this is what gamers should be. I hate the toxicity that gamers get labeled as. Some of that is rightfully so. And we are doing our best to try to change that mentality. And there is no more perfect place to see that in action than our Discord server. So the link is on our website.

You can click it. It's in the episode description. You can click it. Boom, you're there. Come join us. Have a great time. Meet a lot of other really amazing gamers. You will not be disappointed. Yeah, I think you're spot on with all of that. We really have tried to create our Discord channel to be very similar to the tenor of the show. So it's very friendly. It's very open for people to joke and talk about the games they love there's you know maybe a little bit of good natured debate every now and again but it's very clean and friendly it really is just handled extraordinarily well so come check us out on discord and uh josh i think you've got a couple of user left reviews for the show we're gonna read yep hey the community keeps growing

the reviews keep growing. All of this goes hand in hand to make this the number one best gaming podcast out there. So if you have not left us a review yet, please do. It really helps the show. And I'm just going to dive in because I know this is going to be a very long episode. It's going to be long. I'm so hyped right now that I just I need to get going here. So all all right. This first one comes in from Gideon Sus. Five stars. It's titled Amazing Podcast with Amazing People. I have been listening since the Rust episode. So around early 2020.

And this podcast is amazing. The banter and genuinely funny content is awesome. The hosts are so nice and wholesome. If you like gaming content, I cannot recommend a better or more unbiased podcast genuinely funny content is awesome. The hosts are so nice and wholesome. If you like gaming content, I cannot recommend a better or more unbiased podcast for your ears to feast on. Keep up the great work. Also,

you guys say Star Wars and Star Trek, but why not alien? Oh, see, I actually like the alien series so much more than Star Trek and Star Wars. It's only that there's, for whatever reason, people think they need to compare Star Trek and Star Wars. So we've jumped into that.

I do prefer the best Star Trek movies over the best Star Wars movies. But if we're really getting into it, Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, these are amongst my all-time favorite movies. I'm all for it. Dude, you and I legitimately had this conversation apart from the podcast. We did. Just friends talking the other day. It was like two days ago.

It really was. And we actually discussed how amazing the Aliens franchise is. So it's so funny that this got brought up because we are huge fans of the Alien franchise as well. Yeah. So I'm, I'm team alien all the way over Star Trek and Star Wars. No offense to all of our Star Wars listeners, of which we have many who love coming out of the woodwork and talking to me about how much better Star Wars is than Star Trek.

But at least we can both agree. We love the alien franchise. Yes. They're phenomenal. So, all right. And then this next one is titled pancakes forever. Great.

Get out of here. Five stars. This is the best thing since the last best thing. I have been listening to this podcast for almost a year and I love it. I have literally laughed out loud at the silliness and I really enjoy hearing about my favorite games and even some games I've never even heard of the discord server is great and filled with loads of awesome people i've made so many friends i hope this podcast never ends huge fan keep it up oh what a lovely review who did that come in that came in from i told you i would do it via apple podcast there so oh very

nice yeah it's uh it's i mean that's what i was saying earlier amazing community and we hope that this podcast never ends as well yes now i i still don't i i i really don't remember how the pancakes versus waffles debate started you and i both love waffles we both love pancakes we fall on different ends of which one's better it's become a very long-running good natured debate and uh yeah so that's why if you're wondering why pancakes and waffles keep getting brought up it's just one of those things that our discord is pretty close to evenly split on rightfully so they're both delicious all right well we've got so much to cover josh let's get into it. Let's deep dive. God of War.

Oh, baby. All right. Steam describes God of War with the following. His vengeance against the gods of Olympus years behind him, Kratos now lives as a man in the realm of Norse gods and monsters. It is in this harsh, unforgiving world that he must fight to survive and teach his son to do the same. All right, now there have been a lot of God of War games. This is technically the fourth of the major installments, although there are a total of eight entries. And notably, there is a large gap between God of War 3 and this god of war from 2018 there's actually an eight year gap

and so we did have to wait quite a while for this entry here and i've got just a couple of quick facts for you now god of war did recently come out on pc originally it was a ps4 exclusive and here's a couple of stats first of all god of war 2018 is the all-time highest selling game on the ps4 it sold 20 million units on console it was the number one selling game six weeks in a row which is an all-time record for playstation and on metacritic it is one of the highest rated ps4 games with a rating of 93 it won game Game of the Year from several publications, including the Game Awards, Game Informer, IGN, Time Magazine. Josh, I'm just going to hit you with the $64,000 question right off the bat. Is God of War a perfect game?

Absolutely. Without a doubt, 100%. I cannot think of a more perfect video game that's ever been made. I mean, you can get a little nitpicky on a couple of things, but I mean, come on. God of War, it hits you with one of the more compelling stories. It's got iconic weapons. The pacing is quick. I think, honestly, you could maybe nitpick the games a little short. I mean, honestly, there's really nothing to really hold on to here with this game. The voice acting's top-notch.

The villains are great. Famously, there's no loading scenes. I mean, this is one of the most immersive games I think we've had to date. It is an absolutely incredible experience, honestly, from start to finish. Think about the biggest Oscar winner movie ever, right? I mean, this is up there with that. The story that's told is phenomenal. The gameplay is phenomenal. The world is phenomenal. I know, maybe if I had a while to try to nitpick the smallest of things, I could. But this game is generational, in my opinion, you know? And I get that there's a lot of people out there that have just gone, well, God of War is not my thing.

You know, or maybe they saw some of the earlier God of Wars and they went, okay, that looks like a button masher, like combat-based game. Way too fast-paced for me or just not my style. God of War, whether you like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing or you like Dark Souls and all these super hard games, it's legitimately, I feel like there is not a person out there that would play this game and go, I don't like it, you know, or I can't see why people think it's incredible. The only thing I can think of is for people that just don't like violence in video games. That's on because this is a very violent. It is. But yeah, that's very mature.

Honestly, that's the only thing I can think of where maybe there's like a certain chunk of the public that would not enjoy playing it. Now, you mentioned the earlier God of War series games, and I thought that it would help to take a little bit of a step back. For anyone who's not familiar with God of War lore, just a couple of very quick bullet points that kind of catch us up to the story where things kick off in the newest entry. Kratos is a captain of the Spartan army, and he is leading a battle against the barbarians. He is injured, and he's on the verge of death, and he cries out to Ares, who of course is the Greek god of war, and Ares offers to save Kratos if Kratos pledges to be Ares' servant for the rest of his life. And so Kratos agrees, and Ares does save his life and basically gives him the Blades of Chaos, which are one of the most famous weapons of all time. It is tied to Kratos using chains, which symbolizes him being a servant of Ares.

And one of the saddest things in gaming history that I can think of, Kratos is sent to go destroy a village that worships Athena. And of course, we know with the Greek gods, there's a lot of animosity. Ares and Athena do not like each other. And Kratos goes to raze the city. He lights it on fire. Unbeknownst to him, he kills his wife and his child who were there in the city. And in one of the darkest things I can think of about games, so not only is it very sad, but then it also gets even darker. the raising and uses magic to attach Kratos' wife and child's ashes to his skin, which is what gives him that pale appearance and why they name him the Ghost of Sparta. So basically, long story short, from that point on, Kratos is overwrought with guilt. He just wants forgiveness. He wants to be able to have his nightmares rid of his nightly routine. And so he keeps working for various Greek gods who make him every promise in the world.

All of them betray him, and then Kratos, in return, kills them. And by the end of God of War 3, he's basically single-handedly defeated all of the Greek gods and has not yet really found his salvation or his ability to rid himself of these nightmares. And that's kind of where we pick things up, where there has now been a gap of time. So Josh, when you think about the original God of War games, is there anything in particular that kind of stands out while experiencing those games? Yeah, they're phenomenal games, number one. And here's the thing. If you're the kind of person where you said, hey, I've always been interested in God of War, but I never played the originals.

So that's why I've never picked up the 2018 version. You don't need to play the originals to understand. It definitely departs from the formula. It helps to kind of know a little bit about Kratos' past, which you've just very, very perfectly explained. He is a deeply troubled man. Yes. He's had a very disturbing and sad past. He has tried to make up for that. He has been betrayed by the gods over and over and over again to where he ultimately just says, I hate the gods. I want to wipe them out. I want to get back at them for what they've

done to me and my family. And so he goes on this revenge-filled quest to just obliterate the gods that have betrayed him. He's not an evil person. That's the kind of the thing that you get out of the original trilogy is Kratos is not an evil guy. He's not just going around to slaughter people willy-nilly. He's legitimately on a mission against a very specific group of people. They just happen to be the gods of Olympus. Yeah. And you find out that he's Zeus's son, and that's a big thing is that he kills Zeus at the end of God of War 3. And so you definitely have this really tragic background. The psychological trauma to Kratos is second to none. You almost kind of wonder how he's even able to stand and

live at all after how much he's gone through. And he really is very just deeply damaged. But at the same time, he does have this incredible skill to fight. I mean, he is a killing machine like no other. And he was made the God of War at the end of God of War 1, hence the name. He does kill Ares and is given the title. And we see over and over where he uses his skills, but ultimately he's still plagued by his own guilt. So now we pick up things in what I'm just going to call God of War 4. It's too confusing to have four games and two of them are titled God of War. So in God of War 4, a lot of time has passed. Kratos looks different. He's older. He's definitely bigger. And he's living in the

land of the Norse gods. And I think the opening hour of God of War might be the most compelling first hour of any video game ever made. Kratos is clearly a different person. He's living in a different land. He's got a new son. We find out that he had had a wife, but now we are preparing for her funeral. They kind of just drop you into the middle of Kratos's second act of his life, and they don't tell you anything. And you just slowly start to fill in the gaps based on all of these different context clues. And I think that it is incredibly effective in setting the atmosphere for this game and what's to come. It does such a good job of getting you hooked instantly. You know what I mean?

It's like you said. If you were fans of the original trilogy, this new Kratos, this older, calmer, bearded Kratos is a different person. Totally different. You can tell he just wants to be left alone. He wants peace or he wants to live his life. He's got a son now. You get the feeling that his relationship with his son is off. They make that very clear in the beginning.

He's a very tough kind of dad that's just trying to teach his son, but maybe he doesn't show a lot of love. And so it's like you can tell instantly that something's there. His wife is dead. I mean, you're starting off with a funeral pyre for his wife, and you feel sad. Honestly, instantly, you just relate to Kratos and his son and the heartache that they've got going on in this life that they're living. I can't think of another game that has pulled you in into that personal, deep relationship so quickly. It's amazing, man. I don't know any other way to describe it. I'm

with you 100%. And then not only do they get into this personal aspect to where you relate to the characters, it also starts off with one of the coolest boss fights in a video game that I can think of. The game starts incredibly quickly. Now, when you start a game by preparing for a funeral, I know that that sounds like the worst thing to do in the beginning of a game. But this game is just so chock full of nuance and even glances that characters make at one another. You can definitely tell that Kratos loves his son and recognizes that his son Atreus needs a lot of help in becoming an adult and to be able to defend himself. But at the same time, Kratos definitely despises the gods. And like one character points out to Kratos, you are a god and so is your son. And clearly, that is creating a lot of the conflict for why

you're having trouble connecting to him on that emotional level. There are times when Atreus turns away and Kratos reaches out like he's going to touch Atreus and then pulls his hand back. Dude, do you not cheer? In my head, I'm screaming like, put your hand on his back, dude. Just touch him. It's okay. He's your son. He's lost his mom. Just hug this kid. But then at the same time you get nuggets of it so like atreus did not take his mother's knife and they light the funeral pyre the knife is in there atreus yells oh wait and he runs and he grabs the knife and he burns his palm of his hand and kratos really tenderly puts snow on it to lessen the pain of the burn but still can't have that kind of physical affection that

Atreus clearly needs. And it's just like, it's very heart-wrenching. I think it's very easy, at least for me, to connect to both Atreus and Kratos. Like, there are times as a father when I have struggled to understand maybe the way my kids act or the way that they behave. And I also, as a child, sometimes had trouble connecting to my father. And so I really can appreciate it. I feel like it's so well written from both sides. I think they're both really fascinating characters. I think one of the most undersold points of this game is how emotional it can actually make you. People view it, it's God of War. It's a guy with a giant axe, just cutting things in half. It's just this ultra violent game. And yes, there's

some elements to it. But I think what does not come across and makes it so phenomenal is the emotional attachment and the emotional pulls that this game is masterful at. Yeah. And that really first pops up in this entry, because the original games have a very interesting story, but I would not say it's terribly emotional. It's maybe at times disturbing, but when Kratos is fighting Zeus, you're not like, oh, I can't believe he's going to kill his father. It's like, yeah, Zeus has got to go.

This dude's insane. And Kratos has every reason in the world to take Zeus out. And so I don't, I can't think of any gaming series where you had multiple titles that were kind of beloved by everyone. And then all of a sudden you're coming in with installment number eight and turning it around to be this like really emotional drama between the characters where the original games are really just straight up action i mean they really are just like hack and slash games

they do maintain a little bit of that hack and slash element here in the newest but it's really more than anything i would say say, story-driven. But at the same time, I mean, it does have excellent combat, which we'll get to very soon. The story is the backbone of this game. And that's what people, I think, that haven't played it don't understand. Now, the gameplay is phenomenal. We'll get into that. But it's the underlying story between Kratos and his son and their quest to go spread the mom's ashes. That's kind of the overarching quest line. Obviously, a lot of stuff goes into play with that. But knowing why you're playing gives it such a good tone from the

beginning. And then it just goes from there. But to me, it's one of the things that absolutely sets it apart as a masterpiece. Yeah, I completely agree. By the way, I was so excited to jump into God of War. I forgot to mention that we are going to share spoilers that are just in the very beginning as we start talking about God of War. Everything that we've talked about, you find out within the first couple minutes. Later in the episode, we will give you a spoiler warning before we start talking about the endgame stuff, because there are some twists and some big reveals that are coming down the road. But I did want to share one last example of the context clues that are informing the story. Atreus is, in the beginning of this game, he's very weak, right? Like, he struggles to kill

a deer. At one point, he gets a little bit worked up, and he starts coughing. And he even makes a comment, because Kratos says, you're not ready for this, to go spread your mom's ashes on the highest peak in all the realms. And Atreus says, I haven't been sick in a long time. And that's all they say about it. They don't go into the detail. You see this play out over the course of the game. You get these little morsels that are then blown into these full storylines later. But in the beginning, they just drop that one line and it just sucks you right in. Like, oh, what does Atreus have? What is it? Is it just asthma? Does he struggle fighting? Is it something worse? Is he dying? Like, what's going on? And they just keep pulling you in piece by piece until this whole story is like this kaleidoscope that all just

kind of clicks into zoom and into focus. And it's really an absolutely beautiful story. All right, now let's talk a little bit about the combat. All right, so Josh, we mentioned the original trilogy. You've got the Blades of Chaos, one of the most iconic weapons of all time. Well, guess what? Bold move. God of War 4, Kratos has got bandages wrapped all around his wrists. There are no Blades of Chaos. He's got a new weapon. He's the leviathan axe josh i think the leviathan axe is just as iconic as the blades of chaos i think it's a fantastic weapon do you want to talk a little bit about how the leviathan axe works along with the combat it's so cool man

i want one of these so bad dude i like i get it i'm a huge fan of the blades of chaos i mentioned it in a previous episode as one of my favorite weapons in any video game. It's just iconic. Yeah. All of a sudden, it's like Kratos has this axe. And it's not because he's a bearded lumberjack now in this new entry. It's like he's got this weapon. And it's awesome, man. The main thing about the Leviathan Axe that makes it very cool is you can throw it and then you can recall it like it's Thor's hammer. Anybody that knows anything or has seen any of the Marvel movies and knows anything about Thor is that he can just stick his hand out in the

air and Mjolnir comes flying back, hits him right in the palm and boom, there it is. And the Leviathan axe is exactly the same. And it is, dude, the game does such a good job with it though. It's so, like the effect of it is incredible. The further away you run, like if you throw the axe and you run, like you could run to the other side of the map and Kratos will stick his hand out and there's a slightly longer delay if it's further away from you than if you were right there with it. It is insane. When he retrieves it and it hits him in the palm, it's so satisfying and it makes it just such a cool weapon. I mean, obviously, you can melee with this thing.

There's all kinds of different combinations you can do with it. But throwing it out and then recalling it is so much fun. The game definitely uses that mechanic a lot that comes into play in some of the puzzles. But just like any good weapon in any good game, it's upgradable. It kind of transforms throughout the game. I'm with you, man. I think it's an absolutely incredible thing that they did. And if you play the game, like I said, it tying into like, well, this is a copy of Thor's hammer. They actually, the game explains that. And I don't know how much we want to get into spoilers early on, but you actually find out why the Leviathan axe behaves kind of like thor's hammer i i i think it's i don't think it's a

spoiler to say there's clearly some very talented blacksmiths and maybe the same person or the same people crafted both and that is addressed inside the game yeah so yeah i it the Leviathan Axe is very fun to use. I don't know about you, Josh. I use the Leviathan Axe quite often as a ranged weapon. I don't know if you ever do this, but I would throw, recall, throw, recall, throw, recall. And there are some boss fights where I would just do that 300 times until the boss would die. But one of the neat things also is that you can fight with the Leviathan Axe or you can fight unarmed with your shield. And the whole idea is that there are some enemies that are resistant to magic, so the axe doesn't work on them. And after you hit enemies a few times,

every once in a while you get a little button that pops up for a finisher move. And these are incredibly brutal finishers, but it fits the theme of the game and it is so satisfying to hit an enemy like four times with this axe the button pops up you press it you grab this like magical being and you like rip open its. It kind of explodes everywhere. Kratos is roaring. It is just brutal and great. I don't really know how else to describe it. It's satisfying as anything, man. It really is.

And yes, it's violent. But this also gives you a glimpse into Kratos. That's kind of the thing. It's like, well, any schlub can throw a magical axe. There's nothing so great about that. But when you get into the combat, like, well, any, any schlub can throw a magical ax, right? Like, okay, there's nothing so great about that. But when you get into the combat, like you said, and you're chaining together these moves, you've got light attacks, you've got heavy attacks, you've got all that stuff. We, I don't, I, you know, maybe we'll get into that in a minute, but when you're just

obliterating this creature and then it's like, okay, well now you get this finishing move and you literally grab them with your bare hands and rip him apart. Right? Like that kind of shows you like Kratos is bad, dude. This is not like he's the god of war. Like he's a god. And you're just some little trash mob, you know, that's in this world. Another time, maybe he grabs him and he spins him around,

slams him on the ground and then steps on and crushes his head until it explodes you know like that's another finisher like there's multiple different finishers in this game they're incredibly satisfying now they're against what's neat is they're against like fantastical creatures but what's even better than that is sometimes you fight mini bosses you know you might fight an ogre or this gigantic troll thing and then you get to do some amazing unique finisher against that and then you just like you just sit there you're like whoa yeah super minor nitpick the the finisher moves do recycle when you do that so the first couple of times you see it, it's incredible. By the fourth or fifth, it's kind of like, okay, I've already seen it. But there are some moves

where he'll take the enemy's weapon, knock it in the air, grab it, slam it down on the enemy, and kill them that way. It's so awesome. I mean, it's a very visceral experience in this game. You definitely feel like the god of war. I there's no question uh atreus your son is an archer so there is a button you can press atreus will fire his bow there's also a rage meter so over time as you fight your rage goes up it is called spartan rage and this is when old kratos appears all right this is the only time you see old kratos. You pop Spartan Rage. Kratos goes, just starts punching the ever-living crap out of everybody.

He's invulnerable during Spartan Rage. It never fails to just tickle me to no end to see Kratos pop into Spartan Rage. It's fantastic. This game, you said it, dude. It's visceral. I think that's honestly one of the best descriptions you can give. The combat in this game is top-notch, in my opinion. I played this game on not the absolute hardest difficulty, where you can just

get one shot by everything, but one difficulty level under that. I like a good combat challenge. Yep. And the combat in God of War is, in my opinion, honestly, second to none. You feel like you are the God of War. And I don't know how to translate that through a microphone into our listeners. But between how you can string together moves, you get these sort of magical attacks that we'll talk about. You get these finishing moves. You feel like you are Kratos. Honestly, I can't think of a game that does as good of a job making you feel like you are that character and you are as strong as that character as the combat does in this game. And it ramps up. There are some epic, epic battles that occur in this game.

But even the trash that you come across, the trash monsters, as you're just wandering around and exploring, is great. And there's blocking, there's parrying, there's these weapon combos that you can do. You can pull off these insane moves. You'll unlock moves that are even cooler than what you start the game off with. Like, I can't think of a game out there that, that just pulls out so much, like, uh, I won't want to say emotion again, but like that visceral feel of like, this is me. I am a bad dude in this game. And I feel it, you know, um you know um all the effects the sounds all of that plays together in just it's absolutely amazing combat it's one of the very rare games that takes a plus storytelling a plus combat and puts it all together which is why we both say it's it's a perfect game

yeah you know normally we don't rave about games like this in the beginning, but we can't help ourselves. We're like little kids in the candy store. We both loved it back in 2018. We both loved going through it on PC. It's so great. And honestly, we're still in the first 10 minutes of playing God of War. But you did mention a little bit about the opening boss fight. So you are preparing to leave to do your overall quest of spreading Faye's ashes. That was the name of your wife. And you get visited by a person who is initially called the Stranger, I believe. And he's here to fight you.

You don't know who he is. You don't know why he's here. He seems to have a little bit of an understanding of who you are and you just start in the middle of this epic fight and there's one moment when he notices that there's another bed in your house and he says oh there's another bed who else is here with you implying atreus right and so then kratos kind of goes ham on this initial boss the stranger who does pop up again and again over the course of the game this is not the only time we're going to see him he's a really interesting character

but how would you describe what boss fights are like in this game, like the stranger and the other bosses you end up fighting. Yeah, I think that they do a phenomenal job of making you feel like you are fighting other... Minor spoiler territory, you're going to fight gods. I mean, that's what God of War does, right? In the earlier ones, you go through Mount Olympus. In this game, you're going to fight other gods. And it makes you feel like this is a clash of titans. When you do fight them, this is not a walk in the park. You can tell that these are gods. They have their own abilities. They have their own godly specializations, I guess.

You don't fight Thor in this game. That's what Ragnarok, they've already hinted that in the preview. But it would be like, hey, if I'm going to fight Thor, I expect that he's going to use lightning against me. He's the god of thunder, right? So it's like, in this game, the people that you fight seem to have personalities. They seem to have their own unique traits. There are some epic, epic boss battles in this game. And the game does a phenomenal job of starting off with one of the most iconic fights that I can think of so early on. And again, it's like, you just want to be left alone. This dude shows up on your doorstep and he is not backing down and it's very obvious

that he is there looking for a fight and and as kratos you don't know who this guy is and this is like the kinder kratos that just wants to be left alone so you're literally telling this guy hey you don't know what you're doing you don't know who you're messing with and this guy just does not back down at all and you're like okay then then it goes into combat and you're just like yes like i'm about to kick this dude's butt and the boss fights are very long so they definitely stand out like when you think back on god of war you tend to think about these longer very cinematic boss fights they are intercut with cut scenes and sometimes these fights get very vertical or it's not just in one little area one character might throw another all the way across the field

and now you're fighting in a new area it's it's very uh they they do such a great job because you can play a game where you play as like superman and you're essentially a god, and it feels boring because you are invulnerable, or they make the character so overpowered that there's no challenge. But in God of War, since you are a god fighting other gods, you die. You die a lot in this game. It is challenging at times. You have to learn the fights, and you have to learn the moves, but they do such a great job of making it feel like God versus God combat. I mean, it's absolutely top-notch. Now, the game does have some RPG-ish elements. To be honest, they are pretty light. You do earn XP over the course of the game. You use your XP to upgrade different skills or different abilities.

And as you upgrade your axe, and as you upgrade Atreus's bow, it unlocks new skills that are available. Now, a lot of these skills are as simple as just lowering cooldowns or increasing damage. Sometimes they do give you a new button combination that can perform some kind of special move. So you might unlock something that'll do like AOE damage or you're able to throw your axe and hit three enemies instead of one. And then later you can upgrade it to five instead of three. So it's RPG lite, I think is fair to say.

Did you have any particular strategy with where to put your points early on? I was kind of curious to know how you played. I'm actually going to disagree with you, Paul. I think this game is RPG great. Really? Yes. I totally disagree with that. I really do because I'll tell you why.

This was my second playthrough. I played it on the PS4 and and then it came out for PC, and I took my time this time. And I told everybody, hey, I disappeared off the Discord server for two weeks. Everybody's like, where's Josh? I'm like, I'm playing God of War. And so I disagree because this game has various pieces of gear that you can get. So you have equipment. You've got your weapons. I spent a very large portion of this game actually grinding gear and fights and abilities. And so to me, to kind of give you an idea, you can get various armor pieces and you can do an awful lot to unlock

really high-end armor that gives you a lot of really important stats if you want to try to do some of the harder fights in the game. So you actually have to grind a little bit to be able to do those. You have what are called light runic attacks and heavy runic attacks, which are these really fantastical, over-the-top, magical-type abilities that you can get for the weapons that you get in this game. And you can build out a whole build based off of runic attacks, which is actually the route that I went because I wanted to use these like really strong magical attacks. You get different like stat points that you can spend.

I think that there is a heavy RPG element to this game. Now you don't have to focus on it by any means, but there is a lot of customization in how you build your character in this game. So I think it's a little bit more than just RPG lite, in my opinion, if you want to make it that way. Again, that's not required, right? You can play this game on story mode where the combat is very, very easy. And honestly, you don't have to do all that. But if you want to experience a little bit more of what this game on story mode where the combat is very, very easy. And honestly, you don't have to do all that. But if you want to experience a little bit more of what this game has to offer as a whole,

I think you really start to delve into that RPG element a lot more. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like at certain points, they just kind of unlock a whole bunch of new recipes. And if you want, you can go find those mats. Sometimes you get recipes that include mats that you literally cannot get to until end game. So there is some stuff in there like that. I would still say it's,

it's RPG light because you don't have massive skill trees. I mean, this is like you open up a skill tree, you can upgrade either your Leviathan axe or unarmed, or you can upgrade a Trace. I focused, I was kind of like in roleplay mode when I was doing this. I was like, this kid needs all the help he can get. I put every point I could into Atreus, and if anything was left over, I used those for me. So that was kind of like my whole thought process. I never really got particularly into the unarmed

combat i would really only bust it out when i had to when you were fighting enemies who were resistant to frost where literally your axe bounces off their face like you got to use something else um so i was kind of curious did you put more points into the axe unarmed atreus what would you do are we can we get into spoilers here? Because there's one... I have to be able to talk about this other piece of equipment. So can we give a spoiler warning here? Or is that later on? Sure.

We can... All right, let's just start diving into spoilers now. I think most people can probably guess, even if they don't know what's going to happen. Spoiler warning, if you haven't played and you're a fan of the series series you might want to just pause right now or skip ahead just a minute or two but that's your warning the other thing you get in this game besides the leviathan axe is there is a point in this game where you do get or you go and retrieve the blades of chaos this moment in this game gave me absolute chills dude I was geeking out so hard when this happened. And you get the Blades of Chaos, and you're like, oh my goodness, there they are.

And they're phenomenal, right? And the great thing is they don't replace the Leviathan Axe, which I thought was such a cool thing for this game to do. They accent the Leviathan Axe, and they kind of complement it. So there's multiple times where you need to use one or the other. But it's like what I was saying again with the RPG elements is when you get the Blades of Chaos, they come with their own skill trees. They come with their own abilities that you need to unlock. They come with their own runic attacks,

which are like these really fantastical, over-the-top magical attacks that Kratos can do using the weapons. And I thought this opened up the game even more to me because now you have a second weapon on top of your unarmed combat, on top of the Leviathan Axe, on top of Atreus' archery skill tree and stuff like that that you can use. And I felt like it just went from 99 miles an hour to 200 miles an hour because this is partway through the game, and it changes the flow of the game completely and then just makes combat even better. Well, yeah, and they complement each other so well, like you mentioned, because the Leviathan Axe is much more of a single target whereas the blades of chaos you're swinging them around you 360 degrees sometimes so it makes for really good aoe combat and there's a lot of times when you're mowing down large groups of enemies

with the blades of chaos and then maybe you switch to the leviathan axe for this boss fight or whatever it might be there's even some bosses that go through different stages of invulnerabilities. It forces you to continually swap back and forth, which I think is really fascinating. I also loved pumping a lot of points into Atreus because there are times when enemies are blocking you, but Atreus has the enemy flanked. And I can just hit the button, which on PC was F, and Atreus starts unleashing arrows into enemies. Now, you can also put points into shock arrows or stun arrows, and when you max everything out, you can basically sit back and mash the F button, and Atreus is just raining down arrows left and right. I felt like that was the story-appropriate method to go. I also always appreciated putting points into Spartan Rage.

One of my favorite abilities is where you pop Spartan Rage, Kratos just shoves his hand down into the ground, pulls up a boulder, and just chucks it and hits someone at 100 miles an hour. And it's so satisfying to hear Kratos roaring while he's chucking these boulders. So there's definitely a lot of things that you can tinker with the combat to make it fit your style.

Absolutely, it has RPG-ish elements. I would not call this game an RPG. This is an action-adventure game that has some RPG elements. I would not primarily call it an RPG, This is an action-adventure game that has some RPG elements. I would not primarily call it an RPG, but there's definitely a lot of customization. Yeah, I don't... So just to clarify, I'm not saying that God of War is an RPG, but what I'm saying is that the RPG elements go beyond what I would say is RPG-lite. I feel like there is a ton of customization available that falls into that like rpg category gotcha all

right now i we both know this episode's going crazy long i'm not i'm not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna start scrapping stuff yet i want to talk about these guys all right you've already mentioned a little bit of armor and crafting we gotta talk about the two brothers, Brock and Sindri. They're great. They are... They're brothers. They could not be more different from a personality standpoint. In some ways, they are just as different as Atreus is different from Kratos.

Brock is literally blue and has a beard. He's very brash. He's very vulgar. Sindri is like this super scrawny white dude that I will say that even though I found Sindri to be very funny, he almost feels like he's from a different universe because this entire world of God of War is filled with nothing but violence and fighting and blood and guts everywhere. And yet Sindri can't even think about any kind of blood or violence without dry heaving.

And so he is definitely like the comic relief in this game, where he will send you out to get something, but he doesn't want to touch it when you bring it back. And he starts dry heaving, and it's hilarious every single time. It really is. It's more of a lighthearted nature in a very serious game. A lot of times Brock does that as well. Brock's a little bit more of the shock factor to me.

One of my favorite lines is when he says, he says, Ragnarok is coming. I feel it in my scrote. And then he says it again like 10 seconds later and atreus goes yeah you mentioned that oh man brock just brock kills me because he he's vulgar man he definitely cusses there is some language in this game and he's the only one that uses profanity yes he is actually but it just comes out of nowhere, man. And he's so

unapologetic for it too, that it just cracks me up. So it's very funny because Brock and Sindria are the blacksmiths in this game. You learn a little bit about the history of the Leviathan Acts. They're the ones that made it. They're the ones that made Mjolnir. So there's the similarity between the two. But they add such a cool dynamic in the characters in this game, because there's this whole part of the story where they're apart, right? Like, they're very mad at each other. And you're trying to kind of figure out what's going on. Atreus takes a liking to both of them. Kratos could care less.

He finds some kind of annoying, you know, but they can upgrade your gear, right? Yeah. You know, they can upgrade your gear. So he's like, okay, I get it. Like they're necessary, but I hate dealing with them. Atreus really kind of takes a liking to them, but it's just really, I'm with you in that. I think it adds a lot of humor to the game. That's very needed.

It's not out of place by any means. Like, it's not like a, hey, we have to make a joke. So we, you know, let's throw one in there. It's very natural because of the conversation and these two characters that are introduced. I really, I like both of them a lot. I do too. And they definitely have their own storyline, but it feeds directly into the main storyline. So it's not like a side story that's really interesting. It really

is integral, but at the same time, it's their own story. I thought that was really handled very well. There is always a little bit of an element where I kind of think like, how are these guys making enough money? Like, who are they selling to? Because God of War is kind of like, you probably only have eight or nine characters in this game that have a name and talk. Other than that, you've got a whole lot of mindless zombie-like magical creatures that you're destroying. So, you know, I guess they're just making their money where they will. You do also find out that the Leviathan Axe was actually crafted for Faye, your wife, that you're using. So initially, it was actually her weapon that they had made for her

right which i thought was also a really interesting little twist in the story all right now one last thing that we need to talk about before jumping into more of the storyline elements are the puzzles okay now the cynical side of me could be a little nitpicky and say, who is leaving behind these intricate traps and tests to open these chests? But I think they're one of the best things that God of War has to offer. You run across these magical chests that you cannot just open. They have three magical seals. You have to look around. You find these runes.

You hit them with a weapon, and it unlocks the seals, or you might have to ring three bells within a certain amount of time, and then the chest opens. But they are, I think, difficulty-wise, tuned perfectly. They're never frustrating, they take just a couple of minutes, and it gives you a little bit of a break from the combat, and then they give you huge upgrades, where you might increase your HP bar or your rage meter. And I think that the puzzles are actually very needed in this game. I feel like this game would not be the masterpiece that it is if it was not for the inclusion of these puzzles, to be honest. I'm with you in that they do nothing but highlight this game even more. I have no idea. Maybe there were

Norse pirates back in the day, and they're all trying to hide their pirate booty somewhere. And it's like, oh, well, we'll put these runes on this chest to protect it from people. And I'm going to leave the things that unlock it right next to the chest. I don't know. But it really does serve a... It's a pleasant distraction that is super needed in this game. I'm with you. I think the difficulty level is perfect. I found many, many times where I was looking for these bells or these runes that you needed to find to break, to open up the seal on the chest. And I think what it does is it makes you stop for a second.

It's like that breath of air, right? Where it's like, hey, let me pause from all this insane over-the-top combat. Let me take a breather. Let me look around this zone that I'm in or this area. Because one thing we have not touched on is that God of War is one of the best looking games that I have honestly ever seen in my life. It looked great on PlayStation 4. On PC, it is unrivaled to me in how good the graphics in this game are. I mean, that's high praise from me, but man, is it incredible. And I think what the puzzles do is it makes you pause for a second, and it makes you just look around and appreciate what's around you. And I love that they incorporated that in the game.

Some of them are very, very simple. Some of them, I found a couple puzzles to be rather challenging. But it's like you said, as a whole, when you take it all together, they absolutely nailed the difficulty level of these puzzles in the game. Yeah, and some of them are very clever. So one thing that you use a lot in the game is your Leviathan Axe. You're constantly using either to throw at a, I don't even know what to call it, like a thing that it spins in a circle. Or you might use your Leviathan Axe to activate something and you can throw it and freeze something midway. So there are times when you have to raise an elevator halfway and then freeze it and

then you run to the other side and then you can see that rune and you can destroy it. So there are things like that that keep the game very fresh. And honestly, the rewards from those chests are so powerful. You kind of feel like you have to do all of them, but they're all very fun. They don't feel frustrating. They only take a minute or two usually to figure them out, maybe three at the very most. But it's always really neat when you figure out how they hid that rune. And as soon as you discover it, I constantly found myself saying, oh, that's so clever. That's so cool. And then you just move on and you start fighting the next

mob. Yeah. The puzzles play a good part in progression as well, because you're going through all these zones. You're going through all these environments in the game, and you have to solve puzzles to progress. That plays a very integral role in the game itself. But they're fun. They're never frustrating, but you feel like you're accomplishing something. And so it's such a good change of pace between the combat. Hey, you cleared out some monsters. Now you have to look around. Now you have to look around. Now you have to solve this puzzle. Okay, now you can progress and move forward. It's just part of a perfect formula, in my opinion. And without it, I don't think this game would be close to what it is. But with it, it's just another piece of this perfect puzzle.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Now let's get into some major spoilers as far as the storyline goes. So if you want to keep this stuff secret, then, you know, maybe skip ahead to the final 10 minutes of the episode where we do our other segments. Now, up to this point, we have not talked at all about Freya. All right. Now Freya plays a very major role in this game. We find out that she was, of course, married to Odin. She is stuck in Midgard and is not able to leave. We find out that she is estranged from her son. And more or less, she is kind of your guide throughout the game.

She helps you figure out how to get through certain areas or how to get to another realm. And I remember on my very first playthrough, the first time you meet Freya, Atreus is just so excited because she's friendly. She is affectionate. And I found myself thinking like, maybe we should just leave Atreus with Freya because honestly, this kid really just needs a mother. And Kratos more or less has the emotional intelligence of a toaster. I kind of felt like, let's just leave Atreus and let him play with these magical boars. They can pick flowers all day. I kind of felt like he should probably just stay with Freya. Yeah, she definitely does play the mother figure.

He needs that because he does not get any sort of emotional fulfillment from Kratos. You can kind of see that he's hungry for that. Again, there's all this nuance in this game that you pick up on as you play it and as you think back on it. And that's definitely one of them. And so Freya is very helpful. She assists you on your journey as Kratos because you recognize that she's a god. You're very suspicious of her right away. And so that comes out kind of instantly when you do meet her. And Atreus doesn't have any clue.

You know, he's just like, oh, here's this nice lady. She's helping us out, you know, that sort of stuff. But yeah, she's again another character in the game that really helps to highlight the story in this game. You come across her multiple times. You learn a lot about her, which I'm sure we're about to talk about. Yeah. So when you first meet Freya, it's interesting because you're kind of cautious around Freya simply because she's a stranger, but she clearly knows that you're a god. And she even tells you, because she picks up very quickly that Atreus has no idea.

And she says, look, I made choices with my son, and now we're estranged. You can't do the same to him. He needs to know who you are. You can't keep all of these things a secret. He does not know that he's a god. He doesn't know that you're a god. And you need to be more open and honest. Don't lose him the way that I lost my son.

And then, of course, when you learn that Freya is a god, Kratos feels very betrayed by Freya. And this is just another link in the chain of him being deceived by gods. Now, I do definitely want to talk about Atreus' sickness and how Atreus evolves over the course of the game. Now, I think what might be my favorite sequence in the entire game is, I think it's about halfway through, maybe two-thirds through the storyline, but Atreus starts to get worked up the way he always does and he starts to go into spartan rage you see the red the red aura comes around him and he's yelling i think he even puts his hands out the same way kratos does but then he passes out and he will not uh come out of it and kratos has to pick up atreus's body and you have to walk him all the

way back to freya's hut in hopes that she can do something about it and what's so fascinating about the sequence they pull the hud the hud disappears the whole game you've got your your rage meter your hp meter your cooldowns all the stuff that you can see, it's nothing. And since there's no loading times, you're not doing quick travel back to Freya. You have to gingerly lay him down in this rowboat, row your way down the river, pick up his body, go all the way back to Freya's hut. And there's a really intense moment when you take a lift and you lay Atreus down and Kratos is pacing on the lift and you never, ever see Kratos where he is worried or feels like he's not completely in control. And I felt like his worry and his concern was just so palpable. It was a really fascinating

sequence. It's very gripping. it's a hundred percent it makes you it sucks you in even more and honestly that's one of the things that this game is a master class in nuance right for a game that's over the top ripping creatures in half and smashing them in the face right like but honestly that's like that it does so well, right. It really does. And the thing is, is like the nuance in this game is top notch and it's like, you don't even notice it. Right. Like one of the huge areas of this game is the Lake of the nine. And so you're paddling around.

That's kind of the central hub area of the, of the whole game. And, you know, you're paddling around and when you're in the, the, the canoe, when you're rowing and stuff like Atreus will lean over the side and he'll drag his fingers through the water. Right. Or it's like he'll look up and he'll he'll he'll, you know, mention something that's up in the sky or, you know, later on in the game, you get Mimir's head. Right. So Mimir does a very good job of explaining a lot of the lore and stuff like that. And Atreus will talk to Mimir and they'll have the side conversation while you're traveling to the next location. As Atreus matures in this game, his personality changes. It's like you said in the beginning, right? In the beginning, he's sick, and he's very shy, and he's very reserved around Kratos. And

then he starts to open up on this journey. And you can tell this kid is having so much fun just going on this adventure with his dad, right? But then later on in the game, he becomes a little turd. He becomes a complete turd because you're finally able to have him come out of his, I guess if you want to call it a coma but you have to get a certain thing for freya which is in helheim the land of the dead now your leviathan axe won't do you any good in helheim which is why you go unearth the blades of chaos and they've been buried back in his home and i think what most people would say is that this was the climax of the game where he starts to unwrap his wrists and the game starts playing the old god of war music so good dude and it's

just immediate chills up and down as you hear it come in and then you end up you know taking your blades of chaos down into hellheim. But anyway, long story short, Atreus is revived by Freya. She brings him back out of it. But Freya tells you, this sickness that he has is basically because he is a god but doesn't know it. And this divine nature and this human nature are at war within him, and it's having its effect on his body he needs to know who he truly is or else he's gonna keep uh battling this illness and it's going to take his life so you tell atreus that you're a god and that he's a god and there's nothing else to call him but a little turd for a good like i in in my memory he acts this way for like five hours in the story.

In reality, it's a very short lived phase. It's maybe two hours of the storyline. This little idiot has the nerve to say verbatim. I know everything I need to know. Now I have nothing else to learn. What a teenager. What a teenager moment, teenager moment right i mean as

parents and dads boy can we sympathize with that yes it's it's crazy to me and i'm gonna go back to the nuance of this because anytime you like you can command atreus to shoot things it's part of the puzzle solving in this game right like hey i need you to do shoot an arrow over here do this whatever and in the beginning he's like oh okay, great. He's trying to earn your affection, right? Yeah, exactly. He's trying to impress you, his dad. And then he becomes the little turd in this game. And you tell him like, hey, shoot this thing over here. And he'll go, whatever. And then it's like, what? What did you just say to me? And then it's like, he does this kind of stuff. And it's like, what, like, what did you just say to me? And then it's like, he,

he does this kind of stuff and he's like, or he'll be like, yeah, I know. Or he'll interrupt you and he'll say something. And then Kratos will be like, you need to show respect. And then Atreus says,

well, isn't that what you were going to say anyway? And it's like, it's, it's really well done. Cause you and I, you know, we've raised teenagers and it,

there, there's just something so perfect in that teenage mentality mixed with just finding out that he's a god. Atreus even says, because in the beginning he struggles to kill the deer. Now you've slaughtered all these magical elves. And Atreus says, oh, I don't feel so bad after killing all those elves. We were on god business. This is the kind of stuff Atreus says, oh, I don't feel so bad after killing all those elves. We were on god business. Like, this is the kind of stuff Atreus starts saying. And Mimir's commentary is so funny, where Mimir's like, I don't know that that's exactly the lesson you should have learned from this.

And so he throws out little barbs. Kratos, ironically, never comments on the things Atreus says, but he does address Atreus' actions. So Atreus does kill someone that didn't need to be killed, and Kratos lays into him and says, hey, I kill gods because they've all been evil and wrong, and we need to be something different, and you need to be better than me. And I thought that all that stuff was really fascinating. Luckily, Atreus ends up finding the right spot of the pendulum. But man, for those couple of hours, he is insufferable. He shoots you. He shoots you with an arrow at one point. I wrote down in my notes, let me take a look. I wrote, Atreus shot me, let him die, LOL. That's how I felt in that moment. I'm like,

all right, we're done. This kid just shot me with a stun arrow. He's out. This kid's got to go. It's so great, man. The tone of the game changes so perfectly along with Atreus's development. It really does. And you see Kratos's frustration. And it's like you said, ultimately, Atreus does something very wrong. And then that's when Kratos kind of loses it. And that's one of the turning points to Atreus kind of getting back on the right path because it's like he's realizing, hey, your actions have consequences, whether you're a mortal or a god at that point. And I love the transition. It's so funny because that part of the game, you literally get so aggravated with Atreus in real life. That's what I'm talking about. This game is so good at eliciting emotions. And they force these emotions upon you,

whether it's through nuance or in-your-face stuff, but it makes you feel something. And it makes you feel exactly what the developers of the game want you to feel. And I absolutely love that ride that it takes you on. It's incredibly effective to elicit that emotional response. All right. So let's go ahead and fast forward and talk a little bit about the final boss fight. So, if you want to call it a twist, I don't even know if you can really call it a twist,

but you find out that the stranger from the beginning, who is actually Baldur, is the son of Freya. Now, I say it's not really a twist because this game has like seven characters and one of them is a mom who misses her son and one is a son who's incredibly angry and mad at his mom. It doesn't exactly take calculus to figure this out. But in the final fight. Oh, man, I love it. I love I love just thinking and talking about this. So Freya has been cursed by Odin that she cannot harm anyone. And she has this great love for her son Baldur. And she had cursed Baldur to be invulnerable. But as a side effect

of that invulnerability, Baldur cannot feel anything. He cannot taste food. He cannot feel anyone's touch. And so he has grown incredibly bitter. But for Freya, this was the way she wanted to keep him safe. Now, Baldur, since he's been coming at us the whole game, and he's got his eyes set on Atreus as well, we're not going to let that happen. And so we end up at the end of the game where Freya is there, and we're battling Baldder. And Freya is like the frantic mother screaming, don't hurt my son, don't kill my son. And yet you're still fighting him. And I thought that it was, again, very emotional while at the same time being a very fun boss fight. I will say having Balder be the final fight is not as fun as if it were Thor or Odin or even Tyr, the Norse god of war, who does not show up in this game.

So Baldur's maybe a little underwhelming, but I thought that the emotions and the story behind it all really made it effective. It really does. For the mythology fans, Baldur is – because he's the son of Freya and Odin, he's Thor's brother. So, I mean, it kind of gives you a hint as to the extent of his power, right? Like, I mean, Thor's brother is obviously going to be very strong and tough to be, and he is. Balder looks like a normal man. He's kind of scrawny, to be honest. His body's covered with runes and stuff like that, but he's not physically imposing.

Like, Kratos is much more imposing of a figure than Baldur is, but Baldur is invulnerable. He can't get hurt. So even though Kratos is one bad dude and has gone through all of these gods, it's like he can't really beat Baldur either, just because of Baldur's powers. So they wind up having these epic, epic battles battles and it does culminate in this final battle. Freya, like you said, is the concerned mom, you know,

she's helped you out, but now she's really, really mad at you because she does not want you to, to harm Balder. She also has a pretty good clue as to how powerful you really are and so she's worried you know like you can tell she has legit fear and the cool thing is is like this whole time you're fighting you're getting your butt kicked you're kicking butt freya's screaming in the background she's imploring you to please stop fighting each other at one point she reanimates this, I mean, absolutely monster-sized giant who's looming

over this fight. I mean, this is Hollywood grade A effects going on in this fight, man. I mean, it's absolutely just kind of mind-blowing as to how they can have the scale of this giant looming over you. She's yelling and screaming at you. Atreus is, is yelling things at you. Balder's mocking you and you guys are going back and forth. Like this feels like one of those epic, epic showdowns,

right? It's kind of like a duel with Darth Vader between Luke and Darth Vader moments. It's, you know, like these moments that occur where there's 50 things going on at once and you were just absolutely on the edge of your seat at the height of tension, you know, and it's like, how is all of this going to play out? And this final fight, wow, Balder doesn't necessarily make such a compelling villain. The sequence.

The context. Right. Yeah. Everything that's going on is incredible. The one thing that I really loved also is the conclusion of the fight. So you've clearly won. Freya is imploring you to not kill Balder. And so you do relent.

And you let Balder go. And Freya says something to the effect of, like, I want you to forgive me. I was just looking out for your best, Balder go. And Freya says something to the effect of like, I want you to forgive me. I was just looking out for your best, Balder. I want us to reconcile. Balder says, never. I've waited for this moment my whole life. I hate you with every ounce of my being. And Freya says, okay, fine.

Kill me. I won't resist. If this is what you need to be happy in life, go ahead and kill me. I won't resist. If this is what you need to be happy in life, go ahead and kill me. And Baldur starts choking Freya. Son of the year moment. And I'm like, my jaw's on the floor the first time I play this. First of all, I'm thinking, man, every family in this game is so dysfunctional. The brothers, the Blacksmith brothers are dysfunctional. Freya and Baldur are dysfunctional. Us and Atreus are dysfunctional. And so then you step in and go,

no, this ain't gonna happen. And you kill Baldur. And Freya, you just saved her life. But from her perspective, you just killed her son. And so she says, one of my favorite quotes in the movie, I always love when characters become like incredible poets in all of a sudden the heat of the battle they hit you with this monster speech but freya who has been nothing but kind this entire game turns where she looks very stern and starts yelling

i will rain down every agony every violation imaginable upon you. I will parade your cold body from every corner of every realm and feed your soul to the vilest filth in hell. That is my promise. Oof. And then she leaves. Is she mad, do you think? What'd you say? I said, is she mad, do you think? Oh, is she mad?

Yeah. I mean, you just saved her life, though. That's the crazy thing. Like, that's a gift. It's just like, what are you doing? I just saved you. Your son was choking you to death. But as a mother, you kind of get it, right?

Like, she would rather die and Balder be alive. But I think we know, even if you let him kill Freya, he's going to turn on you. You're going to kill him anyway. So honestly, it's like, Balder's going to die, but we saved Freya, he's going to turn on you. You're going to kill him anyway. So honestly, it's like Baldur's going to die, but we saved Freya's life. Now we see Freya in the trailers for Ragnarok. I'm sure there'll be a boss fight against her. Mimir does hint that she might come around once she calms down a little bit. Maybe we need to get Freya a little bit of my doll or something. I don't know, but I do think that she might turn around back toward the good side. It might be a little bit of that Darth Vader kind of ending where she'll turn back.

Who knows? And then finally, at the very, very, very end of the game, we do finally reach the peak of Jotunheim, which is where we've been carrying these ashes. There's a very sweet moment when you allow Atreus to finally carry his mother's ashes. He's asked you a good four or five times, and your answer is no. I don't trust you to do it. Atreus has now matured and evolved, and so you allow him to carry the ashes at the very end. And we get some revelations.

We are told that the giants were not physically giant. That was just a race of people. And we find out that Faye, your wife that died, actually was a giant, which means Atreus is half god, half giant. It also explains why Atreus was so fascinated with giants the whole game. It's because that's him. That's his DNA. He's drawn to the giants and we see that there are murals written on these walls that lay out every detail

that has happened in god of war all of this was prophesied and foretold fey knew that you and atreus would find these murals this was kind of the whole purpose of the game for why she's brought you here and then we kind of get like the major reveal where atreus says well the runes written here don't call me atreus they call me loki yeah and that's kind of like the final big reveal of the game is that your son is actually the god of mischief, Loki. Yep. Which is the big twist in the game. This game does have some twists. There's some other Easter eggs that are in the game. We won't talk about those. But if you pay attention, this game hints at a lot more that's going to happen in the future with potentially God of War Ragnarok and things like that. But yeah, the big, big reveal in this is that your son Atreus, who you've been with the absolute entire game, is actually Loki, who is a Norse god. And that's kind of the thing, too, is you're the God of War. You came from the Greek mythology side of things. And I don't know how you wound up in the Norse mythology side of things. I think you're trying to hide. And you mentioned something that Tyr is the Norse god of war. And while the

game makes a lot of reference to him, you're in Tyr's temple a lot. I mean, Tyr plays a very large part in this game, except that he's not in the game. He's not physically present, but he's there. So it's like, are you able to come to the Norse mythology because they don't have a God of war? Like, you know, so there's, there's some interesting kind of mythological questions that arise from,

from all of that as well. But yes, you do find out a trace is true identity. He is Loki. That's like the big reveal in this game. You know, Loki is going to play a part in Ragnarok. And so that's kind of the, you know's a lot of the stuff that's foretold

and what's going to happen in the future because Ragnarok is coming. And I think we're going to find out a lot of that in the sequel that's coming up hopefully later this year. But there is one other kind of interesting reveal that Atreus doesn't even get to see, because he starts wandering ahead. And that's when you're looking at these murals, there's a curtain that is covering one of them, and the wind kind of blows, and it kind of pushes it aside. And you see Kratos laying on Atreus' lap, and it looks like he's dying. And this has spawned an awful lot of conjecture of what this final mural means. A lot of people argue that it is Kratos. A lot of people argue that it's not Kratos. It's certainly Atreus in there holding whoever this is. But even there,

there's almost like a clear pipe that kind of just like spins around a lot and it connects both of them by the mouth. So then some people wonder if this is some kind of time travel thing where Atreus is actually holding his older self while he's dying, or is he going to continue the pattern of patricide where Kratos killed Zeus? Is Atreus going to kill Kratos? I think it's possible, but clearly the game's not going to give you that clear of a hint. So we don't really see the same tattoos that Kratos has, but it's possible it is him. But it's definitely a lot of fun to wonder what that final mural, which clearly shows the future, I think that'll be more clear once we get into Ragnarok.

But it's really fun to think about. Yeah, I love the twists. You know, even though this game has twists and even though it has an incredible story and even though it's setting up the sequel, you know, for God of War Ragnarok, there's so many things that you can kind of fan theory about and think about even after the game is over that I love that they just leave those little tidbits kind of dangling there to just make you question like, what's going to happen with the story? Well, and one of the coolest things is after you beat the game, you get credits rolling while you're still walking in Jotunheim. And so you walk back and you take the portal back to Midgard. And when you go back to your house for the first time,

there is an extra cutscene that you get to watch where Kratos and Atreus both talk about how tired they are now that they've completed the mission. They both agree to get some good rest. And in the middle of the night uh well all of a sudden the screen goes to black and it says years later and all of a sudden you hear crackling and you see lightning and kratos immediately grabs the leviathan axe and opens the door and what do we see but fat thor with his hands with his hands like in an old western where he's got mjolnir

in like a holster and his hands are right above it and we see more lightning so you know we certainly are going to see thor in the next game and uh you kind of get that little special cut scene at the end of god of war which is pretty. And it's very, pardon my pun, it's very electrifying to see Thor show up. Oh, yeah. And they've done that in the God of War Ragnarok trailer as well. So obviously that conflict is going to be one of the major conflicts in the sequel that's coming up. And I can't wait to see how that plays out. Okay.

And then finally, there are lots of collectibles. There's lots of things you can do in this game. Once you finish the storyline, you can work on a lot of things like that. I think probably the biggest thing are hunting down and fighting the nine Valkyries. And I think that's something that you actually got into in your playthrough. I got into that a lot because they are some of the most challenging boss fights out there, to be honest. And I played this game on a hard difficulty level. So for me, it was just this kind of self-challenges like, I'm going to take my time. I'm going to do some of the extra stuff in this game. The Valkyries are it. Man, they are some hard fights, dude. But there's such a fun challenge.

I was posting like, oh, I'd send screenshots of me walking up to a Valkyrie. And then I would rejoice in the Discord server when I beat one of them. And I did all of the side stuff to track down all of these Valkyries. They were so much fun. You don't have to kill a single one in this game to beat the game. This is 100% optional content, but it was one of those gaming challenges that I kind of put on myself and I did it. It felt so good to just know that I beat all of them on hard difficulty level. It's kind of one of those gaming moments that you're proud of kind of things. You know what I mean? Honestly, beating the Valkyries on hard was one of my things.

They're insanely good boss fights. The timing, the way, the strategies, all of the Valkyries are different and have different moves and abilities and all that. So I highly recommend if you do play this game, at least attempt a couple of them. See if it's your thing. If it's not, it's okay. Like I said, you don't have to do them at all. But this game excels in having that optional content to where even when you beat the story, you're able to continue playing for quite some time if you want to,

to kind of keep experiencing the world and a little bit more that God of War has to offer. Yeah, I personally only did two of the Valkyries, but they were really fun. I was just kind of like, you know what, I was in this, like, you have to have good story and good combat. But for me, the number one driving force for what I care about is story. And since the story was done, I was kind of ready to jump into the next one. Now, I did think, you know, despite me even calling God of War a perfect game, I do have some minor nitpicks. And there's one in particular I have to poke fun at. Josh, your paddle at all times is on one side of the canoe. You turn on a dime left and right, and Kratos never changes the side. i don't know if you've ever been in a canoe but if you want to turn right you got to put your paddle on the left side and if you want to turn left you got to put the paddle on the right side and kratos just keeps it on the same side and this canoe is is moving left and right it it's a very minor nitpick why not throw in just a couple extra

people for a few days? Let him just switch the side. We see it in other games. I see it in games all the time when you canoe, they'll switch the side, but we didn't get that here in God of War. But that's, you know, we're talking crazy minor that that's what we're talking about. Right. Yeah. I mean, if I had to absolutely nitpick something, it's probably that a lot of the puzzles are kind of repeated throughout the game. It would have been neat because the game does such a good job with progression, whether it's progressing the story or progressing Atreus or progressing your relationship with him or whatever. You know what I mean? It just does such a good job that I would have liked to have seen a little bit more progression or difference in some of the puzzles because they do start to feel a little routine after a little while. Again, insanely minor nitpick because I already said,

I think the puzzles enhance this game immensely, but it would have been neat to maybe just have some different types of puzzles or something like that yeah i can see what what you're saying there yeah i think uh only other nitpicky kind of thing is that the maps themselves are actually relatively small the the world looks very big the map's kind of small it almost seems laughable that we don't know who Freya is, because to get from Kratos' home to Freya's hut is about 12 seconds of running and 20 seconds of paddling a canoe, and we're there. It is pretty funny. So I was kind of like, okay, it might feel a little more realistic if this world was just a little bit bigger. But at the same time, because everything is so close, you're never bored running from one area to another.

Everything's very close. You're never running for long. There's really no travel in this game. So it's one of those things where you got to have it one way or another. And I just thought that was kind of funny. How have these two never just run across each other in an open field? They literally live that close to each other. All right. Well, Josh, I did

even make a joke before we recorded that we were going to hit the 90 minute mark before getting to community reviews. And we are darn close to that. Let's jump into reviews that other people have left for God of War. All right, here we go. So as we always do, we pick out some reviews off of Steam. I always try to find a couple positives, a couple negatives, just so that you can get a broader idea of the opinion of this game versus just Paul and I's opinion on it. So I'll just dive in here. This first one is recommended. This person has 98 hours on record, so they have definitely played the game and a lot of the additional content. This game does have a new game plus mode as well, so you can play through it all over again

with all your fancy armor and stuff like that. But this is a positive review, and it says, it's hard to explain the emotions you go through when you experience this game. I'm in my early 40s, and I've played a lot of games during my life. Only a few games I considered memorable, generational games that defined what an amazing game is. And God of War goes beyond this. God of War, for the lack of a better word, is a masterpiece. It is subjectively the best game made I have ever played in my life. An emotional epic that not only delivers Oscar worthy story and performances from actors, but game mechanics and presentation that are brutal, satisfying and fluid.

Not only it looks unbelievable and cinematic in its scope and engaging gameplay, it pays homage to everything that came before it in the series. I feel like I could have written that review, dude. There's, you know, the term masterpiece gets thrown out a lot. cyberpunk 2077 was already tagged masterpiece before it released on steam like people are ready to always crown the next masterpiece this game really is one of them as much as i love the original god of wars i would not say any of them are masterpieces they are very very good probably great games um but this one definitely stands apart and what's even more wild is that

it came out the same year as red dead redemption 2 we had arguably the two best games of the entire decade both come out within a few months of each other yeah and you know today we're not gonna talk about you know ranking those two that that conversation is going to come down the road. But the fact that we had two unquestionable masterpieces come out in 2018 was so much fun. It's unbelievable. I really hope we get that again in my lifetime. You know what I mean? I want to have this problem of like, oh, which game is the game of the decade? Okay. Yeah. So, all right. I'll say this. It was not easy to find negative reviews that weren't negative just because of technical aspects. Now, this is from Steam. So,

obviously, this is the PC port. That's what you and I both played this go-round. That's kind of what we're basing everything off of. The story... Nothing changes from the console to the PC version other than some graphical stuff and things like that. But a lot of the negative reviews were simply negative because of technical issues. And so it was difficult to find ones that actually talked about gameplay and stuff like that. But here we go. All right. So this is a negative review.

10.6 hours on record. Was fun at first, but the combat is extremely repetitive and boring. Even when fighting bosses, it's the same repetitive motions to disable any foe. I was kind of hoping I would be making my way through the gods every so often, but the 11 hours I have played, I have fought two bosses and three trolls. Trolls are exactly the same as each other aside from a color and a single ability. I guess Dark Souls customized combat experiences ruin games like this. If you want to play a movie slash game and hack away repetitive enemies in a repetitive fashion, buy it. If you're looking for something less basic, don't.

I can understand saying that there is a level of repetition, but I would never say it's not fun. You're going to develop the same things, right? Like I, I like this ability where I do the AOE freeze move, or I like doing this ability where I spin in a circle and you're going to do those every time your cool down is up, but that's the same of every game. Like that's like saying, Oh,

what am I just going to run around with this gun and halo and shoot people over and over? What else? Like, you know, like that's just what the game is. Right. Yep. I agree. I mean, yes,

there is some repetition, I guess, but I never found that to be a negative. And the combat was varied enough to me in the skills and abilities that you can equip or decide to use that it's kind of up to you how repetitious you want it to be, I guess. Now, the trolls are repetitious because they have the exact same finishing move. And that is kind of like some recycled code. But I don't fault it for that. Very nitpicky. You're going to have a little bit of that in every game. Right. Yep. All right. This next one is recommended. 57 hours on record. Absolutely amazing port. I already played this game on PS4 back then, so I know what to expect. So this was more of a review of the PC port. I have a high- on PS4 back then, so I know what to expect. So this was more of a review of the PC port. I have a high-end PC and was worried it would still be rough, but I am

easily running this at 1440p ultra at 90 frames per second. As for the game, the story is incredible. The world is gorgeous. Characters are very well done along with their voice acting. The combat is intense and brutal. The music is incredible as well. This game is a masterpiece that should be played by everyone. Use DLSS if you need better frames per second because they did a good job supporting that. One thing we haven't talked about is most games that start on console that port to PC have a lot of issues. Some PC ports are notoriously very, very bad. In my opinion, this is the best PC port I have ever seen in my entire life. It's definitely up there. I mean, I can't claim that I've played many. I have done like Mass Effect, all of the Mass Effects on console and PC and thought they were all great on both. I thought God of War was fantastic

on PS4. It's fantastic on PC. I had no issues with the port whatsoever. There are some goofy button combinations like to activate Spartan Rage you're pressing left shift plus your middle mouse button. It was weird. There were a few things like that where I was like

who's coming up with these button combos? You get used to it after you do it two or three times. But that's just more of a button mapping thing. The port itself is perfect. Right. Yeah, I agree. All right. And then last one, this is not recommended five hours on record. In short, cutscenes and story are great, but I find myself sighing with boredom every time the game throws another group of the same enemies at me, or I discover that it's apparently time for yet another axe throw puzzle. A masterpiece, they say. I don't see it. This game consists of three things. Fights, puzzles, and cutscenes. You walk from room to room, and it's either a fight, a puzzle, or a cutscene. Combat is very repetitive. Chop or throw an axe and tell the boy to shoot arrows. Same

enemies and same finishers over and over. Puzzles are very generic, mostly throw axe at stuff in specific order. I think I will try to finish the game though, since I like the story a lot. Okay. That's kind of bananas. Like what would you expect to do in a game other than cut scenes or fighting or going into a next room. Like what else is there? That's, that's every video game. Did he want, did he want survival elements?

Like, does he want craft? Like there's even stuff like that in God of Wars. I don't even know what he's looking for. I have no idea, dude. I'll be honest with you. Like it's hard for me to relate to these negative reviews. I do try to like pick ones out that talk about some of the gameplay and

stuff like that because you know, different strokes for different folks, right? Like, I get it, but I don't understand how you can complain about this game is nothing but combat, a story, and a plot. Yeah. Or like... Nothing but plot and gameplay. Right. That's literally every game out there. Like, I don't know how you can gripe about the fundamentals of video games.

Oh, that's funny. All right, Paul. Yeah. that guy's just on another planet yep all right so this is where we try to guess the overall score based on the steam rating system which is zero to a hundred percent we know that god of war won a ton of game of the years you and i both know that this is a wildly popular and well-received game so i have a feeling this is going to come down to a very close guess yep by uh i i won the last one last time so i'm gonna make you i get to guess first yep all right so user reviews on steam zero to a hundred percent i think unquestionably this is overwhelmingly positive which would be 95 plus I don't know that I know anyone that has played God of War and doesn't like it. I'm shooting for the moon on this one, Josh.

I'm going 98%. 98%? 98. All right. I guessed 96%, Paul. Oh, okay. Okay. All right.

So we're very close to each other. Could we have our first tie? We've never had a tie. Well, what would a tie be if it was 97? Yeah. If. All right. So we're very close to each other. Could we have our first tie? We've never had a tie. Well, what would a tie be if it was 97? Yeah. If it was right in between? Yeah. Paul, we've got our first tie.

Is it a tie? It's literally 97%. Oh. I feel like I win, though, because you busted. Isn't this Price is Right? Is this not Price is Right rules? No. No, no Price price is right nice try

well our first tie we've done how many of these we have five or something we've done a lot of them well i guess it's reigning champion if it's a tie you retain your title is that is that our new rule i feel like that's how it goes in most sports, right? I was going to say, should we just both talk over each other? We both introduce... You want to do two terrible pickup line intros? Sure. One after another or at the same time? No, at the same time.

Let the listeners try to figure it out. All right. All right. Let's hit that music. Hey there, Lady Freya. Hey, my name's Microsoft. I'm good at algebra. Can I crash in your place tonight? I can replace your X, and you wouldn't need to figure out why.

I'm gonna be honest, I did not hear a word you said. And mine was a terrible math joke. Mine was better. Okay, go ahead. Why don't you tell the people what this segment is? Okay, so this is how we rate games at this point. We're going to basically play what we call make love, marry, or murder. This is how we rate every game that we do a deep dive on.

Make love is, hey, this is a great game. It's well worth your time. You're going to fall in love with it, but maybe it burns out quickly. Murder is, this is probably not worth your time. You're going to fall in love with it, but maybe it burns out quickly. Murder is this is probably not worth your money. There was more to dislike about a game than there was to like about it. And Mary is we think that this game is absolutely phenomenal. It's a game that everybody should play at some point. There's a ton of gameplay. It's worth the money, so on and so forth. But this one, I don't think I've ever had an easier Mary in my life, Paul. Yeah, it's a Mary.

This is, I was trying to think, like, what would you say is the greatest example of marriage that you can think of? God of war. That's what this game is. Yeah, this is the perfect spouse. They're attentive. They're perfectly healthy. They understand your needs before you even speak them. They're supportive. They're perfectly healthy. They understand your needs before you even speak them. They're supportive.

They're the perfect match for you. Like you could not ask for a better spouse. This is also the easiest Mary that we've ever had. Why belabor the point? Right. Yep. Quickest make love Mary murder section ever. Mary, Mary, done.

Check the box. All right. Well, Josh, time for our last segment of the show. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right. If you're new to the podcast here, every time Josh and I deep dive a game, we decide as a group consensus, where are we going to place this game on our overall leaderboard? We have done a total of 65 games to date. You can see our leaderboard at multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the front page. Just scroll down a little bit. Josh, I think since we're both marrying this the fact that we both

love it immensely i think it's absolutely in the top 10 i know a lot of people have asked us is there ever a game that's going to crack your top four because we have famously said overwatch apex legends rocket league and rust are kind of like the Mount Rushmore that we've had where we have not had any game compete for quite a while. Is this going to be our first game that can compete in the top four? Paul, I'm going to put this out there. This for me is number one. I mean, not to rock the boat, but having played it on PS4 back when it released, having played it on PC, I loved this game even more the second time I played it, which is unheard of for me. I generally do not ever touch a game once I'm done with it. It only served to reinforce to me that this game is

video game perfection. I cannot think of a game out there. Now, everybody knows I love The Witcher 3, and I've said, hey, that's one of the best video games ever made. I'm putting it on record, dude. God of War is the best video game ever made. I'm absolutely not with you on that and i'm already cringing when we talk about red dead um my my my my nitpick with god of war is when we're talking about those top four overwatch apex rocket league rust you have unlimited content you can literally play those games forever now you might you might not enjoy it as much over time, right? There's seasons when we don't touch some of these games for a very long time. I think God of War is absolutely a perfect game.

I think you could make an argument that it doesn't belong in the top spot, but I'm going to argue that it does. I'm with you. I don't have any complaints from minute one it is you it it's top storytelling stop top gameplay it's an a plus all around i mean what can you not love about god of war it's all fantastic i can't wait for the next one i am nowhere near saying it's the best game of all time. I think this game is, it's like an open world, but it's very much a linear gameplay type of game. I think it is limited, but I think that's part of what makes it all perfect. They don't try to bite off more than they can chew. There's nothing compared to the open world of GTA 5 or Red Dead 2, where you can literally sit back and just watch NPCs,

and it's like, you get to watch all these cool interactions. There's nothing like that in God of War. But for what it does, it accomplishes all of it beautifully. I have no problem putting it number one. Are we really going to have a new number one, Paul? Because people said it would never happen. We came a little close with Valheim with how much we loved it. But even then we were kind of like, no, that's not on par with like Rust as much as we love Valheim. Yeah, but this is as good of a single player experience as you can get. against something else. It's never taking anything away from God of War. I can argue that another game is more ambitious. Maybe they've tackled more and they've done it all so well that it's just as good. I would never take anything away from God of War. It's a perfect game. I've said that like four times. But it's true. It really, really is true.

You and I don't always agree on stuff, you know, and especially when it comes to melee combat, which God of War is. Not the way I is, I think not the way I play Josh, not the way I play 300 X throws. It is all X throws and a trace. Well, Paul turned this into a rage combat game, but the fact that you can do that, right? You played it the way that you wanted to play it. And it was possible, which just goes to show you why it's such a great game. Lock it in, Paul. I'm with you 100%. I'm so glad we agree on this. I know there may be a debate coming up later on down the road. I was going to say, we have already, well, maybe we haven't talked about this on the show, but let's just say there will be a future deep dive on Red Dead Redemption 2 2 and i just found out this

week that michael butler started and did not finish red dead which means i'm already going to be sad knowing that red dead is going to end up below god of war i actually had the opposite experience of you i enjoyed god of war a lot more the first time the The second time was just as fun, but because I knew the story, it just wasn't quite as high for me. I think for you being so rushed the first time around, that definitely made the second one probably a lot better. For me, it was just like 10.0 versus 9.999. It was just the tiniest bit worse. Yeah. I noticed a lot more of that nuance that we talked about this episode, a lot more in my second playthrough, which really helped me

appreciate all of the little things that went into making this game as incredible as it is. Yeah. Now on the leaderboard, should I call it just God of War, God of War 2018, God of War 4? No, just call it God of War because it's technically just god of war i think people will understand we're not talking about the original that god of war one yeah all right perfect then we'll lock it in we've got a new king of the leaderboard at least for now uh a little part of me did feel like trolling you just a little bit just to give myself a little bit of buffer for red dead like no way josh it's not multiplayer this should be number five but let's let's be completely honest i'm fully fine god of war being number one it deserves it man they did such a phenomenal job with that game

and this is not recency bias because we both played it four years ago and this is kind of funny that just recently we have a new king of the leaderboard and a new slum of the leaderboard is that the dredge is that drags of the leaderboard so we now have got a war at number one and we have battlefield 2042 at number 66 now as our lowest game all right so that's all that we have here for today. Our next deep dive is going to be Lost Ark. And we are very excited to talk about that. So many things to get into for Lost Ark. Having another MMO, what a blast.

Can't wait to talk about it next time. Well, not next episode, but that'll be two weeks from today. And of course, as always, our next episode will be on Thursday for This Week in Gaming. Come check us out on Discord. Link in the episode description. Check us out for Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. Make sure to rate us five stars. And if you want to interact with us on social media, come hit us up.

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