Video Gamers Podcast - God of War: Ragnarok - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Gaming Norns Michael, Josh and Paul are here with an incredible breakdown of God of War: Ragnarok. Gaming’s latest mega-release got a lot of praise, but is it truly the gaming experience God of War is known for? We dive into the gameplay, story, combat and more in this awesome episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming 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

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello fellow gamers, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today we have a very exciting episode for you all as we will be deep diving God of War Ragnarok. Before we start that though, we would like to ask you all to take a moment to rate our show five stars and leave a written review if your podcast app allows. And if you like what we do and want extra content,

you can sign up on Patreon to get bonus episodes while helping support our show. You can check it all out at MultiplayerSquad.com, and you can also follow us on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. I am your host, Paul, and here with me, death can have him when it earns him, it's Josh. Oh, that's one of my favorite lines! It's a great one. It was so, dude, they showed that off in the trailer, that part of the game.

I was just like, yes. Very nice. And here joining me and Josh, he looks like a calm and reasonable person. Are you a calm and reasonable person? It's Michael. I think I am a calm and reasonable person, but maybe there's some things underneath that just haven't come out yet. It could be all right so i did want to say here at the top of the show that as we cover god of war ragnarok we are going to be sharing spoilers from the previous god of war entries so all the

games that came before are fair game and as far as ragnarok goes, we are only initially going to talk about the opening hour of the game. So being that it's about a 20, 22 hour campaign, we are going to talk about the opening hour just so we can talk about it on the show. And then later we will give you a major spoilers warning. And that's when we'll talk about end game reveals. All right. Since we have so much to talk about, we're not going to dilly-dally. We're not going to go over any kind of housekeeping today. It's time, boys. Let's hop on our wolf sled and make final preparations for the end of the world while deep-diving God of War Ragnarok. Oh, that music was almost as epic as Bear McCreary's score for this game. Oh, and you better believe we're going to talk about that music today.

All right, so starting off, in case you're living under a rock and don't know anything about God of War, here's the description of Ragnarok according to Sony. From Santa Monica Studios comes the sequel to the critically acclaimed God of War 2018. Join Kratos and Atreus on a mythic journey for answers before Ragnarok arrives. Together, father and son must put everything on the line as they journey to each of the nine realms. Throughout stunning mythological landscapes, they'll face fearsome enemies, from Norse gods to wild beasts, as they prepare for the showdown of their lives. Armed with his trustworthy weapons of war, including the Leviathan Axe and the Blades

of Chaos, Kratos' deadly skills will be tested like never before as he fights to protect his family. A host of new abilities for him and Atreus also await, leaving room for fluid, expressive, and customizable combat in this epic and unflinching tale. Alright, so I think it's fair to say that God of War Ragnarok is one of the most highly anticipated games that we've done a deep dive for, probably second only to Cyberpunk 2077. And for anyone out there who does not know, Ragnarok is actually the ninth entry in the God of War series, and Ragnarok sold over 5 million units in the first week, making it the fastest selling first party game in PlayStation history. Wow. Now, Josh, you and I did a deep dive of God of War 2018,

and we have it placed number two on our overall leaderboard. It currently sits only behind Red Dead Redemption 2. What is it about God of War that makes it so special? Oh, man. How long do we have? That's a good question. We have an hour for just this part. Yeah. I mean, to keep it simple, it does everything that multiple games do on their own and puts it all together in a complete package. So your gameplay aspect is phenomenal. The combat in God of War is top-notch. It is fun. It's engaging.

It's in-depth. You're good to go. The characters. The characters are explained. You care about them. There's backstory to them. They have a lot of depth to them. So they nail the characters.

The story. You become insanely invested in the story that the characters are going through. You actually care, and it's a well-written plot. So what makes God of War incredible is that it takes all of these different gameplay elements and it combines them into an almost perfect mishmash of a lot of those different elements. That's the easiest, simplest way I can put it. I can say it even simpler. I can just say it's severely underrated on our leaderboard. I mean, to be fair, God of War is number one for me.

It was Paul that I conceded Red Dead Redemption 2 to the number one spot. Well, Michael also did the deep dive on Red Dead and agreed at putting it number one at the time. Oh, Michael. Wait, Michael is is guilty yeah michael is guilty here guilty i have not played god of war but i have now played god of war 2018 yeah yeah and there's gonna be a lot of recency bias here but that's okay that's okay we'll talk about ourselves yeah yeah josh is absolutely right marriage of story and gameplay you know i don't think that god of war 2018 is like the best story ever told in video games but it's a story with a combat you put it all together it's the perfect length where it just kind of leaves you wanting more like some people fizzle out on longer games like red dead redemption 2

but god of war 2018 just drops you off 20 years later in Kratos' life, and you just have a million questions. Like, who is this woman Kratos was married to? Why is his relationship so strained with his son? What's going on? And the story is told with so much nuance and care. You can really feel the passion in every scene every line of dialogue you know josh and i i think we both said god of war 2018 is a perfect game like it's in that very small pantheon no pun intended of perfect games i think the other thing that stands out to me is that the 2018 game has so many oh crap moments yeah which i know we talked about on the deep dive but i mean it covers things from like cutting off Mamir's head,

summoning the world serpent for the first time, the entire scene where you have Kratos carrying Atreus unconscious back to Freya's hut, and you don't know if he's going to survive or not. You've got all the stuff with Balder trying to choke out his mom, Freya. I mean, to the reveal of Atreus being the Norse god Loki. There's so many individual moments that stand out as being all-time greats. I mean,

there's nothing more you can ask for at a God of War. And so here we're finally getting the follow-up, which is Ragnarok. Michaelael you already mentioned here that you had not previously played god of war you never played any of the entries other than a couple hours of 2018 before fizzling out now here in the last two weeks i believe you blazed through all of ragnarok first as your first god of war game you finished it you went back you ended up playing all of 2018 as well so what's it been like to eat drink and breathe god of war for the first time um it was incredible i'd actually played a little bit of god of war 3 back in like what was it 2008 or something like that but yeah it was interesting i did i did almost 100 complete ragnarok i have done literally everything you can

do in the game, with the exception of two things that I would consider kind of spoilers, so I might bring them up later on. But it was incredible, just going back and understanding the character. That being said, I absolutely am a preposterous, obtuse idiot by not listening to Josh and Paul when they ceaselessly told me to stop everything that I was doing and play God of War 2018

because I did play these in the wrong order. I didn't know. Now, if I had known I was going to blaze through 100 hours of God of War in a week or in two weeks, I would have played 2018 and then played Ragnarok, which listen to me out there, you have to do it that way. I know you're excited about the newer

entry. Maybe the graphics are a little bit updated and some of the things we talk about with combat later on, not to spoil later in the episode. But story-wise, it's like watching Star Wars out of order. When you watch the original trilogy from the 1970s and 80s, you're meant to understand Darth Vader as this big, bad, evil, literally faceless entity of just no remorse, just of cruelty. And then you go back and you watch the prequels, and you understand more about Anakin, and you get more of his personality and his tragic story and stuff like that. You have to play the story in the order it was meant to be revealed, because 2018 sets up so many things for Ragnarok that are just great payoffs. And I'm really sad I did it that way. That being said, I'm so happy I've done this. And I want to

play through them all again. So a good question for Michael right now is... I mean, I agree. If you haven't played 2018's God of War and you're amped about Ragnarok, do yourself a favor. You're not missing anything. Play 2018 first and then play ragnarok it will pay off in spades for you but i know there's people out there that have gone listen i don't have the time i you know i have kids or whatever but i'm super interested in ragnarok can i just play ragnarok on its own and have it be rewarding yeah i mean it's that's the whole thing is. That's what we aim to cover today, right? Yeah, exactly. So to kind of bridge the gap from 2018 to Ragnarok, we do have a time jump of three years in the story. Atreus is no longer the little turd that you might remember from 2018. Now he's a teenage turd.

He is now a strapping young man. I really love comparing the opening of 2018 to the opening of Ragnarok because it really highlights the time jump. In the beginning of 2018, you first take out Atreus to teach him how to hunt. And in the beginning of Ragnarok, Kratos is just calmly whittling away more arrows for Atreus. And Atreus walks in carrying a giant buck on his shoulders. He is no longer the little prepubescent tween. He's now a young man. So the story of Ragnarok is not quite as simple or as clean as 2018, where you're just trying to spend the entire game going to the highest mountain in all the realms to spread Fae's ashes. But in the beginning of Ragnarok, we find out that Freya has still been hunting down Kratos, trying to kill him over the last three years. We also find out that Atreus has been sneaking off at night with Sindri to study

all of the giant's shrines and also trying to find out what's going on with the Norse god of war, Tyr. Can we find out where he is? Is he still alive? Is he dead? What's going on? And Atreus is also learning more about his giant powers, since we of course know that he is half god and also half giant. So one night when Kratos and Atreus are home near the beginning of Ragnarok, they're getting ready to go to bed. And we see what was shown at the very end of the 2018 entry, where the home is kind of like hit by lightning. You hear thunder everywhere. And they open the door.

And there's Fat Thor standing outside Kratos's door, holding Mjolnir. And of course, you just kind of expect an immediate fight. Because in 2018, you did kill thor's sons you also killed his half brother balder uh but michael do you want to tell us like what happens at this point when you start talking to thor um so essentially the whole part with thor is you can kind of see that thor is is kind of being a puppet of odin's wishes and Odin's wills and stuff. So the point of the fight with Thor is... Well, first of all, it's pretty cool because you're literally flying through all the realms, crashing through things, destroying landscape around you,

while Atreus is back in the cabin talking to Odin. And that's the whole point of what's going on here is Odin is trying to distract the heck out of Kratos by using Thor in order to talk to Atreus, because Atreus is kind of the key to what he is looking to do. Is that kind of where you were wanting to go there? Yeah. I'll rewind just a little bit before that point, because everybody thinks you're fighting Thor right away, kind of like you fight Balder right away in 2018. But the game kind of throws a twist, because Thor basically says, can I come in? I brought mead. And so there's this little moment where you go like, wait, we're not fighting?

It's just our house guests. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. And then so it's this very tense moment, which I really enjoyed, where Thor comes in. You can tell Kratos does not trust him. What's happening? He pours the drink. You can still tell that there's mistrust. The tension just keeps building and building. Odin shows up, which I thought was super cool that they did this so early in the game, because it was kind of like, we know what everybody expects. So we're going to give it to you right away and show you that there's much more that's going to happen in this game than just the showdown with Thor and Odin. And then it does transition into the fight.

Odin wants Kratos to basically just leave things alone. He can live peacefully. Just stop looking for tears. Stop doing this stuff. And it sounds like, I mean, sure. And then Kratos is just like, no. One word answer. Yeah, and then the fight happens.

Yeah, and it really does echo back to like when balder knocks on the door at the beginning of the 2018 game and it goes right into a fight and you know it's it's kind of one of those things i think thor says something along the lines of you won't invite a stranger into your home with me you know something along those lines and you're like well we know a fight's coming though like we we know this is happening to josh's point and it's really interesting to see the slow build. It's kind of like when you slowly pick on that violin, that... You know, and you know it's coming.

When is it going to break? Yeah, I think this really highlighted a lot of what they do in Ragnarok. It follows a lot of the same template of 2018, but they kind of put a little bit of a twist on it. So the fact that they sit down at the table first, I thought was really cool because it kind of sets everyone's intentions, or at least what they're saying their intentions are, down on the table. If Thor shows up and they start slugging it out, that would have been epic and it would have been neat. But the fact that they both sit down on opposite sides of the table and start putting the chips down,

I thought that was really incredible. And also, when we're talking about things like the little nuances of God of War, I didn't even notice this the first time around, but when Odin first shows up, the first time he mentions Atreus' name, Kratos puts his hand on the Leviathan axe. Now that his attention's on my son, I'm ready to protect him. And then he finally lets go. And about a minute later, Odin reaches out his hand and places it on Atreus' shoulder, and Kratos does the same thing. So it's like, they don't bring attention to those details, but you can tell that they really just sit and think through, how would these characters respond here? And you can just pay attention to any section of the screen, and you're going to see something interesting that furthers the story.

And those little details, I think, really set God of War apart. I think that's one of the things that shows a good game director to a great game director, is having that vision to go through and say, hey, what would these characters actually do, and not just having the story evolve? They could have just had the conversation. But by suddenly showing the hand go to the axe twice, you understand that Kratos' most important want here is to keep his son safe, which of course is flowing right from the 2018 game and this game. And we show that that's really there. Atreus is becoming a man, but Kratos still feels very protective of his young man son.

Yeah. And they do such a good job of showing that instead of telling it. Like, Kratos doesn't just say, get my son's name out of your mouth. You just see those little moments where he responds in a certain way with his body language. And I think that's really fascinating. All right. So yeah, basically, Kratos refuses this truce with Odin. And of course, we know with the history of Odin, he's a liar. Mimir and Freya spend all of 2018 telling us, never trust a word Odin says. Kratos is willing to trust them. And he just says, no, your offer sounds great, but we're not going to do it. And then Odin says, don't take long to Thor. And then Thor just starts slugging it out with Kratos in what is, in my opinion, the most epic fight of Ragnarok.

This is just like hands down an incredible fight. Like what parts of this fight stand out to you guys? What do you want to talk about? I mean, all of it, to be honest honest because this is the big showdown right like in in god of war 2018 and we're going to keep referencing that because there's a lot that ties in it's like this is what builds up some of the payoff for ragnarok so right um you know in 2018 thor is mentioned a lot and the you know his acts of you know killing these giants and he's just this wrecking machine and he's super powerful. You get glimpses of that, but you get no payoff in God of War 2018.

In Ragnarok, you finally are like, I'm fighting Thor. Am I strong enough? Is Kratos able to actually take down Thor? And so this fight plays into that. And it is very cinematic. I think it is one of the better fights in the game, to be honest, because you're basically going like, can I do this? You know, this is Thor we're talking about here. So I, you know, I think that they did a very good job in the fight. I think they did a good job of making you

kind of feel reserved almost because Thor keeps saying, let me see the God of War. Let him out. This is a lesser version of you. Right. And he keeps saying that. And you kind of feel it though, right? That's the thing is you kind of go like, come on, Kratos, let loose. But he's not that guy anymore either. And so it's just a perfect conflict for me in the way that they framed it i thought that was one of the coolest ways that a game you know when you start a game okay see you end god of war 2018 you have unlocked all of your abilities on leviathan axe and the blades of chaos you've got everything you're a super god again but at the beginning of any game

obviously you you have to have something to achieve so you've got to work your way up you know when you first start swinging leviathan axe all you have is throw and hit. You can't do any special abilities. And so when you go into this fight with Thor, it's a really cool way to be like, hey, I know that you're not letting it all out. I know that you're not... I know... Show me the God of War is what Thor keeps saying to Josh's point. But really, it's because the player can't unleash everything because you don't have any abilities at this point in the game. It's the very beginning of the game. I thought that was an incredible way to do that.

And then also just my note on what was really cool about it is that there's, I think, the one or two times that you actually like the Leviathan Axe and Milnear, which is Thor's hammer. For those who don't know, Clash, a huge frozen lightning bolt is stuck in the ground at that point, just showing like, hey, two gods have fought the ground at that point just showing like hey two gods have fought here and that's just really cool while they walk in a circle around the weapons met in the middle talking to each other while kratos is like telling thor your sons died because of you and thor's like i don't care about your fatherly advice like he's like you're not father

of the year either which which Kratos isn't. And I thought that was really cool. I love when they stop fighting and then they talk again and have that dialogue. The other thing that I think that really stands out in the Thor fight is that Thor kills Kratos. Do you guys remember this? Like Thor hits Kratos. You get a death screen and then all of a sudden you hear Thor's voice. This fight's not over till I say it's over.

And he takes Mjolnir like a defibrillator, shocks your heart, brings you back into the fight. And then the fight continues. And the whole time Thor is like relishing, almost like he finally has someone who can maybe be on his level. Where he's like, did my sons die to you from pure luck? Where's the real god of war? I can see why my sons died to you, but I know you're capable of more. And it's finally when Thor says, Allfather has a plan for Atreus. And that's when you hear Kratos lose all control. He lets loose with that battle shout that we've heard a million times with Spartan Rage.

And your boy, Allfather, has plans for him. No! There he is there's the god of war and he punches thor so hard it's like a scene from a movie where it's like slow-mo and you see like thor's you know all of his face like jiggling as he gets hit on the side and then Thor just says all right your blood debt's paid and then he just flies away it's like it's the craziest opening fight to a game the first hour of this game is absolutely incredible and so what Michael was starting to mention earlier which I think we can talk a little bit about more now, is that during this entire fight, Odin is alone with Atreus.

And so Kratos is now very quickly trying to get back to Atreus and has no idea what they've said. Have they made any promises or any deals or any treaties? And that kind of sets up the primary tension between Kratos and Atreus for the rest of the game. In 2018, Kratos had all of his secrets. He never told Atreus that they are gods. He was trying to protect and keep Atreus safe and innocent because Kratos knows all gods turn evil because of their power. And here in Ragnarok, that really has, it's flipped on its head, where now Atreus has had these alone moments with Odin. Kratos isn't sure what to make of that. And Atreus starts calling himself Loki now, and so Kratos is like, well, did you make any promises? What did you tell Odin? Are you conspiring with Odin against me? And it's really interesting to see that tension between father and son. I was kind of curious to know what you guys thought about that. I actually, I thought it really added to the story and not in a takeaway annoying way. Because

in 2018, there's parts when Atreus becomes very defiant. And honestly, I get why they did it, but it was really annoying. The kid sucked. In this one, he never goes all out on just being a tyrant. He believes he's doing the right thing, and he thinks his father is holding him back. And I think it's interesting where you've got Atreus becoming a man and saying, Father, you don't know everything. Trust me. Please trust me. Please let me do this. I know something you don't know, but I can't tell you about it because spoiler for later. And I actually thought it was really well done. And I appreciated that part of the story. And also that was a chance to play as Trace. You got to play as a trace a whole bunch in this game while he goes off and does his own thing. I actually think that it does add a

layer between Kratos and Atreus. And then the first game, it's just about, I need to teach this boy, I need to make him not weak, because he is weak in 2018. And you see that he is strong in Ragnarok. But at the same time, Kratos is still having an issue with trusting Atreus' abilities and the fact that he's not going to get himself killed right away and things like that. So you have the level of trust. I don't trust what's going on between Odin and Loki. Can Kratos trust Atreus' skills at this point? Because early on in the game, Atreus goes off and you go looking for him and you're very worried about him. So you see these glimpses still of the fatherly concern Kratos has, and he can't let go, even though his son is a lot older and more capable now. But at the same time, you know, I mean, he's getting

older and you start, I mean, this is true with any parent, right? As your kids start getting more freedom, you start going like, how much can I actually trust you to have this freedom? And it plays into that perfectly. And on the flip side, you have the reveal from 2018 where Atreus realizes he's Loki and you see the giant mural where it shows Kratos laying in Atreus' lap, seemingly dead or dying. And so now you have Atreus not wanting to talk about or reveal that to Kratos at the same time. So I think there's a bunch of levels that happen with all of this that get set up very, very well, like very early on in the game. And that's precisely why this game feels so different than like God of War 2 or God of War 3, where it's just big gods beating the crap out of each other for just revenge and and that's cool it's fun they're button mashers but this is like a very human story even though you're talking about gods the whole idea of raising a teenager into adulthood when they have their own passions

and convictions and those may or may not align with yours and you have to just trust that you've done a good job and you have to let them go like that's something that every parent understands and that makes the game feel grounded and not just a button masher between gods that you've done a good job and you have to let them go. That's something that every parent understands. And that makes the game feel grounded and not just a button masher between gods, which a lot of action games kind of devolve into. And that's what keeps this so fascinating. I think that's really what makes this rebooted,

soft air quotes, their series of God of War really stand out because everyone's always liked the God of War games. They're great action games, but that's all they really were. And that's why these two games are elevated so much by critics and so forth, because it really does add so much feeling to the story. It's so much more. So when they came through and said, hey, let's make another God of War game in May 2018, it's so impressive they chose to go in this direction. And that continues through Ragnarok yeah 100 all right so let's move on and talk about combat in ragnarok now it has been slightly revamped in ragnarok um in my opinion it feels largely the same um you know they did tweak it a little bit and obviously

the combos are going to be a little bit different they're not going to just keep it exactly the same as 2018 but i think there is a little bit of a dose of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've still got the axe, we still have the blades, and those are always going to be fun to play with. A lot of the combos are kept the same from the last game, but they do add some new ones. Josh, what was your overall take on the change in combat to Ragnarok? I feel like the combat is mostly the same. Where it excels over 2018 is just choices. That's honestly the biggest thing that I could say in that. It is not vastly different by any means. And we actually kind of all had a conversation offline about like, Paul, you felt like it wasn't really different. I felt like it was faster. Michael was saying, hey, I feel like it's smoother. And we kind of

just talked back and forth a little bit. Ultimately, it's basically the same. Like you said, if it's not broke, don't fix it. But what they did is they tweaked it just enough to give you the sense of it is improved if you want it to be. That's the big thing. You can play Ragnarok 100% like you played God of War 2018 in the combat department and probably not care or notice a difference. But what you can do is you can take advantage of the different options that they give you in Ragnarok to make the combat feel more fleshed out. It's not necessary, but I think it is improved. I think if you get into it, ultimately, you can play it as a button masher and just do nothing but swing the Blades of Chaos and the Leviathan Axe. Or you can get to where you are performing combos and launches and grabs and slams and things like that. It's not necessary,

but it's flavor. And if you play that way, I think you get the advantage of saying, oh, I see the improvements that they made with ragnarok yeah and it's what i had noticed about it too is it seems like they thought a little bit more about the combos like what josh was saying you can go into a different move from one move what i think was more smooth is it looks like the moves were designed to be together like a dance of some kind whereas in 2018 it's like okay i've done. For instance, if you do the combo that's like right bumper, right bumper, right bumper, right trigger, he goes into an epic move. If you do the same thing in Ragnarok, it feels like this is a real thing that you would do. The way he swings around and the way his momentum carries him into the next move is just what I had noticed a little bit, which really, I think, sets it above a little bit. Yeah. And they also just make the combat, I would say, a little more interesting. So for example, I was reading an interview where they basically had said in the 2018 entry, the triangle button only had one function,

and it was to recall the Leviathan Axe, and that's it. And so they're like, you know what? That's a whole button that we can do more with. And so in Ragnarok, if you press and hold a triangle for about half a second, it will imbue the Leviathan Axe with frost magic or the Blades of Chaos with fire magic. And now it's going to do more damage on your next hit. And you can even put points into where now when you recall the axe, if you just keep holding triangle, it's immediately imbued when you call it back so it just starts to add a little more complicated combat i think that's very neat they did also tinker with the shields a bit i don't know how much you guys played around with the shields but they do give you multiple options where you can now craft and upgrade shields you can focus more on parry or more on blocking i don't know about you guys i just prefer

straight up blocking and that's pretty much all i used in this game i i'm terrible at parrying terrible so i use the stone wall shield from beginning to end which basically says hey there's not a lot of range to this guy but it's gonna stop him from hitting you a little bit better than like a specialized shield that's not going to stop as much, but it's really good at parrying. I did like the options, though. I think the shield part was really cool. And again, I think the keyword here is just going to be options. You have more options at your fingertips to fight how you want to fight, whereas you didn't necessarily have that in the 2018 one. I went with the parry shield because I love the combat in God of War. 2018's combat, Ragnarok's combat, I played on the next to highest difficulty level. I got my butt kicked, man.

But at the same time, it's one of the things that I absolutely love about the game. And so I went with the shield where it's all about parrying. Because if you time it right, there's a huge payoff there. But if you whiff, ouch, it hurts at about parrying. Because if you time it right, there's a huge payoff there. But if you whiff, ouch, it hurts at the same time. But I love the fact that they give you these options and they say, hey, you want to just hold your shield up like you do in Dark Souls? Fine. There's a payoff for that.

Want to try to time your parries? There's a payoff for that. And then what's really cool, without getting into too many spoilers, is there's multiple shield options that you wind up having that play very differently. Yeah. And I just thought, what a cool way to go, hey, we've got the offense part of it down. We're giving you all these choices on how you want to approach combat there. But at the same time, we're giving you all these defense options too,

which I thought was a really neat aspect. Yeah. You want to know what my problem was with, with the combat and God of war. My problem with the combat and God of war is that we'd come off of Gotham nights and went right into this. And I was playing Kratos like bat girl the whole time. There's, there's almost no block in Gotham nights.

You're just dodging the whole entire time and throwing stuff. And I just kind of rolled back into that. Like the first two hours of the game, I had a hard time because in Gotham Knights, it was the circle button that dodges and the X on the bottom dodges in God of War. How many times I pushed the wrong one and died during that Thor fight?

And I'm like, oh, I just want to dodge with that button. Nice. Yeah, and then the shields add that extra complication with the mechanic where if you have like your Stonewall shield, you can only block so many times because your shield absorbs all the energy. And then you have to double tap L1 and you'll smash the ground and unleash it. And now you're doing offensive ability with your shield. And so there are things like that built into the shields that it's not just straight up blocking. It actually turns a good defense into a good offense.

And so enemies, there are times when you have to parry or block, or this might be an unblockable move that you have to dodge, or they might have a shield and you have to do a shield slam to get rid of their shield. So there's all kinds of stuff like that. And even speaking more to the customizable stuff that you're talking about, Josh, the Spartan Rage system has also been revamped.

I love what they did with that, dude. Yeah, talk about that a little bit. Maybe in generalities. Maybe we don't want to spoil specifics, but they give you more customizable options. Yeah, we'll talk more in depth during the spoiler section, because part of what makes God of war amazing is the discovery right like there's some major spoilers that we'll get into later on but we're going to keep it safe for people that are listening right now but they give you other options for spartan rage in this game that i thought was an absolutely great thing for them to do because again it just gives you choice in how you want to play um you know. And I think there's three different options,

if I remember right. And I cycled between all of them. And it was really neat. And the testament to how well they designed these is that there was not one that I found to be a favorite. I felt like the three options for Spartan Rage all had a time and a place in the game to be super valuable and like effective and so i found myself actually rotating through those more often than i thought that i would in that case the other thing i want to say on combat real quick that i did notice that's different between the 2018 one is the runic attacks so runic attacks in 2018 were super op honestly like that's how i beat all the valkyries in 2018 like they the runic attacks in 2018 were super OP. Honestly, that's how I beat all the Valkyries in 2018. The runic attacks, you got them fast and furious. You were getting lots and lots of them. You could level them up really quick. And they were very, very strong. first i i feel like almost two-thirds of the game so i don't know if the developers said hey it's hard to balance around these so we're gonna limit them but i actually really liked that aspect

because it made you get good at the mechanics of combat before you got into the really strong magical powerful attacks of combat yeah where it's like let me just call in these three wolves and they're gonna kill everything for me right they force you to learn how the combat works yeah i if i wanted to be a little nitpicky i will say one of the spartan rage options is a little less exciting than the other two it's very handy and you have to use it on certain fights but it's not as fun as 2018 where you just start grabbing boulders out of the ground and chucking them at enemies um you know one of the options is a little more boring in that regard. Now, as far as combat goes, is there anything in particular that you guys liked or didn't like?

I will say for me, the one thing that I thought was maybe just a little bit out of balance was the boss fights versus the swarms of enemies. Yeah, the bosses, because I played it on normal, all right? And primarily the reason for that is because Josh and I had to share the PS5. We had limited time. I said, you know what? I'm not going to blaze through it as fast as possible on easy. I'm just going to play on normal. I won't bump up the difficulty. I thought some of the bosses were probably a touch too easy. I think I died at most to bosses maybe three or four times at the very most. A few of them, actually most of them, I one-shot.

But the swarms of enemies are very hard to keep track. I died so much more to swarms than I did bosses, and I felt like maybe that was just like, I know I'm getting nitpicky, but that was a little out of balance. Yeah, I feel like you're 100% right. I didn't die to bosses a lot because also their mechanics were relatively easy to learn early on.

I think all of the hardest fights in this game are the fights you don't actually have to do. It's the side stuff. And I think it kind of fringes on spoiler territory so i'll cover it later but it mirrors 2018 okay so 2018 you have the valkyries that you fight and you don't have to go fight them i think you you kind of are meant to fight the first one to open up a side quest because you just kind of find it and you're like oh hey defeat this valkyrie and then she's like her soul goes and it says we'll find my other valkyrie sisters in this one i don't even

recall what the whole story was with the Berserkers, to be honest with you, but you have the Berserkers, which are the same thing. There's 12 of them that they actually go across nine different fights because a couple of them have two or three Berserkers at the same time. Those were far harder by night and day than any boss. Even when you fight the last boss in Ragnarok

later on in the game, obviously there's a last boss fight um that fight was also not nearly as hard as the higher level berserkers i had to actually go through and find out like i had to google hey let's go easiest to hardest on these fights because like i went in and got trucked i actually put it down just to see i put it down to story only mode on the hardest one and still got completely obliterated. Two hits and you're dead. I was like, what's this fight like in story-only mode? So it's really interesting that you're right, except for the swarms are much harder. I died a lot more because people were hitting me in the back a lot more.

Yeah. I'll say I'm with you, Paul, on this one. I played this game on, like I said, the next to hardest difficulty. I died a lot. And the swarms of monsters, and by swarms, we're talking like anytime you're facing four or more enemies, I would die so many times to some of those fights versus the boss fights in the game that it started to border on frustrating just a little bit because it was more so the camera angle and the inability to get a second to be able to focus on somebody. You've got guys trying to melee you. You're having to dodge. You've got guys range attacking you. You're having to dodge those. And it's almost too hard. And so I'm with you on that complaint that fighting five guys is way harder than fighting a boss fight in this game. I know exactly what you're talking about too.

Specifically, the worst, most frustrating part was the Dark Elves because they have a combo where if you don't parry properly, you will get hit four times in a row and it will take away two-thirds of your health. And if two of them are doing it at the same time, there's nothing you can do. You're dead. Yeah. And that stuff's very rare for a game that really nails combat.

I didn't experience that often, but when it does hit you, it's just like, oh, come on. Like how, how did that just happen? It's like we get chain stunned over and over. So there's a couple of points like that, but you definitely learn over the course of doing that same fight over and over. Okay. If I position myself here, my back is to this cliff and I can see everyone else a little bit better. Okay. I need to focus on that guy riding that beast because then I can get on top

of that beast and fight the other people. And so you start to kind of figure that stuff out. Most of the time i found it to work really well and only on occasion did it bother me but then again i also played on normal difficulty all right now let's talk a little bit about the voice acting work because yeah i think overall i think overall this might be the best voice acted game ever oh i thought you were gonna say something bad, Paul. I was like, dude, wait, what planets are we on here?

I could never speak a bad word about the voice acting. Okay. It's incredible. The way you said that, I was like, is Paul about to say something? But dude, part of Ragnarok, comparing it again to 2018, is your cast of characters is five times as large in Ragnarok as it was in 2018's version. And part of that is they introduce all these new characters, all of these people that either you've never met before, or you're meeting... You're understanding more and more about them and stuff like that. There was a point in Ragnarok, I want to say it was probably about the halfway point, where I just stopped and listened to a conversation

that was happening. It was in Sindri's house when you're having dinner. And I got so wrapped up in what everybody was talking about that I forgot to play the game. Like, no lie. This is how good... Talking about Tears Stew. This is how... Honestly, right? I got so just wrapped up in listening to the side conversations that people were having that I thought it was part of the game. And then I sat there like an idiot for like 30 minutes before I finally went like, wait, am I supposed to do something? And I hit the controller and I realized that it was like, this is just side content. This wasn't part of the main story.

And I was just like, oh my goodness, I got so enthralled in this freaking dinner conversation that had nothing to do with the main story of the game. But that is a testament to how good these actors are. I'm with you, man. I can't think of a game where a cast of characters and voice actors have drawn me into a world so much as these people have. Josh, it's so funny you said that because there were so many times when I was done upgrading my armor, my axe and stuff. But Sindri and Brock were still having a conversation. I'm like, I can walk away or I can sit here and listen to this and see what they're saying. And the game gives you the option to do that.

Stay there and listen to it. If you haven't played this game yet, stick around and listen to the conversations because they're rewarding. But I'll just cover two things real fast that I was really interested in seeing when I saw the casting list for this game before I played it. It was one Richard Schiff as Odin. I was not sure how that was going to work. I'm like, you think of Odin and you think of Anthony Hopkins from the Marvel movies. You think of, again, more of a Zeus type of god. He is the king of all the gods in North mythology, unless I'm missing some smaller thing that I don't

know about. But Richard Schiff, he's not an imposing actor. But when you watch him walking around as Odin, the character actually looks exactly like the actor too. And somehow it really worked. And I think the way it worked is because you could really see how they... I know I've covered this before, but the motion capture, these characters looked and acted and felt exactly like the voices were coming out. And then again, with Ryan Hurst as Thor, who told in an interview that he modeled his character more off of, if you were looking at the Marvel movies, more off of the Hulk than Chris Hemsworth. Not Helmsworth.

There's no Helmsworth. Chris Hemsworth's Thor. That worked so well, too. And it really, really came out early in when you guys were talking about that conversation that Thor is having with Kratos in the very beginning of the game during that fight. You're like, nailed it. This voice acting for Thor is perfect. It's exactly what it needs to be. Oh, and also Doc McStuffins is in it as Angerboda. Nice. Now, Christopher Judge and Sonny Suljic get most of the acclaim for voicing Kratos and Atreus.

They're both nominated for Best Performance at the Game Awards. They're both fantastic. They were both great in the last game. I thought Richard Schiff as Odin stole every single scene he was in. I agree. I think he's the best villain I've seen in a game in ages because he doesn't have to fight anyone. He doesn't have to pull out a gun or a knife or a magical staff or anything. It's just his voice and his command. And he's in complete control, seemingly, of everything.

He just manipulates and plays people. And I found myself so enthralled with every single scene of his that anytime he was gone, I could not wait to spend more time with Odin. What do you want? How about peace? wait to spend more time with Odin. How about you stay home, kick up your feet, seek no quarrel with me, and I'll have none with you. Of course, it means that that one, that one has to stop his search for Tyr. Yeah, we know what you've run up to. Stop it. Tyr's old ways are dead. is dead you understand and then that's it there was square you almost trusted him that i almost that's what i was gonna say you yeah this is what this was how

good richard schiff was as odin is that there were many times in the game where i went maybe odin's actually not bad like maybe yeah like maybe fran got him wrong misunderstood like is that part of this game is that is that like what they're going for because i'm kind of digging odin man even though the entire time in both games mamir and freya are like do not trust him. He will manipulate you. He's bad. And still, midway point in the game... He manipulated me because I was liking the guy. I was like, I don't know. And I think that's such a testament. Again, I know we don't have a lot of time to spend on this, but such a testament

to... Richard Schiff, he's not a big actor. He's in a million things. You've seen him. Look him up. You've seen him in everything you've ever... He won in everything for the West Wing. He's a famous actor. That's right. He did. Yeah. But he's always been a side character actor. He's never, in a lot of ways been like still in the show side guy in lost world jurassic park in this it's amazing that you see some of his best work in his career in a video game where he's motion captured like it's because yeah like i i was like maybe he's right and then of course

you snap out of it pretty fast yeah and and also also you already mentioned Ryan Hurst as Thor. I want to back that up as well, Michael. I thought he was incredible. I did not realize it was the guy that plays Gary Brutier, the quarterback in Remember the Titans that gets paralyzed. I was like, oh man, he did such a good job as Thor. It's a very interesting take. And I won't spoil exactly who Thor is and how he acts, but I thought the voice acting work was phenomenal for how they wrote Thor in this game. He faked the drunk Thor really well. Yeah. You legitimately care about almost every single character that they introduce in Ragnarok. And like I said, that is hands down credit to the actors, credit to the script,

credit to the story. Because this story is pretty crazy. There are times where the story is hard to follow a little bit. But the characters and the acting, I think, are some of the best that I have ever seen in a video game. Yeah. There's so many layers to every single one of your pivotal characters in the story that you really do get caught up in it. Yeah. And the music in this game is incredibly epic. Yeah. Bear McCreary, kudos, man. I know he's super hot right now. He did Walking Dead and a bunch of stuff. But dude, the soundtrack, the way that it heightens the scenes, the way that it plays on your emotions, you need a soundtrack to hit at the right time to really enhance everything. And man, does the soundtrack do that. I was really impressed many,

many times with what was happening in the background with the music and the effects and stuff like that. It's genius level work in how he will take Kratos' theme and then weave it into Atreus' theme where they play simultaneously. So in these scenes where you see characters together, he will merge their themes. I mean, the OST for this is incredible. Go play it on YouTube or Spotify or whatever. I would like to think he's a shoo-in for best music and soundtrack at the Game Awards. I would not be shocked at all for him to win this. The music really is great. I don't know that I really have anything else to add on top of it, but I know we all loved it.

I'll just add a tribute again to Bear McQuarrie. The first time I ever heard him was Battlestar Galactic 2004. And just to challenge himself, he later on said he changed the theme of the music or the instruments and the style between every single season. The first season, he only uses drums for the most part. By season three, he's using Celtic music. And somehow the Celtic music, even including bagpipes and instruments I've never heard of, works. The next season, it's all people chanting. And you like what how did like it's just really the guy is a genius yeah he really did fantastic composing work here in both games yeah okay we will take

a short break and we will be right back with more multiplayer gaming podcast okay guys now it's time for us to go ahead and share spoilers we're going to hop into whatever else we want to talk about in this game if you want to keep yourself spoiler free and you don't want to know but you want to jump ahead to the final segments of the show go ahead and jump forward 26 minutes and 35 seconds all right guys what do you want to talk about what should we cover here first so this is where we talk about the story everybody because there's a huge story in this game but we can't talk about that and ruin it for people either so uh also i'm gonna give one more preface if you are planning on playing god of war ragnarok do yourself a favor and skip this part you can always come

back to it later but do not spoil it because part of what makes these games amazing is the discovery so final warning from all of us if you are going to play this game skip this part because it will be worth it um that being said man this story in this game is big sometimes confusing a little concluded yes super epic um sometimes like why did you put that in there if you didn't go down that road um you know you a little convoluted. Yes. Super epic. Sometimes like, why did you put that in there? If you didn't go down that road? You know,

you, it's, it's like this, they tried to do everything bigger and better than 2018. And to a large degree, they succeeded in that to some degree going so big is at the same time going to make it to where it's not as intimate. You know, that's the best summarizationization of the story part that I could say.

You're 100% right, Josh. And I'll highlight a couple ways where they do that in a few minutes. But let's start by talking about Tyr. All right. So in this game, you have convinced yourself that you, or Atreus has convinced himself that he's tracked down Tyr. He's not dead. Odin has kept him imprisoned.

Kratos trusts Atreus. You go. You find Tyr. You bust him out from his jail. And Tyr says, I'm no longer a fighter. Tyr's a wuss. And Kratos even says, you're the Norse god of war. Which is funny because Kratos doesn't want to fight either.

You would think they would bond over two gods of war saying, we want to set aside our weapons. And so Tyr comes across as a little bit of a wuss. I don't know about you guys. I fully expected at some point later in the game, he's going to be forced to fight and he's going to be incredible. That's what I kept waiting for. Yeah, I kept waiting for goosebumps because he knew it was coming. Yes, I was waiting for that or to find out that he is secretly working for Odin. I knew it had to be one or the other.

It wasn't going to be just as simple as, oh, we found Tyr, but he's not going to play any role in the story. You know that's not going to be the case. So then later, when you find out that Tyr is actually Odin himself, that was a really cool reveal. I'll be honest. I had no idea. That one got me. And I love how it kind of came about, too, because one of the characters, Brokk, starts to catch on. And he says, Hey, man, I've noticed the way that you refer to Atreus, the way that you talk. Like, Brock? And I'll be honest, I had no idea.

No idea up until that point. And then it was like the light bulb went off and my brain went, oh! And then just the craziest sequence of events happens. And I was like, oh, my goodness, they got me. They got me again, man. Well, and it's crazy too, because what you know from the first game is that Tyr is the one who unlocks the ways to the realms. It's not like in the Marvel movies where it's Heimdall who does it.

In this universe, Tyr is the one who can make the realms. And he even in the first game hides ways to Jotunheim and stuff. And so in this one, it's kind of funny because that moment you're talking about he's like oh i i have another way to asgard and brock is like how come you didn't bring this up earlier that you have another way into asgard why wouldn't we have just done that like i don't know seven hours of gameplay ago and then that reveal that he was owed in the whole time was incredible and also very sad because i kind of liked where tear was going, even though, again, it was really just Odin pulling the wool over my eyes because

after a fight, he does nothing. He's like, listen, I was fighting with my shield when I should have been fighting with my sword. I'm going to help you guys out now. And you're like, awesome. We're going for that reveal. We're going for it. And it never happens. And I don't know if you guys want to talk about this anymore, but you do

see Tyr after the game. You find the real tier after the game. You do. So I can go into that. I'll go into that very briefly. But this is, again, it could be a tie into the spoilers. It's a side quest. So basically, parts of Asgard have fallen.

And you find you have to go close these, like, basically rifts of Asgard. Not really rifts because you can't go back and forth. They're remnants of Asgard. Asgard is shattered after the game goes everywhere. Well, when you go and do this, one of them, you free Tyr, the real Tyr. And again, we talk about like, why was Tyr left alive if he's literally the most powerful god? Why wouldn't Odin kill him? Well, because he needed him for his form. That was kind of foreshadowing, I guess, although I didn't catch on. It was completely surprising to me. But you do find him later, and he's walking around,

and he's just kind of making these side comments about it. You don't really get a whole lot from it, but you can't help but wonder if maybe it's part of that mural in 2018 where you do see the symbols of Egypt and of the Mayan Empire. How far can this series go now that we've destroyed Ragnarok? What if we look into Egyptian mythology? And can Tyr go there too? Because it's shown him opening the realms in that temple to other mythologies. And so I think that that was maybe a reason why they still have Tyr alive in the game. I don't know. I hope we get to see more from Tyr in the next entry.

It looks like Kratos' days of fighting are over. I would have loved to see Kratos and Tyr team up together and maybe we will get that. I don't know. But one of the funniest things about the reveal that Odin was Tyr is, I don't know if you guys remember this or if you've revisited any scenes. I watched a lot on YouTube after. But do you remember when they visit the one giant shrine with Tyr and they realized that Groa had lied about the prophecies and they say, oh, we can win Ragnarokok odin can die and asgard gets destroyed and mamir is even laughing saying odin's been working with a false prophecy finally we know

something odin doesn't know oh and tear is standing there staring studying the mural realizing now in hindsight that was odin he absolutely knows the whole time it's just one of those like very rewarding moments on second rewatch where it's like oh that's so clever he's there the whole time i didn't even think of that i didn't either until i went back and then saw it again um also tied to the odin reveal being tear uh he kind of takes out our boy Brock in the process. Oh, I was so sad, dude. Poor Brock. This game was terrible. I'm with Mike. This game, there

were a few moments in this game where I got a little choked up. Like, there were some moments between Kratos and Atreus or, you know, some of the other characters or Brock dying where I was just like, no. Like, no, I don't want this, man. Or some of the emotional... I mean, some of it's intentional. They definitely

intentionally try to tug on your heartstrings. And I'm okay with that because it worked. Oh, yeah. I'm a sucker for that stuff. So fine. But yeah, that part kind of sucked. So I'm going to hark back to Bear McCreary and the music again real fast. At the end of the game, the first side quest that you're like thrown at is attending Brock's funeral. Yeah. The music at his funeral is it blows away whatever else you hear in this game. Like I was crying for like an hour later, just wandering on my house

because I attended Brock's funeral. And it is hard. I hated it. It's incredible. It's especially sad because I don't even know that they really needed to go this far to do our boy Brock wrong. They tell you he's not even eligible for an afterlife

because part of his soul was left behind. It's like, really? We got to rob Brock of an afterlife also? So our boy Sindri is reduced to this really bitter, empty shell that he was before. And so it's like seeing Sindri reduced to ashes is also really sad, because he's partially responsible

for why Brock no longer has an afterlife. So it's a really tragic tale at the end of those two brothers did you notice that when he shows up at asgard at the end of the game like his eyes are red like he has been he has been he is in that was that was something i thought was really nice that they did that because they didn't have to do that but like the attention to detail again on the direction of the game his eyes are red like he's been crying for days. It's horrible. Yeah, and he's like...

He almost doesn't even care that he's taking out innocents as he destroys all of the Odin reinforcements around the wall. He's got his little instrument. He hits it. He's like, there you go. You got what you wanted. And he's just like... It's not that he's acting soulless but it's like you lose everything that made cindery cindery he's

like a different character at that point and it really just makes you hope that he turns out okay he needs some time to grieve yeah we have to talk about the drop nurse spear in in spoiler territory i i'm trying to think of like what are some of the biggest moments of like that stand out in my mind and the dropner spear is one of those it was also one of the most confusing initially because they're like well we need this weapon and they're like well dropner and then i'm like what the heck is drop there and it's a ring and then i'm like wait what's going on and then you have to go see this mermaid lady and And so there was a little bit where I was really lost. And I'm like, what the... I actually stopped and looked up what Dropnir was because

I'm like, what is... I have a Dropnir spear. How is this thing powerful? But that whole sequence, I thought was incredible, man. You go, you make this weapon to kill Heimdall because Heimdall can foresee everybody's actions. So you can't fight him because he knows what you're going to do. So you have to go make a weapon that can kill Heimdall, which plays a huge part in the story of the game and Kratos kind of going back to old form because it's like, well, I'm making a weapon that's going to kill a god. This is my mission.

So I thought like, okay okay this is really neat but that whole sequence dude they they know how to like get you amped because you get this spear it's a freaking spartan spear number one so i'm like oh yeah like the weapon and then they like the next 30 minutes is you testing this weapon out and seeing what it's capable of and i'm'm just thinking like, I love you developers for this, man, because what a sequence. This whole thing took like an hour or so, and I loved every second of it. And the way they added a third weapon to the game that, again, was nothing like the other two. It added so many more layers to the combat in the game that I loved. I found myself, once I had the spear, every single fight it became like

second motion like do i use the blades of chaos do i use the loyothanax do i use the drop near spear and it would just be like oh this is happening spear real quick dude also that heimdall fight when you finally do fight heimdall with that spear at first i'm like uh this doesn't work he's still avoiding everything and then you have that realization of how you have to beat him that every time he deflects the spear it goes in the ground and you've got to track him over it and blow it up to damage him until you break you know and that part when he first gets hit and he's shocked and you're like you are so dead now so this is this is what i was gonna ask how does the drop near spear how how does heimdall still not understand your intentions

i still don't totally get why you're able to use that to kill him because he knows that they can blow up so why would he still run over them i didn't totally get so it goes back to i think when they were taking the the rings out of the mine or whatever where he was a cindery or brock goes down with a bucket and grab the chain yeah they get the ring somehow this ring somehow this spear exists to me like both in and outside of realms in normal time and heimdall just can't see it once it's been thrown it's it's he only sees the one that kratos is holding but the spear like duplicates itself it's and that was kind of what i infer drop near replicates itself is what what it was. So the actual mythology of Dropnir is it is a ring that replicates itself and it's made out of gold. So this is how Odin winds up basically having all the money he ever needs to rule the nine realms kind of thing.

And so they even mentioned that, hey, they stole Dropnir from Odin. The dwarves did it. The brothers did it. So when they turn this into this spear, basically the spear can replicate itself just like the ring could. And so because it's replicating itself, that's why you can throw so many copies of it and embed them and things like that.

And it just overloads Heimdall's ability to know where everything is going and your intentions, because this spear is replicating itself. So he can't track everything. That's the best I got out of it. It's a little convoluted. You just got to take it at face value. Yeah, you and I kind of came to the same conclusion.

It was kind of like, well, it's because he can't see. Did you guys like the spear? Did you use it a lot? I loved the spear. I didn't like it. I used it a lot. I didn't like it. I got real nasty with that spear. I put a lot i loved the spear i didn't like it a lot i didn't like it i i got real nasty with that i put a lot of points into it now i did i did almost 100 the game and a lot of the stuff

that got good with the spear was way later yeah again you don't get the spear until at least two thirds in the game halfway halfway about halfway in the game you get this i'd say a little over yeah yeah a little over so we'll say three fifths but you know it's almost like i used it a whole bunch later on with some of the berserker fights i think was where it became really handy but that was after i had it maxed every point into it see i put every point into it too because by the end of this game you can basically buy every skill and i will say it's very funny to turn enemies into pin cushions where you are just throwing spear spear spear spear spear spear and then you make them all detonate like it is very funny i love the idea of the spear and i

liked the heimdall fight but i did not find myself using it very often later i only would pull it out if i felt like i had to like if the leviathan axe or the blades of chaos weren't working yeah i really wanted to like it but i felt like it was inferior to the blades of chaos in the leviathan x one of the things i liked about it was some of the abilities that you use on it some of the um the runic abilities are very good for crowd control because it would either pull in or push away groups of enemies and that's kind of why i favored it later on more you know in that part like normally you use the blades of chaos for a lot of that stuff leviathan x feels like more single target blades of chaos like more multi-target the spear was more crowd control like okay i'm getting overwhelmed so some of the crucible challenges you've got to

use the spear and try to get these guys corralled in front of you or just get them away from you yeah uh since we're going into spoilers i i do want to share a couple things that i found lacking in ragnarok's story. The combat, I have nothing negative to say. I think the combat in this is a little bit better than 2018. I do feel like the story elements do suffer a bit. I think they bit off more than they can chew. I don't know why this wasn't split into two games.

You've got enough villains. You have enough story. I felt like in large sections they kind of just yada yada yada the details they're like you know what we see in prophecies that we're fighting with hell's armies and we're fighting with the dark elves and then toward the end of the game they're just like okay um frere uh and like frere says i'll just go reunite the elves after centuries of fighting. And they're like, well, how are you going to do it?

And he goes, well, they really like me. And I'm like, really? We don't get to see it. We don't get any kind of explanation. And clearly, they just didn't have enough time to delve into all those things. Hel's army gets recruited. We don't see or experience any of that. Frere kind of pops up out of nowhere we don't

really spend any time with him and then he dies saving us and i'm like i wish i cared but like i don't know anything about frere i didn't i didn't spend enough time with him so i felt like the game almost felt like it was on fast forward unnecessarily i i wish it just had a little bit of a slower pace and they could have fleshed out some of that stuff a little bit more. I feel like what they really could have done, too, is if they split it in two games, because I hadn't thought about that until you just mentioned it, but Freya's story, which I have to cover in spoiler territory. We don't have to do it now because we're on a different part, but I have to cover that because it was one of my favorite parts of this game,

was just the conclusion to the Freya story. but i think you could have made that almost a whole game with her and freyer and all that stuff and uniting the elves and all that that might have actually worked because again united the elves it's not a small thing and then of course the outcome of what happens with freya to break the curse very emotional part well even going into the freya stuff she has spent three years trying to murder Kratos. Right. And then all of a sudden, Atreus turns into a bear, and Kratos just says, no, don't harm her. She's our friend.

And then Freya's like, you know what? I probably can't forgive you, but let's just go ahead and have an alliance. And I was like, really? Three whole years of devoting her life to killing Kratos, and it's just snap of a finger, and now we have this alliance where she's going out on missions with us. Again, I felt like that's a little fast. And I know that you first send Atreus, and Atreus goes out and talks to her first. But again, I felt like it just turned things around a little too quickly for me. Yeah, there's a lot. Like I mentioned this earlier, but the story is so grand in a lot of ways. They try to go so big that some of that falls apart a little bit. I had exception with a few things. Number one, there's the whole series with Angraboda where you're learning about the

giants. This is the slowest part of the game. Oh, I did too. I like the character of Angraboda. you're learning about the giants. This is the slowest part of the game. Oh, I did too. I like the character of Angraboda. I thought she was great, but this part of the game is very slow. Ooh, 90 minutes. It's all about learning about the giants.

Why am I picking crew for 90 minutes? Right. I mean, I get that it's all like, ooh, I'm finally going to learn some about the giants, but then it's like all their conversation and everything I felt like could have been condensed into like 10 minutes. Like, give me just the facts that I need to know. conversation and everything i felt like could have been condensed into like 10 minutes like give me just the facts that i need to know and then so that gets really convoluted after a while

and they go down this whole thing and i left this 90 minute segment going i don't really know any more other than like their souls are in marbles like okay like and i get that that plays a part later on but that part, I was just kind of like, what was that all about? And then you get into the whole fate versus prophecy versus your choice thing. And I think that's a neat premise, but they didn't have time to really explain a lot of that. I wanted to bring up that same thing, Josh.

I wrote it down. This did nothing for me in this game because never for a second. Do you think in the universe of God of war that you have no choice? Right. You don't, you don't believe that ever. So why is that like a main tension of the story? You don't believe in prophecy in this game.

Nobody does. So why does it even matter? Why is it even in the story? They even say like when you visit, what are they called? The, the noons or, uh,

the Norns, the Norns. Thank you. They even say, like when you visit, what are they called? The Nunes? The Norns. The Norns, thank you. They even say, yeah, basically you're just so predictable, we can guess the future, but it's not really set in stone, but it is because we know your nature. But then if it's not set in stone, then why do prophecies even matter? It's just, it made no sense to me. I like the aspect. I like that, hey your fate your fate is it predetermined do your choices matter like and i like that they brought this up in the game because

they're trying to figure out how they're going to defeat odin and they've got all these prophecies that atreyu super believes in because the giants left them behind like i get the conflict i i get what they were going for i just felt like it really kind of fell short in that regard because is Kratos going to kill Heimdall or is he going to spare Heimdall? And then they're struggling with the fate versus prophecy thing. And it's like, well, he tries to spare Heimdall, but then Heimdall winds up being a jerk and Kratos kills him anyway. And I get what they're going for, but it never really pays off, I guess. Like that whole interaction with fate and prophecy

never just had a payoff to me. They could have taken a lot of that part and spent more time with Freya, who we really care about. Really? I don't care about Freya that much. Now I want to hear Michael's, because he said he had to bring it up. But Freya in 2018 God of War, I thought was phenomenal. And I'll be honest,

I did not care for her that much in Ragnarok. I liked her. I think it was rushed a little bit. I think I really liked having her around for a lot of the postgame stuff because after the game, you run around with Freya and not Atreus. Sorry about that. Spoilers. Oh, we're in spoiler territory. We can do it. I really got connected to specifically the writing when it frees her curse. Because what we know about Freya is she has a curse where she cannot harm anything at all. She cannot harm anything. That's what she is until they lift Odin's curse. And Kratos, that's why she's teaming along. And I kind of bought into this. I wish they would have gone into it more. But I bought into it that her and Kratos have a common goal. And one of the reasons that she is

with Kratos this whole time is because he's basically like, listen, if you want to go for your curse, I'll come with you. And she's like, well, because you owe me? And he's like, no, because it's what I would do. And you're like, okay, I kind of get that. So that's why they kind of hang out in the middle of the game a little bit. When they lift the curse, though, the line that she kind of says, and I'm going to paraphrase this because she looks at him and she says, now that the curse is broken, I have to either forgive you or I have to kill you. And you see her reach for a sword and you think she's going to fight him, maybe. And then she kind of puts it down and says, I can't do either.

And I'm like, that line was really heavy. She can't forgive him because he still killed her son, but she can't kill him because he's an ally and they both have a common goal. And then later you kind of get more from the stories that make it so that you kind of believe the alliance and the friendship can exist. But it wasn't enough. I think I was making things up in my head to love it as much as I do, but I liked what they did with it. I just wish they spent more time on it. Yeah, that makes sense uh let's talk a little bit about the emotional payoff between kratos and atreus because i thought that was handled really well this is where you have the benefit of two entire games of kratos not really knowing how to connect emotionally to his son it was one of my

major complaints when josh drafted kratos as best gaming father after 2018. And I said, no. Still stand by it. I still stand by it. Not in any shape to be father of the year. Also, I don't know if you guys saw the dialogue, but there's a really funny sequence with him and Mimir when he's asking, did I prepare Atreus enough? And Mimir's like, oh, yeah, the boy can survive and handle himself and he's like no i mean like in the ways of love and mamir's like well me and the boy have had some

conversations so i'm like yeah kratos can't even touch those subjects with atreus but the fact that at the end of the game they have learned to fully trust one another kratos gives the little comment about loki is gone but atreus is here and you even see kratos uh shed a little tear oh i shed a little tear i'm not gonna lie dude the facial expression they'd zoom in on kratos and i was like is he about to cry because if he if he's gonna cry i'm gonna cry you get the big hug they hug each other yeah oh man speaking of emotional payoff um one of the reasons why you have to play God of War 2018, of course, if you're listening this far, I guess it doesn't matter because you probably have. But one of the reasons you have to play it is one of the first things that Kratos says

to Atreus in God of War 2018 is when he kills the deer, and he says something about how you have to not feel. You have to just not feel it. Close your heart. Close your heart. Close yourself. Close your heart. And then when the end

of this game, when they're in Asgard and there's innocent people there, when Kratos, you guys probably know what he said better than I do, but when Kratos tells him, basically,

open your heart, it actually shows so much more about Kratos' character arc than it does Atreus'. It's so incredible because he basically says, no,

you should feel. We should be compassionate. Kratos can accept his son for who his son is instead of trying to make Atreus act like Kratos. Kratos says, that's what makes you unique and makes you you. So you open your heart to it because you're not me. You're your own separate adult now. And I thought that was really beautiful. Yeah. I like that. I mean, obviously, you see the evolution of Atreus in ragnarok i think that's one of the highlights but at the same time you see the growth and evolution of kratos as well

and a lot of what i love about the story and the payoff in this game is seeing them both mature and come to grips with things that maybe they're not so good at and ways to be like a better family as well. So. Yeah. It is side. Just one little side comment about the character development, more of a Trey. Yes.

At one point, I don't remember when this happens in the game. It's towards the end. Atreus coughs and Kratos is like, boy, is it? He doesn't say boy. Cause he never says boy in this game.

He literally doesn't say it one time, but he's like, Atreus, is it back talking about that cough that he had in the first game and atreus is like no dad i just swallowed my spit yeah there's some very funny moments i feel like this game had a lot more humor i loved 2018 which i appreciate though dude there's one part i can't remember are you with tear Tyr? You're with somebody. And you're playing as Kratos, and you go off and you smash a chest that you see. And Atreus just goes, yeah, my dad likes smashing things. Or he really likes going to look for gold or something. I can't remember what he said. Tyr says, why are you going that way? The objective's here. And Atreus goes,

oh yeah, he does that that you'd be surprised how much treasure he finds like they even poke fun at even that mechanic in god of war yeah yeah i'll tell you though um since you talked about mamir when i played god of war ragnarok and then i went to the first i don't know third of god of war 2018 i felt very lonely not having mamir on my body at that time so i was really happy because I'm like, oh, shoot. In this game, does he get Mimir in that capacity, where he's on his belt talking? Mimir makes this game so great.

The commentary, it's the little things. We said that about the 2018 one, too. But the attention to detail, some of the comments that just happen as you're walking around the world, that aspect is one of those small little details that really makes God of War. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I think we can close down the spoiler section here. We can move on to our last couple of segments here. So, community reviews. I know that this game is a PS4 and PS5 exclusive. Josh, were you able to find some reviews left online, maybe through Metacritic or something? I did. Actually, I had to go to Metacritic for this, but it's honestly, for this game, probably the best conglomeration of reviews for this.

So like we always do, we've talked about the game. We've kind of given some of our thoughts, some of the overviews and stuff like that. But we always pull some reviews from people that have played the game. We always try to find some negatives and some positives. So Metacritic is where I went for these. So I will start off with a negative one. And Metacritic uses a score of 0 to 10. And then it's weird because then that translates to a score from 0 to 100 somehow. So all right. So this person gave it a 4 and says,

does what it does correctly, but the hand-holding is inexcusable. The devs need to stop catering to the lowest common denominator and realize that most people can actually grasp very basic logic in puzzle solving. Prompting the player

literally seconds after a small challenge presents itself is bafflingly bad. Okay, I can kind of see what they're saying. I agree with this one, which is why I pulled this one seconds after a small challenge presents itself is bafflingly bad. Okay. I can kind of see what they're saying. I agree with this one, which is why I pulled this one because there are a lot of puzzles in God of War and especially in Ragnarok.

And they do mix up the puzzle some, which is a nice little thing too. And we didn't really talk about, but you can approach a puzzle and look at it and go, okay, I'm just going to look look around let me get the lay of the land and five seconds later freya is like i wonder if we could stop that water flow over there and you're like what the come on man and just the part two where like almost every time

that you're in it you're in a building or a cave or something and there's multiple different ways to go a trace is always standing where you're supposed to be going no matter what if you're like oh that's the way i gotta go i guess like sometimes the top the compass turns gold and like you don't have the pointer on there well just whichever way trace is looking that's the way i gotta go my favorite is when you're literally trying to solve the puzzle and you're doing exactly what you need to do and then they're like huh i wonder if we could do this. And it's like, yeah, yeah.

Game. I'm literally trying that right now. Like I just, I didn't hit the target the first time. I do wish there was a way to either turn it off completely or change the time. Right. Like give me like after 60 seconds, if I haven't done something like give me a hint kind of thing,

but they really, it really dumbed the puzzles down big time, man. And I like the puzzles in this game. I think they're a nice little refresher you know so yeah i love the puzzles but i do think that um the ai there because sometimes it would wait like a minute sometimes i'm like i need a clue can you say something and i'll walk around in circles and stop for a few seconds like please freya say something i can't figure this out and i'm above youtubing it yeah and it's funny because, but the AI doesn't know.

I wish the AI was tweaked to where it's like, okay, if someone's standing still for 60 seconds, then we'll give a clue. Yeah. All right. This one is a 10. So this person rated it perfectly. God of War Ragnarok maximizes and perfects everything

that was already great about the prequel. Storytelling, artwork, dialogue, audio, gameplay mechanics, and combat are crafted with so much love for the smallest detail. It's simply astonishing. The game is so ultra polished that it comes pretty close to perfection. And man, what an eye-opener the graphics are. One of the few real next-gen titles and one of the best games ever made, 10 out of 10. Game's gorgeous. Can't argue with that. Yeah, it is.

Yeah, they get it right i can't i'll be honest i this this is the first time i've played a ps5 by the way because i borrowed your ps5 paul and i i didn't even realize that they give you a performance mode and a quality mode i i'll tell you what man i tried both but getting 60 frames a second in the performance mode was such a game changer over the little bit of extra detail in the quality mode that I played 100% of the time on performance mode because the graphics are so good that I literally could not tell that much improvement with using quality mode. Yeah. And so... I want to talk about something real fast that we didn't cover. And I'll just derail us for one second because it's so important.

When you guys talked about God of War on that episode, you talked about the snow. When you're walking through it and you see the footprints and so forth, this game amped it up a million times more. It was so realistic when you would step on the snow the way the powder. And then you would do things like you would go to Kratos' house and the whole area is covered in snow. You'd go back again later and some of the snow is melting and the snow the way the powder and then you would do things like you would go to kratos's house and the whole area is covered in snow you'd go back again later and some of the snow is melting and the snow reacted differently i thought that was incredible and also one of the things

that kind of took me out of god of war 2018 is it felt like they didn't get the water quite right they fixed that in this one the water's incredible so the fact they could get the quality with those things those details they don't need to have it's so polished all right this next one is a negative they gave it a three where's the ragnar though? That is the ending of the game and the ending of the North mythology chapter. Is this a joke? What an underwhelming and rushed ending. The characters, apart from Atreus and Kratos, don't even get a proper sendoff. Where's the epic boss fight? You can't seriously make a God of War and think that three humanoid bosses are enough. Where's the big bosses WTF? Now, here's another reason I picked this one because if you're going to criticize it balder and freya you know and you have this epic giant thing you've got some of these huge creatures you have the dragon fights in 2018 those were monumental

i will say in ragnarok i felt like the boss fights were a little bit lacking yeah it's since i played 2018 after i played ragnarok i didn't realize that i was missing that feeling from god of War 3 that I got. In God of War 3, one of the first things you do is you're jumping on Gaia fighting like Zeus, and you're like on a Titan. You have a whole fight in God of War 1 where you're on top of

Atlas, a whole city on top of a Titan. This game had none of that. It was all humanoid bosses, and that was something I didn't realize by playing this game first, but God of War 2018 had it. Even the part when you go inside the world serpent was kind of cool, you know, but yeah, interesting take.

All right. And then this one, this person rated it a 10 out of 10. And it says, as a fan of the previous games, I didn't think a sequel could surpass it. Oh, how wrong I was. God of War Ragnarok ups the stakes, action, and emotion all the way up to an 11. The story and characters are phenomenal and prove upon the original in every way. The visuals are once again striking, and the action is upped thanks to new gods to fight and enemy varieties. Although the rest of the gameplay stays mostly the same, which is far from a bad thing given how smooth

it was in the 2018 game. God of War Ragnarok is a triumph and shows just how games can truly be works of art and insanely fun. So one of our minor criticisms, Josh, when we did the deep dive on 2018 is that the finisher moves were so repetitious and it was the same enemy types over and over. They absolutely fixed that in Ragnarok. Now I take issue with anyone who says the emotions and the story are better in Ragnarok. I completely disagree. But I will say the only complaints we had about 2018, they did fix in this one. I think they created a couple new ones, but there are, instead of being like three finisher moves, there's a good 15 in this one where you only see the same ones a handful of times over the course of the game. That does not feel repetitious in this one where you only see the same ones a handful of times over the course of the game

that does not feel repetitious in this one at all there's also a better enemy variety in ragnarok which i did appreciate now i hate some of those enemies because they're annoying to fight but at least they had better enemy variety as well so um and since those were very polarizing very very low or perfect tens i did actually pick and find a very middle of the road review as well. So I'm going to read that one just to kind of give a balance there between somebody that said, hey, this game, it's good, but it's not great, but it's not terrible either. They rated it a six and it says the story is good. The worlds are mostly very fun to explore. And there are a lot of very memorable characters. The combat is great against bosses,

but fighting groups of enemies, the majority of the darn game, is mostly garbage and not fun. The camera is garbage, and you'll either be spending a lot of your time trying to keep all the enemies in frame or getting shanked from off screen. I played this and 2018 on the hardest difficulty. I had fun with 2018, but did not enjoy my time with Ragnarok as much. Which goes back to what we were saying about the combat, which is, you know, it's just good to see that we're not the only ones that thought that. But fighting swarms of enemies

should not be harder than a boss fight in most situations. Agreed. Yeah. All right. Okay, guys. So what we always do after this is we guess what we think the overall rating for a game is. Now, I said before the show, I knew the rating on this. I don't know if somebody was talking about it,

if I was checking for video game news and just saw it in an ad or something like that. So unfortunately, I inadvertently cheated and I know the rating on this. So I'm not going to give my guess. But you two both said you have no idea what the Metacritic rating on this game is. So this is going to be between the two of you as far as the competition. So on the Metacritic scale of 0 to 100%, where do you guys think it falls? So for a quick point of clarification, the 0 to 100 rating is from critics. The 0 to 10 rating is the user score. Oh, right. Sorry. This would be the critics. So we're is the user score oh right sorry this would be the

critics so we're guessing the critic score correct all right what what you got michael i think you've won more recently than me do we normally guess the critic score the user score well on steam it's user score but they don't have a critic score on steam so so here's here's what always gets me and i know we do this on purpose as is Josh goes through the reviews before we do this, because I'm always like, man, it's going to be really high. And then I hear the negatives, and I'm like, maybe it's not as high as I think. That being said... We could do the user score, too, if you guys want.

I mean, maybe we should do the user score on this, which would be the scale of 0 to 10. I didn't think about that. User score is harder. Yeah, do the user score, because that's... I mean, this is people that played the game. I think everybody's heard what the critic score is, and everybody knows it's really good.

But let's go with the user score, which is 0 to 10 on a decimal scale. All right. So I can't say 13 then. No. Okay. Well, you can. Yeah.

Which is all about win. I still believe the consensus of this game from what I understand, just even talking to people in our discord is people love this game. There are going to be naysayers that are negative. So I think the score is very high. I'm going to say it's somewhere around a 9.6 to be honest with you, which might be a little lofty, but I think it's very high.

I think that's probably too high. Given what I know about Metacritic, I will strategically say 9.5, but my realistic guess would be 9.0 would be my real guess. All right. You got to pick one. Strategic guess or real guess? Oh, strategic guess. 9.5 is the official.

That's like bringing comic book characters in a video game fight. All right. Well, Paul's strategy paid off. The actual user score on this is an 8.3, which I find to be very, very low. There was some review bombing, which seems to happen in every game. I mean, you heard the gripes that people had

for the legitimately bad reviews. But I mean, there were just a lot of people that gave it zeros because it's not any different from 2018 you know and so there's there was some review bombing on there as well the critic score is a 94 um to you know to give you that and then like i said 8.3 for the user score so paul you win lead us into this next segment paul all right let's do it let's hit that music dang freya was your daddy a baker because those are the finest buns i've ever seen all right this segment is called make love marry or murder this is where all three of us rate the

game is this game marriage material we highly recommend it you should go buy it pick it up right away is it make love material maybe it's worth waiting recommend it. You should go buy it. Pick it up right away. Is it make love material? Maybe it's worth waiting until it's on sale, or maybe it's worth just playing a couple hours and then moving on. Or is this game murder material? Who wants? Michael, I feel like yours is the most obvious answer. Why don't you go first?

Am I always like, am I that transparent? It's always. Well,? Like it's always, um, well, you said it. Oh yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, so here's what I'll say. Okay. 2018, I agree is, is a near perfect game. If not a perfect game, there's so many small criticisms that are so small that you can't say that it's not a perfect game.

That being said, if we compare Ragnarok to 2018, it is inferior. 2018 not a perfect game. That being said, if we compare Ragnarok to 2018, it is inferior. 2018 is a better game, despite them polishing some of the graphics and some of the... Some of the... Oh, man. I just lost my train of thought there. All right. Combat. That's the word I was looking for. That's not even a hard... Thoughts are hard. Now, words have only been hard. I'm going to have to go get a test. Anyways, so if we compare to 2018, I think Ragnarok is inferior. It does some things better. It sure does.

It's a great game. That being said, if we compare this game to many other games, it is an easy Mary. This game is incredible. It's a very well done game. It's tons of fun. The graphics are incredible. The voice acting is over the top. Matching these characters' movements and their mannerisms to the voices that are being done is second to none on

any game I've ever seen. The game is incredible. So yeah, I'm not comparing this game to 2018, even though it sounds like every single review out there is being like, oh, it's just more of the same. Yeah, but more of the same is really freaking good. This game was awesome. So I'm marrying the game. Yeah, I would almost say exactly the same thing of everything you just said michael i think it's absolutely inferior to 2018 but it's still fantastic if 2018 did not exist i might be saying this is a perfect game and i might not have any complaints it just speaks to how good 2018 is that you can nitpick the more minor things, especially in regards to story.

There's no way I'm going to try to get too cute and try to argue. It's somehow make love or anything like that. It's, it's a Mary. It's a fantastic game. Everyone should play it. It's worth the $70 price, which is hefty,

but everyone out there should buy it and play it. If you have a PS five, I'm sure some people will buy a PS5 just to play it sooner than later. But yeah, it's definitely marriage material. Mary, all the way. All right. So for me, this is an easy, easy Mary. I mean, everybody knew I was going to love this game.

And I do. I absolutely love it. Everybody wants to know, is it better than 2018? How does it compare to 2018? That kind of stuff. For me, this is your bigger, better sequel that shoots for the moon and kind of gets into orbit, but doesn't quite hit the moon, right? It misses the magic of 2018's God of War. That small quest of it's just, hey, this is just a

father and a son trying to get to a mountain and what happens along the way. This is, we want everything to be grand and amazing and showdowns and all this stuff. And while it succeeds in a lot of that, part of going so grand is that you miss the intimate stuff. And so I will say that Ragnarok on its own is practically a perfect video game. I mean, I cannot think of another game in recent memory that I have loved more than Ragnarok. Is it better than 2018? It doesn't need to be. You know what I mean? It stands on its own. It does its own thing. If I had to pick one and say, this is the one I'm going to play for the rest of my life, I'm probably going to pick 2018, because it's got that magic and that mystery to it

and that innocence that you don't have with Ragnarok. But man, is Ragnarok great, dude. Yeah, so much fun. That's the takeaway. That really is. You know what I mean? It does some things better, it does some things worse. You're never going to regret playing this game. That's the answer. How about an easy film comparison to what you just said as far as the intimacy of the first game and going too grand. It's like the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to me. The very first movie stood alone.

It was great. You got lots of Jack Sparrow and Miss Turner and, of course, Jeffrey Rush. I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request. It means no. You get a lot of that stuff from it, and it's really good for character development, but the sequels decide to involve the entire freaking world,

and it just doesn't land enough because you don't have enough. You're trying to do too much. And I think that that's an easy comparison where, okay, we tried to bite off more than we could really do, and it was a great game. It was lots of fun. But like Paul said, maybe this should have been two games.

I will say this. There was a moment right near the very end where I was trying to formulate my thoughts on Ragnarok versus the 2018 and stuff like that. And I just remember thinking, this is the most epic video game that I think I've ever played. In that sense, I can shake my head and say, I feel like I am playing an Oscar-winning game almost. This game is going to win a ton of awards. It's the most epic experience I think I've ever had in that regard. It just doesn't have the magic that 2018 had. So it's like, take that for what you will, you know what I mean, as far as that goes. Because people want to say, oh, which one's better? And it's like, they're just different, in my opinion.

Yeah, it's kind of like a forest and trees analogy, right? Like, this is a much bigger forest than 2018, but you're kind of losing the element of the individual tree in Ragnarok. Yeah, exactly. That was fun with metaphors with Paul. That's the new segment. All right. Well, obviously, we knew this show was going to go pretty long, but let's go ahead and move on to our leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. Okay. Okay, if anyone out there is new to the idea of our leaderboard, we have on our website, multiplayerpodcast.com, a list of every game we have done a deep dive of. We currently are sitting at a list of 83 games. We will now have 84 after adding Ragnarok. And as a three-person

consensus, we have to figure out where to place this game in relation to all the others. This ends up meaning we're not just comparing it to 2018 God of War. We're also going to try to compare it to games like Rust and Valheim and Elden Ring and Outer Wilds, all these games that are vastly different, even different genres. It's part of the fun of what we do here. So as a three-person team, the fact that we all married God of War Ragnarok, I assume it's safe to say it's in our top 20, right? I would say top 70 at least. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Top 70 for sure. Helping you guys out. Yeah, I think top 20 is safe to say, and I think we're all saying it would be lower than 2018, right? So we're looking somewhere in that 3 to 20 range? Is that what we would say? I mean, I'm just going to throw it out there

that I think this is super comparable to God of War in its enjoyableness. If nothing else, I had crazy amounts of fun playing this game. I mean, for me, it's a top 10 game easily i i concur i'll easily put it in the top 10 yeah i was gonna say looking at the list i could be talked into something as high as seven where we would put it above apex rocket league valheim satisfactory but i could also be talked into putting it as low as 14, putting it below Divinity Original Sin 2 and Elden Ring. So that was kind of my thoughts.

So you're both just a little bit higher on it than me. What do you guys think? I mean, I would put it at number three, personally, because I think it's that good. I mean, does it reach, like, you know, again, everybody's going to compare it, right? Does it reach God of War? Like, no, but it's like a 1A and a 1B kind of thing. And where it does some things better, it does other things worse. But I mean... Wow. Over Disco and Cyberpunk, huh? I freaking loved Ragnarok, man. I'm not going to lie. I mean, it was more of the same. And I know that I'm higher on God of War than probably both of you guys. So it's a little bit of personal bias there as well.

But I mean, if we're saying God of War is number two, and I think Ragnarok is just about as good and in some ways a little bit better, then I'm going to put it at number three. I am much closer to Josh than I am to Paul. I have a very hard time with number five when I try to rank this because Disco Elysium, again, much smaller scale, much more simplified artwork and character movement, stuff like that. But the story was absolutely engaging and enticing. I loved it. There's so much more in God of War Ragnarok. But Disco Elysium is a perfect role-playing game. So how do you do it? So I could go on either side of Disco Elysium. I don't know if I'd put this one above Cyberpunk just because the ambition in Cyberpunk was something I don't think I've ever seen in a video game. Overwatch, obviously, is Overwatch. It's an incredible game that united so many

different genres to make someone like me want to play a shooter. It belongs there. I would definitely swap one and two. I think God of War might be the best game I've ever played. I think Cyberpunk might be number two behind that. So that's why the top three I can't touch. But putting it in front of Disco Elysium, I would take an argument on before or after Disco Elysium. And that's where I think it needs to go.

Let's go one after, just for the sake of a little bit of diversity. Instead of having two God of Wars top five, if you feel you could go either way, let's put it right below. Let's put it below Disco. I got an idea, guys. I got an idea.

What if we put God of War number one? No, no. The best game Michael's ever played is the last one he played. We're not putting it above Red Dead Redemption 2. So where do you want to put it? At number six? The funniest thing is the best game I ever played before was Cyberpunk.

Michael did say that on the Cyberpunk episode. So you're saying put it at number six? Let's do it at six. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that, too. So now our top six will be Red Dead 2, God of War 2018, Overwatch, Cyberpunk, Disco Elysium, then God of War Ragnarok, then Rust, and everything else. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah, when the top five should say God of War, Cyberpunk, Disco Elysium, Overwatch, Red Dead Redemption 2.

All right, well, at least you've got, Overwatch, Red Dead Redemption 2. At least you've got five out of the same games. It's five same games. I mean, I didn't obtusely put Elite Dangerous up there. I'm fine with that. I think that's a fair... It's a good spot for it. Okay, so my reordering works? That's great. Yeah, and it's interesting

that all of us have it rated above Elden Ring, and yet all of us think Elden Ring will win Game of the Year. Is that just our perception of what other people think? I think Elden Ring deserves to be a top 10 game personally, but I think some of that was we were referencing the difficulty curve. A lot of people aren't going to like how hard Elden Ring was and stuff like that. It's not going to... God of War is going to appeal to more people once it's available to a broader audience, I think. Like when Ragnarok comes to PC, I think you're going to find that more people like Ragnarok than people liked Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is a game of the year because it did so much over what did so much over what it you know the Dark Souls format was is probably going to genre right exactly yeah in that regard Dark Souls games Dark Souls games created their own on Joan genre essentially that's why we call it Dark Souls games like other games that are like those Dark Souls like and that game innovated that my thing about

Elden Ring versus this game is Elden Ring feels a lot more like a one trick pony like pony. There's no story at all. Except for best narrative, Michael. What are you talking about? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But

that's the thing, though. There's no character. You don't have character movement on their faces. It's just all combat, and it's incredible at that, and it did innovate. Man, it's tough. It sounds like I'm almost that and it did innovate um man it's tough it sounds like i'm almost talking to myself into believing god of war ragnarok will win a game of the year when i think it's going to be out of the ring yeah i think probably all doing i think there will be enough people like us who think it was a little bit of a step down overall because i

would say combat is 10 better but i would say story is 40% worse. And so it's still fantastic. It's I would give 2018 a 10 out of 10. I would give this one a nine out of 10. Like it's still fantastic. It's way, way, way up there. So, all right. Well, if anyone out there wants to look at our full leaderboard again, that's multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the main page.

Just scroll down a little bit there. And obviously we've been going for well over an hour and a half, guys. We could keep going, but I think this is a good stopping place. We do want to say thank you to everyone out there for listening. A very special thank you to Patreon supporters, especially legendary supporters Red Letter and Remy, and Epic supporters Ace of Shame, Yoda, Papa Thunderfist, and Wayne01. If you want to join their ranks, please visit MultiplayerSquad.com. And if you guys want a head start on the next deep dive that'll release two weeks from now, we will be covering the third-person cowboy action game

Evil West. Also, you can follow us on socials at MultiplayerPod. We hope that you guys out there enjoyed Ragnarok as much as we did. Next Thursday when we release our next episode, we hope you'll join us for that one as well. And until then, happy gaming. Cheers, all. All right. See you, everybody.