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I actually just finished the 2018 game and am of the mind that his character didnt really change THAT much, maybe towards the end arguably.
That's a big part what makes the new God of War so great - that Kratos has changed. He's not a one-dimensional murder machine anymore; he's a dad, and becoming a dad softens you. The game would've flopped if he was still the same Kratos from 18 years ago.
tbf he was a dad back in Sparta... it just didnt go so well
That's something I think many folks forget, in art your have to change or else people will eventually get bored of it.
God of War is one of those games that wants to tell a story, so of course Kratos is going to change since the game isn't meant to be a saturday morning cartoon where characters are meant to be one-dimensional. Like, if they want games like that, there's always Crash Bandicoot or Call of Duty where the plot doesn't really matter that much.
I can appreciate an edgy as hell 2000s character today. Characters like Jack Garland in Stranger of Paradise and Vergil in Devil May Cry 5 are fun to me because they're practically caricatures. They could've done that with Kratos, but taking a character the least suited for parenthood, especially single parenthood and putting him in that situation was narratively interesting. Kratos processing his wife's death, reconciling his relationship with his son, and ultimately learning to let both go is more adult than running around ripping everything in half because angy.
Kratos and Vergil are very different kinds of edgy though. It's like The Punisher and Shadow the Hedgehog
Shadow The Punisher who also kills cops in his game.
I'm pretty sure Shadow the Hedgehog does kill cops in his solo game, and I think you kill the president in what I assume is the good ending
The reason why Jack works so well is because Square was fully self aware and knew what they were doing. Things like the "bullshit" cutscene, and him interrupting the boss monologue with his "no fucks given" attitude are pure gold.
That's the whole fucking point lol, "wot if... wot if permanently angry man had family? how make work?"
it's always been baffling to me how gamers cried when roger ebert said video games weren't art but violently react when video games are elevated on an emotional and/or aesthetic level
Art is when big robots and zombies. Having feelings is feminine and woke.
What they always wanted was people from "legitimate" forms of media to tell them that video games are legitimate too.
Of course video games have always been art - guys like Roger Ebert who dismiss the medium are reacting to the fact that the biggest games are crass commercial products. Imagine dismissing all of cinema but the only films you've seen are the Marvel movies.
i enjoy how one of the few gaming franchises that got better and more mature with time and after changing hands makes the OG creator seethe because his juvenile ultraviolent misogynist toybox was taken from him
alternatively 
"They shrunk his shoulders, made him look soft."
Also having never played the og god of wars game i can say that the og games were very boring much like the new ones
Did this dick weed forget that the original god of war games back in the day killed themselves through player exhaustion and that the reboot was wildly successful for being different.
After god of war 1-3, ascension and the psp games people literally didn't want any more of old kratos and old kratos gameplay, it was so bad that anything being like god of war was shit on like dantes inferno.
Personally I much prefer the rebooted series. The originals were fun but pretty shallow and generally boiled down to mash button and sometimes big enemy with qte and angry man go AAARRGGG.
He hasn't been involved with god of war since god of war 2.
I quite like the rebooted series, but I would like the power level turned up a bit. It's all well and good having the gritty one on one combat for major creatures, but also I want to be able to just tear through minor enemies rather than things getting complicated when there's more than 2 of them.
I can't even think of something funny to say about this.
MFW they made Kratos an actually interesting character:
G*mers are stuck in the 90's and still think "attitude" is the most admirable trait imaginable. I think it now makes sense why they're stereotypically reactionary. They see themselves as too cool to respect others, and because of how cool they are, all the losers around them are targets for their all-knowing-but-sassy mouth.
Gamers are reactionary because most of them are essentially big man babies. Their idea of masculinity is the same as that of an insecure teenage boy. The reason why they are so obsessed with video games in the first place is because these types of people are still stuck in the same mindset they had when they were 15, they simply never moved on and think binging call of duty and watching anime with big tiddy waifus in it is the dopest shit ever, and that the evil woke feminists want to take their fun away or whatever.
Huh, maybe it's actually a good thing that I'm not nearly as interested in video games as I used to be. The boomers were right, it's much better to geek out over music than video games.
Kratos: Maybe I should be nice to my son and not kill everyone I meet.
Jaffe: The woke mind virus has taken over.
Nooo, he can't care about being a better father to his son while still viciously murdering gods, he's so soft now!!!
I want an interesting story but with no woke "character arcs" or "growth"
We are talking about a fictional character, right? LOL
So the creator is like Rob Liefeld? Good to know that someone else took the helm of his characters direction.
Rob Liefield seems to have more of a sense of humor about criticism
Lmfao even Giga Chad's proportions aren't as ridiculous
Kratos isn't a character he's a brand for all the loyal PlayStation consumers to go "wow videogame so mature now it's totally not cringe for me to still play this now that I have kids".
I jus thought it was a fun story 
cringe culture is reactionary, enjoy things
Kratos is the father to all gamers.
i dont think this is a hot take or anything but it's ok to be a parent and play video games (obviously assuming you aren't neglecting to give your child attention).
Kratos remaining a vengeful murder machine would have cheapened the conclusion of the old series (Ascension notwithstanding). Like, what was he supposed to do from there after killing the whole Greek Pantheon who set him on his path in the first place?
His whole character development was also one of the big draws of the 2018 game, as opposed to the Assassin’s Creed route of “Same God of War but Norse Mythology because why not”.
To be wise is to accept change. To be enlightened is to love change
G*mers are just awful
Gamers like to gripe about how they hate "politics" in games, yet I have never heard a single one of them complain about politics being in Church. I wonder why...
It is kind of hard to see what the character is supposed to do after having split up with Atreus and going to Egypt or whatever. It's not the kind of story they were looking for, but since there were insinuations about Atreus having a much more serious heel turn as Loki than he ever ended up having, it would have been interesting if he used his trickster god skills to convince Kratos that someone or other had killed him.
And you all laughed at me when I said they shrunk his shoulders! Well who's laughing now? Definitely not kratos...
when "we killed your parents and then felt bad about it" is too woke for you
in seriousness though, I like emotionless/silent protagonists to some extent. It was a big part of the appeal of Metroid for me, at least before Other M came out. It makes the game feel more otherworldly
I can't bring myself to like the new God of War games. Not because Kratos became "soft" or "woke" or anything like that but because I think that Kratos is so incredibly evil and messed up that he can't be redeemed.
The guy wiped out all of Greece in the end and on his way there he did funny little things such as ohh I don't know:
[CW] Extreme violence against women.
Spoiler
JAMMING UNARMED WOMAN INTO GEARS. And it gets worse. Seriously if you are sensitive to this stuff do not open the next spoiler.
Spoiler
This scene is vile. Dude could have just asked her to hold the gate open. But noooo mister "the only 2 interactions I have with women in this games is killing them or fucking them" just stuffed her in there while she begs him not to. And you hear her scream as she's is snapped in half while you continue through the gate.
This piece of shit cries about his family endlessly and then goes on to kill ALL of Greece and therefore countless of families. A guy like this doesn't get the "I have a family now" treatment. It makes me livid that off all villainous characters that get a redemption arc it's the biggest piece of shit out there.
I also have complaints about the gameplay but it's not even my main issue. I can see how someone could enjoy the gameplay at least. Even though it's not really my style of game. But I can't understand how anyone who has played God of War can think "Give the family slaughterer Kratos another family he can endanger. I feel so much sympathy for him this time."
Ngl, I never thought about this, and I don't know why.
You're completely right, he doesn't deserve to be redeemed, or anything other than punishment and/or death for all the fucked up things he has done to innocent people. Yet he receives none. Instead he gets to have a new family.
I think the problem is that there is no way of doing that, Kratos is a literal god killer, there's no way of enacting punishment upon him unless he accepts it willingly and he won't while having to care for his son. So instead you get this fucked situation where he gets to do anything he wants just because.
That being said, (while not remotely enough) he also regrets what he has done and is a much more nuanced character now, I just don't know if it is justifiable to keep him around. He can't be redeemed, and
but again, it doesn't erase anything of what he has done, and he still deserves to pay for it. Letting him off the hook just makes a story about someone that could do anything, was evil and then turned good, to me it just looks like some idealistic morality slop.spoiler
if the end of Ragnarök is where the series will go, Kratos will turn into someone that actually does good,
Still, I really want to see him turn into something else, I guess I'm too invested in the character. This shit's conflicting. 
I don't blame you. When God of War 2018 came out no one really talked about how messed up Kratos is as a character exactly. It was just a bunch of people going "I never played God of War but I really like how mature Kratos is now." They kinda knew that Kratos was a violent guy but no one talked about how comically evil he was and that Kratos isn't really the guy for a redemption story.
The only people who brought up that Kratos is a massive piece of shit where Chuds who did so because they were pissed that Kratos isn't slaughtering and raping his way through Greece anymore.
Kratos in the new games is an appealing character but his past is so messed up that it just doesn't mash with who he is now. If God of War ended after the first (old) game I wouldn't even mind the reboot but I just can't see myself forgiving the guy who whipped out all of Greece. Even if the ending of GoW III implies there is still hope for humanity. That doesn't really matter, Kratos still killed millions and millions of people.
I never played GOW 1-3 so my preferred way to treat the reboot was that only the events directly mentioned are canon and the OT are legends or vaguely true and distorted
That's not a bad way to look at it, but I can't really go along with that. When I was a teenager, I played all the God of War games over and over. My mom was working two jobs to keep the lights on, so she wasn't checking much on what I was playing when I was just 12. Plus, my uncle, who was kinda careless but cool, hooked me up with his modded PlayStations and a bunch of pirated games.