Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn’t worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they’re not staying true to the spirit of the character and the franchise. The creator noted that if developers want to pour their life experiences into their work, they should do it with new IPs and characters.
It may not be the work he wanted, but it was a positive direction. I know nothing about his other works, but new-kratos is a much expanded character and successful continuation on the original work. Not a hamfisted cash-in like so many sequelizations do.
Honestly seeing kratos grow up is what makes the new games that much more impactful. The series when taken as a whole just really makes kratos’s character that much better. Imagine 2018 GoW without the original trilogy, it would not be nearly as close to perfect of a game as it was
The original Kratos was basically one big long revenge story. Almost all of it justified and satisfying, but basically wiping out the Greek Pantheon was his ultimate goal.
His actions were reckless and fury driven, but often went over the top, both in violence and in actions.
My favourite example is from GoW: Ragnarok, when certain characters are reflecting on Kratos’ past, and how the one story of him killing the Sisters of Fate must truly be myth, then he corrects them saying it was true and how they deserved it. The third character then shines a present light on the fact that he did that in the past and says, “that’s the most dangerous and irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard.”
I think that sums up Greek Kratos in a nutshell.
his other works include twisted metal and drawn to death.
not bad games, but also not games known for their ahem quality storytelling.
the Original God of War Kratos had all the depth of a puddle.
nuKratos is by far the superior character.
Modern Kratos wouldn’t be nearly as impactful or enthralling if we didn’t intimately know his past and what he is capable of. Replacing him with another character who acts identical and had a similar background revealed in flashbacks would just undercut how Kratos acts now.
We see him show restraint his younger self was incapable of, and how when hes holding back, its not for his benefit, but for those who are antagonizing him and his friends. HE knows he is a monster, doesn’t view himself as redeemable in the slightest, but has no intention of returing to his old ways while he has the ability to help those he’s come to care for, and also show his son a better a path than the one laid out for him.
So while yes, ps2/ps3 kratos had all the depth and bredth of a puddle, modern Kratos is built entirely off that puddle and wouldn’t hold its own weight without the previous foundations.
as someone who’s only played GOW 2018 I still thought he was a compelling character 🤷♂️
There were innumerable opportunities for kratos to develop character beyond raging angry guy of rancorous fury. Every betrayal and every reconciliation was so bland after a while. The originals were one long soap opera.
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What made them successful was marketing and copying and simplifying devil may cry. GOW’s voice acting and tactility of gameplay were far above the norm, which brought people back for a sequel. Its story was par for ps2, which is to say tolerable.
Meh. Not everything need to be deep. It’s a video games. Nobody is asking what the DOOM character backstory is. He’s there to shoot some hellspawns and that’s fun.
There’s a place for both, really.
There’s a place for both, really.
Sure, but when someone whines “Why did they give this character depth? They could have made them shallow and boring!” I’m not going to give that person much credit.
Also, DOOM guy does have some backstory for those that care to look for it in the games. Easily ignored for those that don’t.
You don’t even need the deep lore hidden text and recordings for Doomguy. The show-not-tell storytelling is fucking amazing in Doom 2016.
Like they don’t need any deep lore dumps or in depth explainations. The simple and casual disregard of Samuel Hayden for the lives of his employees and everyone else on Mars is in direct contrast to how deeply it’s immediately obvious that Doomguy DOES care about those same dead scientists and colonists just from a few simple actions.
No long-winded explanation necessary. Those 10 seconds were a masterpiece of visual storytelling.
He wasn’t deep but he was Metal AF.
Honestly, I liked him better when he was just an angry sad revenge monster man. The way the games were structured made so that was never a crutch.
That said, David Jaffe needs to disappear already.
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When everything’s deep, shallow is a breath of fresh air
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I guess it’s mostly old fellows that are way past their teenage years of angst and thus had lots of time to reflect, rather than pretentious gamers. But hey, I’m just an internet rando
I understand Jaffe not being happy that the games are going in a different direction than he imagined, but he’s also the guy who thought Drawn to Death needed to be made.
Well he can fuck right off, God of War 2018 was amazing
Was Ragnarok less loved? I got a bad feel for it with some comments so left off playing it. Then I got it and loved every second of it.
Literally every person I know that played it loved it more than the 2018 reboot, which is saying something since the 2018 GoW put the franchise back on the map after its years long downturn.
I didn’t like it as much and quit playing, but that may be because I just had my fill with the first one and was done with it.
Wait until the franchise falls into decay like what happened to the to Tolkien’s work after TLORs massive success.
David Jaffe is a fucking idiot whose opinion doesn’t matter anymore.
David Jaffe is unhappy that his generic revenge puddle of spit character has actually grown in depth and is truly interesting now.
I mean on the one hand you have a story of a father and son grieving over loss while finding themselves…
And on the other you have Kratos fucking bitches via rhythm-based mini games.
I really do wonder what he thought was so great about the character before?
Ehh, h’s not wrong. If this David Jaffe guy is a pro-revenge type, of course he has the right to be unhappy: the writers for the new games blatantly said in interviews they completely changed the story around to oppose revenge, completely against the wishes of this Jaffe fellow apparently. Which is ironically a vengeful act.
People don’t have the right to just change stories to suit their personal opinions and the new writers need to learn to respect that.
Lest the writers after that change it back to a pro-revenge story with depth and good writing just to spite them.
Blatant anti-revenge stories are bland, predictable, preachy and uninteresting.
People don’t have the right to just change stories to suit their personal opinions and the new writers need to learn to respect that.
I think the new writers absolutely do have the right to change the story as they see fit, on account of they’re the writers and David Jaffe isn’t
They don’t, because they’re not the original writers and stories are art, not corporate marketing products.
You don’t have the right to do whatever you want simply because you like it.
You don’t have the right to do whatever you want simply because you like it.
Yes… Yes you do? Lmao brother have you experienced any story or art in the last, I dunno, ten thousand years? Everyone is just retelling an existing story with their own little tweak or twist.
Look, it seems like you didn’t like the creative direction of the new games, and that’s fine. But getting mad at the writers and claiming they didn’t have “the right” to write the story as they saw fit (in a brand new series of video games btw, not remakes of the existing ones) is weird.
No, you don’t.
You can certainly write fanfiction and create fanart all you want to. People have done it for thousands of years. But it’ll never be the original story no matter how much you want it to be.
You are not the original creator of the franchise. Grow up and get over it.
Getting mad at me for telling you the truth won’t change that fact, and it won’t make Jaffe any less correct in his complaint that the writers deliberately destroyed his creation and his original intent. Because they did, and they admitted they did it because they didn’t want a pro revenge story in media.
Go look up the interviews with the recent GoW writers. Go actually do some research instead of throwing a temper tantrum here because I won’t let you do what you want.
Objective reality is a thing whether you want it to be or not. You don’t get to decide what the truth is.
Dawg where have I claimed to be an original creator of the franchise? You’re being koo koo for cocoa puffs right now lmao. And the writers didn’t destroy anything. The original games are still there. If Jaffe wanted the new games to be different, if he wanted to preserve his “original intent”, he should have written them himself.
Jaffe writing the original story doesn’t give him the power to dictate how new stories based on his work are written, and that’s objective reality, not whatever fantasyland you’re living in.
I’m pretty sure this is less about the quality of the game and more about ppl working on his creation without him. You can see this a lot in comic books
Creators will be pissed that ownership has continued work on something they created without them.
Pretty much why Allen Moore hates comics so much. Or even why John McAfee hated his anti virus program.
David Jaffe is kind of a nut these days though. Like what has he done in recent years?
The last thing I saw regarding him was him being unable to comprehend how secret rooms in Metroid work. It was painful.
Jesus. Kudos to that video editor stitching videos of other people doing it.
Hahahahah. Thank you for this.
Brutal. He’s so wrong and he has no idea.
Which is something super common in Metroid too.
Hell he probably hasn’t figured out you can shoot up and just tries to jump to fire horizontally at enemies instead.
I kinda wish the article has expanded on what he said, if anything. Does he still think they are well made games even if he doesn’t like the direction?
Like, I don’t like the new Zelda games, I don’t think they have stayed true to the original Zelda (not you Zelda II) games. That said, I cannot deny that a lot of care and polish went into them, I just don’t like the direction.
Sure, the new God of War games are not the original avatar-of-rage Kratos but they are still exceptional games.
Yeah, I like BotW and ToTK, but not as a Zelda fan.
The year before GoW 2018, he released Drawn to Death… PS Plus release that had some cool style but otherwise crap game! He was relevant back in the late 90s and early 2000s… but now his opinion hardly matters and he’s a bit of a drama queen. I don’t really give a shit what he thinks.
Could the author have packed any more bias into the article? Like, we get it. You like the new games.
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Is that a statement extracted from the article/video ?
His tone, the way he mocks other creators, comes off as (for lack of a better term) developmentally stunted. I understand if you disagree with the product because your vision is different, but the way he expresses it is so reductive that it’s hard to see his points as valid beyond his feelings.
With that being said, It’s been awhile since I’ve seen David Jaffe and he’s kinda got a “We’ve got Dan Harmon at home” vibe about him now.
Went and watched the original.
Seems like he just doesn’t like the direction and it’s a ‘different strokes for different folks’ kind of thing. I think his point about Ragnarok is fair, the writing is a bit all over the place and that can make characterization suffer.
Oh, so he never matured at all then, huh?
Welp. I don’t know what to say other than he’s the creator and he’s completely wrong.
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Define “gamers,” because the metacritic user scores would argue your point.
And reviews can’t be swayed right? God forbid there’s a loyal minority who agree with the creator
You’re probably right. Must be bird watchers who bought all those copies.
