God of War Creator Is Unhappy With New Games and Kratos' Story

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.
- 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.
  
  My friend, you're missing out on the batshit insane lore of DOOM Eternal. The game itself is amazing, but the lore is even better!
  
  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.
  
  100% my biggest issue with modern games right now is there’s too much damn lore. I need to know a hundred different things to understand the game, and I generally don’t know those things.
  I’m a huge fan of Doom Eternal, and it’s one of the few single player games I’ve finished in the last few years. Too many games now end up needing to spend half my play session in conversations or cut scenes, and I realized I don’t have fun playing games like that.
- 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.
- He wasn't deep but he was Metal AF.
- When everything’s deep, shallow is a breath of fresh air

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.

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.
  
  Instead of just "man literally too angry to die."
  
  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 removed 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.

As someone who has played from the beginning, and seen the entire storyline unfold through the multiple directors, I was so disappointed......in nothing absolutely at all whatsoever about the new games.
I thought it was really cool how they stitched the story back to GoW3 and developed the new character so thoughtfully. Christopher Judge seemed to take the character much further while adding depth, and being thoughtful too.
If Jaffe doesn't like that Kratos isn't a mindless rage machine, different strokes I guess. He's definitely in the minority and I think every subsequent game director did an overall better job than he did in GoW 1. *shrug
- Parts of 2018 and Ragnarok and the ending of both actually had me tear up a bit, not many games accomplish that. It was very heartfelt and emotional I enjoyed seeing a proper character arc for Kratos and his kid and watching them develop.
  I also really liked the themes of redemption and trying to be better not just for yourself, but for the people around you, I liked that Kratos has to reflect on his actions and actually come to terms with how he was for all intents and purposes, a monster.
  I liked that even enemies where made more complex and given good character arcs. 2018 and Ragnarok are so well done and I love them. The old GoW trilogy was also fun and had good writing in it's own merit and direction, but the new games are something else entirely in a good way and I vastly prefer the character and relationship focused writing in the newer games.
- Sounds like Jaffe does not akree
- I love this positive note! Thank you for not being Reddit.

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.
- Wait until the franchise falls into decay like what happened to the to Tolkien’s work after TLORs massive success.
- Why are shilling so hard for a has-been whose most noteable works had to taken away from his creative control to actually develop into something beyond a juvenile revenge fantasy?

Something about the new games that really bothered me was how it handled puzzle rooms. You'd walk into a room and start to look around then your kid would yell out "hey I think we should shoot that target up there which should knock down this bridge for us". Golly thanks, guess I won't get to attempt to figure things out myself then. I pretty much fell off about 10 hours into the first one because I found that so frustrating. Does that go away after a while?
- Not from what I've read elsewhere.
- I can't think of any times he did that when I played. Most things I either figured out right away or missed quickly. I went backtracking while he was in his rebellious phase and he was mostly useless as a tutorial prompt. Any scenes out of order that required him to be cheery made him seem mentally unstable too.
- Yeah, while I personally really enjoyed both new games, I can understand not liking the way the gameplay went. However, I think Kratos' story is a perfect evolution for the character, so I cannot really understand his opinion there

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.
  
  You can't even chalk this up to an old man not understanding how modern games are played, either. The OG Metroid on the NES had blocks you could break by shooting upward. He's just an idiot.
- This isn't the criticism you think it is. People can have opinions on things they don't create.

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.

- Is that a statement extracted from the article/video ?
- Amen. No one cares about freyas divorce

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.

I mean, I too would be unhappy with the new games' stories. They're not very good stories overall.
But, they're better than the vast majority of video game plots, because that's a low bar.
Still, Jaffe seems to imply the old stories in GoW were any better, when they were pure drivel. I might still be very underwhelmed by the story in the two new God of War's, but I at least like that they're trying (even if I think the direction of relying heavily on animation and visual flair is the wrong one, as far as telling good stories goes).
- Jaffe always struck me as a perpetual adolescent. The two GoW games he worked on were great for the time, but the stories were shallow excuses to showcase as much gore as possible. His other big property, Twisted Metal, was genre-defining gameplay but any narrative was just edgelord violence and/or crass humor.
  The last "big" project I remember coming down the pipe from him was Drawn to Death, which took his signature juvenile tastes and combined them with horrible gameplay and eye-blistering art direction. As far as I'm aware, he hasn't worked on a game since.
  I'm not saying the new GoW games are perfect, but I wouldn't say Jaffe has a trusted critical eye.
  
  I fully agree. If you read my first comment, I pretty clearly as much as the new ones are pretty bad (story wise), the two Jaffe worked on are even worse in that regard.

I played about 3 hours of 2018, and my honest opinion is that the story was kind of interesting, but the gameplay was slow and clunky. The most fun I had with my time was the fight in the beginning with Baldur, and most of it was a cutscene. I prefer the gameplay and fluidity of combat in the original trilogy, which I have beaten, to this new version. With that being said, it's still a good game, just not my cup of tea.

Oh, so he never matured at all then, huh?

Could the author have packed any more bias into the article? Like, we get it. You like the new games.

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.

Welp. I don't know what to say other than he's the creator and he's completely wrong.
- Define “gamers,” because the metacritic user scores would argue your point.
  
  You're probably right. Must be bird watchers who bought all those copies.

Too Bad

meh. I played the first and second I think. I can't believe its still going. Its a pretty limited story to think of as a franchise.

What a whiney removed. God forbid they turn it from mindless killing to a fantastic story.

I've always loved god of war. Chains of Olympus being my favourite one. And I still love the new ones both gameplay and story wise. I really like kratos as a character and I like the story of him finally having time to reflect on his actions in the original series and trying to better himself afterwards.

I only ever played the first 2 until I got a PS5 that came with Ragnarok.
They're not even the same game anymore. The originals were more akin to Devil May Cry while Ragnarok felt like it could have been an Assassin's Creed game.
I can't say much for the story since I haven't gone very far in Ragnarok (and only beat 1 and 2 back in the day so my memory on details is a bit hazy) but the game play is definitely a lot different than it started.

Jaffe Kree
- Indeed, Jaffe does not akree.

He's not wrong, do new stuff, too many remakes and remasters nowadays.

I can understand him. God of War 2018 and Ragnarok have basically nothing to do anymore with the original games. They could have made a new IP but they had to take the name and characters for brand recognition.

I said the same thing on reddit and got banned. Ragnorrak was pandering garbage compared to first trilogy
- *they do shadow banning, how progressive
  
  Brave new world lol

His public presentation skills could get better, but I agree and support the essence of the idea. An art piece has an idea, a form, an ethos, and a character has a personality and is driven by specific world visions. To take an art piece, and just sh*t on the original spirit and forms to produce a derivative piece that fits someone else's vision while also using the familiarity to market it better is just cynical. Corporate media is just too cynical and hypocritical to not do exactly that: twist a art piece again and again to get better market outcomes.
He is right. God of War was created as a violent dynamical hack and slash with a Greek tragedy as background . It is not shallow, revenge stories after tragical events are a common trope. Kratos was a Greek tragic revengeful character that had a purpose and a vision , and he fulfilled his destiny. End of story. Call it pro revenge or whatever, its the spirit of the work.
The absurd was the newer artists not caring at all about fidelity or having the courage to create something new. Want to continue god of war ? Don't disrespect the original character and spirit and mechanic of the game, build upon it. Maybe a hack and slash about a Japanese kratos battling against shinto gods. Want to create a story with the opposite message, a completely different character and completely different gameplay ? Create a new game, new characters, and be happy.
I already find it hard to swallow when the original artist itself radically shifts the art piece, like what happened with Dragon Ball (compare the first episodes or chapters with Dragon Ball Z, and tell me its the same thing, its not). To see corporations being cynical about art, and being praised for it is even worse.

How dare he (the creator of Kratos) don't like the new games! /s
Who cares. Just play your games ~~and STFU.~~
- My point was, who cares. Just play your games.

I just can't with this generation of PlayStation games. Couldn't finish god of war, Horizon or spiderman. They look good but the game and story sucks
- I thought the story in Horizon was fantastic. I'm a Sci-fi nerd, so that all hit home with me. The second game, not so much though. It was like they didn't quite get why the story of the first game worked.
  I have problems with God of War though. The story feels like an attempt to copy what The Last of Us did with Ellie and Joel, but without really understanding why their dynamic worked.
  
  I have a lot of complaints about the HFW plot but the biggest one is the juvenile way they handled Tilda and Sylens in their capacity as prime movers. Aloy herself is a mature character but the story around her takes place in a moral scape of the world as seen by a fifteen year old.
  Sylens goes through the motions of his scheme and keeps the same smug "I'm above it all and don't owe anyone any explanations" attitude, through setback after setback and reality check after reality check. It seemed like the authors were poised to deliver a harsh discussion about ends vs means, how the world isn't a magical fairy tale and sometimes something important needs to be done that requires dirty politics and won't be magically solved by the one pure hero pulling the sword out of the rock; but then they squandered it completely and went back to 'yeah all glory to the chosen one'. Most frustratingly they had their angle right there, already baked in: Aloy fails the first 7 times she tries to do anything, so if Sylens mocked her "this is the real world, you don't just go ahead and solve things, Hero", she could legitimately retort "idk, have you tried". Instead they just don't have this discussion and go back and forth "screw you I hate you" "behave, girl" again and again in a flat loop.
  Tilda was made in the mold of this cringey moral that's all the rage now about how everyone's an abuser and when people say "I love you" they really mean "I own you" (as also seen in Dragon Age: Absolution). It reads like someone's pent up frustration about their controlling parents, like in his nightmares the person who created this plotline sees his mother taking to the air in that floating exoskeleton and shouting amid a rain of guided missiles "you're going to college and that's final, submit or perish".
  
  I feel like HFW kind of lost the plot when it introduced the Far Zeniths. They just didn’t work for some reason. I kind of wish if they were going that route, they had been the descendants of the people who left for Far Zenith and they had a better reason for wanting Gaia and Earth or something, so they weren’t just cartoonishly evil.
- I like the 2018 GOW and first Spider-Man, but just couldn't get into the sequels. I guess they're just so similar I felt like I was done and didn't want more. Horizon I never liked because I hate the combat. I also liked the first Last of Us, but didn't want to play as someone I hated in the sequel.
- It's the reason why I've been holding off on getting a PS5, and recently decided I just won't. The only thing that has come out recently that tempts me is BG3, but I'm past buying a console for a single game; I'll just play it on PC.
  
  BG3 really wants to be played with a mouse and keyboard. Using a controller is clunky AF.
- Funny thing is, I realize now there’s multiple franchises I’ve stopped for gameplay reasons, not story.
  In God of War, not only was I contending with an offset thumbstick that I didn’t feel like replacing, but I was stuck on a fight that I didn’t seem to be geared for, and was getting pummeled.
  Last of Us, I got stuck on some stealth section against enemies that didn’t seem to behave as the tutorial suggested.
  Demon’s Souks would just be leagues beyond me anyway, so no chance there.
- I thought the same thing. All i vould think of is: man, i should really like this, but i don't
  
  If you already own a decent PC, most of these games have already been released there, although later than on PS5. Only ones missing from that list so far are GoW: Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2.

I'm confused, is everyone upset the new games have more depth or are they upset the new games oppose revenge?
Anti-revenge stories are blatantly shallow, preachy propaganda pieces that seek to fulfill a political agenda.
Pro-revenge stories absolutely can and often do have depth and well-written characters.
So let's stop conflating the two.