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January 23rd, 2022: God of War - The First Button

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series chronicling my thoughts on this game. I still can't believe that this actually came to pass. That Santa Monica and Sony not only brought God of War to PC but delivered it to us in such a fantastic package. The performance of this game, even on high, is incredible considering it's running on a mobile version of the GTX 1050 Ti. Every person who made this possible has my sincerest gratitude.

Now let's talk about the game itself. I arrived at the main menu with moody music in the background and Kratos forlornly staring at a tree, axe in hand. I hit new game and the menu simply faded away and that simple transition took my breath away. Much has been said about the one shot camera that the game employs but I wasn't expecting that to kick in before the game itself did.

It was time then for the game to run me through its tutorial. Games traditionally start out with camera movement or character. Move your analog stick around to look or around, orienting you to the world before you are then gradually introduced to interactions with the world. God of War was content with keeping the camera to itself for the nonce, as I watched Kratos hold the tree, sit down to rest his head on it before slowly getting back up. All this slowness conveying a sense of weight to his person that made him feel even more larger than life than he is. And then the game tells you to press R1 to swing the axe.

Not the camera, not character movement, not even environment interaction of the more benign kind. Your very first button swings the axe and as you repeat that motion half a dozen times for increasingly brutal strikes, I couldn't shake the sense of this choice being a statement in itself. Was it saying anything more than what its title already had? It sure accentuated it brilliantly and as the massive tree came crashing down, my journey had begun.

CC0 low-key, 2022-01-23

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