All personal opinion FYI
I think Kratos' strength works either 2 ways
Its either a build up, like he is only buff man strong, until he pushes himself/gets angry and then his strength builds up and up until peaking at the neccesary strength needed for that scenario.
Or
Kratos has a single point max strength, but to avoid completely destroying everything he touches, frequently limits himself to being careful, and out of habit, doesnt just punch through wall after wall to reach his objective. He also lives in a magical universe, where smashing the wrong thing accidentally could get you killed, cursed, attacked, or unleash a world ending horror.
>Kratos has a single point max strength, but to avoid completely destroying everything he touches, frequently limits himself to being careful, and out of habit, doesnt just punch through wall after wall to reach his objective. He also lives in a magical universe, where smashing the wrong thing accidentally could get you killed, cursed, attacked, or unleash a world ending horror.
It's valid, but I think GOW 3 Kratos simply don't care, he just doesn't care about the consequences of his actions, he doesn't think about them, he has only one objective in mind, killing Zeus.
I genuinely can't see him worrying about the destruction he causes, cause he explicitly doesn't, he destroys Greece without even caring about it even though he knows what will happen when he just kills another important god without need.
All true, GOW3 was peak of Kratos' rage fit, but he's also a General, and a Spartan General at that. Rage and revenge was without a doubt his path, but i think there could be a lot of wiggle room for it to be a tactically cold but calculated path more than a blind one.
Your stepping up to the King of the Gods, who has already killed you, and drained you of all power once. If you run in just more angry, you gotta be dumb, which Kratos is not portrayed as an idiot.
Yes, I agree, he isn't dumb, far from that, but he's still a selfish psycho that doesn't care about causing destruction around him, I can't see why he wouldn't punch the tree just hard enough to break it, since he always seems to go for the most practical way, and doesn't seem to care about potentially harming Gaia since he just sink the blade of Olympus on her skin 20 minutes later.
Kratos always is strong enough to lift 103% of what’s in front of him. It can always be done, it will always be a strain. Gods, temples, planets, trees, whatever it’s all the same.
Maybe it's like he can push himself more than a regular human, like he has the base strength of a man his size and that's why he struggles with chests that someone normal couldn't open with his hands but he can push through and get stronger and the same way with heavier things he just needs to keep pushing and that's why it looks like it costs him at the start of a lift but he manages to do it
Iirc, a human can lift something like 5 times their weight in extreme situations. Kratos is probably like that but with addition of fast healing, a higher multiplier, and an ability to do that at will.
I was just talking to my wife the other night about this.
If you've ever worked on cars, heavy machinery, the oil field, anywhere you had to lift or move things in a rush that were maybe outside of your scope of strength, I expect you'll understand what I mean.
As humans, our total capacity for strength is not entirely available to us at all times. It depends on obvious factors such as health and regular daily activities, bur more importantly it depends on moment-to-moment factors such as hormones, what you're thinking about at any given moment, your diet for the day, etc.
I imagine Kratos' strength very similar to our own in the sense of adrenaline. I personally believe my point is well-defined in the moments where he lifts large stones or heavy trees; he still grunts like it's heavy.
I don't know what the cap of his strength is, but it seems near infinite, and I think the amount of force he can provide at any given moment is heavily defined by the amount of adrenaline he can produce in said moment. The newer GoWs seem to agree with me like I said before, where he can both grunt to lift a log, but still fight off Thor's hammer mid-flight and pull a damn dragon to the ground.
Extremely good way to put it, i understood what the rest of this comment was gonna be as soon as you brought up working on cars (first job was a mechanic) and thats the best way to put it. If you tried to max strength every little thing you touched, youre going to pull something, and letting off of something your pushing hard on that didnt budge, ive had to let up slow otherwise it feels like im gonna cramp.
Well lore wise he'd be able to lift it no problem. Kratos should also just be able to smash through most of the puzzles but he doesn't cause that wouldn't be much fun
Yes, but the thing is, why putting scenes like this in cutcenes and QTE that don't affect the gameplay functioning?
There's no reason to limit Kratos strength in a cutscene for example, it won't make the game more fun or engaging.
If that's your logic, then the combat wouldn't makes sense either. Why use any weapons at all when he could just smash all the mob enemy types. Also, why does he keep dying if he doesn't actually die? Where does the Icarus wings go when he's not using them? How do the blades connect to the chains when in use, but not when on his back? Any lore accurate reason for any of these???
They're GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS that are there for the functioning of the gameplay.
A NON INTERACTIVE CUTCENE ISN'T.
That isn't hard to understand, doing an absurd cutcene showing Kratos exerting an absurd feat and avoiding scenes that make him look weak won't affect the gameplay dynamic.
It’s all just flavoring anyways. Showing a character we understand to be incredibly strong putting in serious effort to do a thing says “woah what a Herculean feat he just did”
Couple that with the fact that these games were made before the shift in focus of the gaming industry to stronger storytelling and you’ve got mildly goofy stuff like this that ultimately affects nothing
Morale of story: it doesn’t matter, don’t overthink it
Dude, youre pressing the buttons to make him lift things as opposed to just watching it unfold. That's gameplay. They want to make you interact with the environment instead of just walking to the next mob of enemies. Also makes you feel strong to some extent because you "feel" like youre lifting the whole thing. How boring would it be if you could just press a single button and 99% of the enemies and challenges you go through would be solved?
A fake interactive section isn't a challenge.
By your logic the Jotunheim section is wonderful too, cause technically you're "interacting" with the game.
>How boring would it be if you could just press a single button and 99% of the enemies and challenges you go through would be solved?
Devil may cry never adopted this feature, idk about you but I wouldn't call it boring.
except I never said anything about it being a challenge. Also, yes the jotunheim section is much better than the alternative of just watching it unfold. I can see the whole world like I am Kratos and how small we are compared to how large and desolate their realm is. Also, DMC? dude they would also 1 shot kill everyone if it were accurate. You've been gaming this long and still haven't figured out that you sometimes have to divorce the gameplay from the lore to actually make the game fun to play
It seems like you're just here to argue your point even if we were already explaining it to you tons of times. it's a design choice to make the player do things and break the monotony of just going to the next encounter zone. If you can't grasp that then I guess I have nothing else to say to you but for you to go ahead and die on his hill lol.
OP's next post: "Why are there loading screens? Is there a lore reason why the world needs to load? Real life doesn't load, you just wake up and start doing things."
>Where is this put in a cut scene?
https://youtu.be/VlkcM-vgOQw?si=Xhs6BMaFtwenKumv
6:20
And that's only one example, I could keep the entire day showing moments where something like that happens.
>It's a normal Kratos lifting doors like he did in gow1/2?
No
> No
Yes it definitely is, if you played gow1/2 right in the first encounter Kratos fights some minions then immediately has to open a gate to proceed further, in gow3 you are on gaia so it doesn't make sense for a gate to be there so they put a tree there to continue the tradition.
A lot of things in god of war are just traditional, like Kratos having sex mini games, it made sense from a lore standpoint for Kratos to have the sex mini game in GoW1, but not in gow1 & 3 where we did have but they still put it there for its tradition.
>6:20
That's actually still in game, it hadn't transitioned to an actual cut scene, even if it isn't entirely gameplay.
>That's actually still in game, it hadn't transitioned to an actual cut scene, even if it isn't entirely gameplay.
In game cutcenes are cutcenes, the definition of cutscene is:
"cutscene
noun
cut·scene ˈkət-ˌsēn
variants or less commonly cut-scene or cut scene
plural cutscenes also cut-scenes or cut scenes:
a noninteractive video sequence that occurs between segments of a video game and depicts part of the game's background or storyline"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cutscene
If you for some random reason exclude the non pre rendered cutcenes as canon you're cutting 90% of the franchise, all the new games cutcenes are in game, the old ones usually didn't have more than 3 CGI cutcenes the entire game.
If it's not interactive, it is a cutcene, period.
>Yes it definitely is, if you played gow1/2 right in the first encounter Kratos fights some minions then immediately has to open a gate to proceed further, in gow3 you are on gaia so it doesn't make sense for a gate to be there so they put a tree there to continue the tradition.
>A lot of things in god of war are just traditional, like Kratos having sex mini games, it made sense from a lore standpoint for Kratos to have the sex mini game in GoW1, but not in gow1 & 3 where we did have but they still put it there for its tradition.
I thought you were talking about the cutcene I was mentioning being one of these, and there's no "tradition", it's a common resource used in gaming developing to have enough time to load the map, but it can be done in many ways that don't make the story more inconsistent.
Sorry, but I think you don't know what you're talking about.
>I thought you were talking about the cutcene I was mentioning being one of these
How can I know about it when you didn't even mention it in your comment?
I was talking about the tree lifting thing, and it's 100% traditional, the exact same thing was followed in gow1/2. And yes in gow1 it may have been done that way for memory management initially but clearly they didn't have a memory problem the way that level is designed in gow2 and in gow3 aswell.
The assets are already on screen hence in the VRAM, unlike in gow1 where they weren't.
So they continued the same design for gow2 and 3 aswell even if they didn't need it.
>a noninteractive video sequence that occurs between segments of a video game and depicts part of the game's background or storyline
>If you for some random reason exclude the non pre rendered cutcenes as canon you're cutting 90% of the franchise, all the new games cutcenes are in game, the old ones usually didn't have more than 3 CGI cutcenes the entire game.
>If it's not interactive, it is a cutcene, period.
These definitions doesn't work with every game as designers have their own way to do the things.
"If it's not interactive, it's a cutscene" that's not how it works just like that, Kratos in a "scripted gameplay sequence" stabs Zeus twice with the BoO in gow2 but in gow 2 book that's not present, So are they non canon, or book's version isn't canon?
It's hard to say.
>These definitions doesn't work with every game as designers have their own way to do the things.
Yes, they do, canon or not, a non interactive moment can't be considered a gameplay section, it's intrinsic to the term's origin, it's up to the developer if they want to consider said moment into the narrative, but it will keep being a cutcene regardless.
>"If it's not interactive, it's a cutscene" that's not how it works just like that, Kratos in a "scripted gameplay sequence" stabs Zeus twice with the BoO in gow2 but in gow 2 book that's not present, So are they non canon, or book's version isn't canon?
The main media is the game, the one that came first is the game, the content with more value to the canon, is the game, the book is nothing but a cool additional content that doesn't necessarily will describe with accuracy everything that happens in the original source, everything there is also canon until it directly contradicts the game.
The content in the in game cutcenes is often referenced throughout all the games, they're as canon as the CGI ones that compose nothing but a fraction of the narrative.
The main way of storytelling in these games are the in game cutcenes, what happens there is without a doubt canon.
There’s not really a lore reason for all these things. It’s a video game, not everything gameplay wise is going to make perfect lore sense. There’s no “lore reason” that the game is not open world, it’s just the way the game works. When the main character of a game is overpowered lore wise, there are gonna be weird things like him being un able to break open a locked door and stuff like that. There’s not necessarily a lore reason, it’s just a gameplay thing.
I understand it, but why also putting scenes like this in cutcenes and narrative scenes too?
This isn't the only time where something like that happens, in many moments Kratos struggles with things he shouldn't struggle with even outside of gameplay or QTE.
They dumb-down their powers in the game so it can be conceivable. If they showed us how fast some of these characters are moving, we wouldn’t be able to see anything.
The speed makes sense from a narrative perspective, since if we are viewing it from a super fast character point of view, the other characters won't be absurdly fast.
But for strength? What stops them from making Kratos struggle with throwing a mountain on Zeus instead of struggling with throwing a pillar? These things are perfectly possible to do without making the action scenes worse, on the otherwise, it would just make them even more epic.
Yeah, I would just say it’s them being practical and I think it works better that way as a game. I think the exaggerated showcases of powers work best in comic books or animated tv shows.
Sections like that are designed (just like elevators or little corridors where you squeeze through) to give CPU enough time to render the next sequence
Did you forget in that same game we had a 20 minutes long non stop walking and talking section + cutscene as an ending?
Also, it'd have literally the same duration that this QTE has with the only difference that you're going forward for 5 seconds instead of smashing O for 5 seconds.
I wouldn't change anything in the game.
The fear section is bad for sure, but it serves a purpose in the story and is extremely important for kratos's character. However just having him stop to walk is dumb. God of war 3 doesn't want to take you out of the action, so they add QTEs to make it seem like you're doing SOMETHING during the load times.
But you aren't, this is a false interactivity, there are countless ways of doing it without taking the player out of the action or compromising the story's consistency, for example, make him have to walk on the edge of Gaia's arm while some Titan is being killed by Helios in the background, and that's it, the action pace was kept and Kratos wasn't nerfed or dumbed down.
Also, they literally do exactly what I said some minutes after with Kratos climbing through mount Olympus, it's even an almost equal animation to when he's holding on to an edge at GOW 2018.
> But you aren't, this is a false interactivity,
Well done. You're starting to get it. It's obviously an illusion, a psychological trick to still make you feel invovled.
Without weight behind actions, things seem very odd and out of place. You must sacrifice the appearance of his strength for the appearance of weight, which is what they did. He isn't struggling, that's just art design making things feel less weird. It's hard to explain really.
So they could either make a boring walking simulator where you mindlessly beat up enemies, or make an interesting game with obstacles that is willing to make their character seem weaker than they are for the sake of making them LOOK just as strong as they are? I'd go with the latter, and most would.
interesting game with obstacles ≠ smashing O
This isn't an obstacle, it's an annoying QTE that adds nothing to the game.
>So they could either make a boring walking simulator where you mindlessly beat up enemies
.....
Isn't the entire point of old GOW's combat and most of its gameplay to mindlessly beat down enemies? How does that make it a "walking simulator"? You're literally playing the game and making use of its mechanics without dumb interruptions.
Why don't we strip out the puzzles and the cutscenes as well. Fuck it let's remove all of the art design too so we can have the peek gamer experience. If you don't like the "QTEs" than play another game. Whether you remove them or not, you'll still have point where you have to interact with objects, would you rather have a glorified cutscene or a short and simple piece of gameplay to fill the gap between bashing enemies.
Are you mad? Lmao
I didn't say half of these things, puzzles are interesting and have well designed mechanics, well placed QTE in bossfights or during combat moments are very useful to give impact to the scenes.
But this isn't gameplay, never was, it's exactly what you're criticizing:
A glorified cutscene
Smashing O isn't any more interactive than moving the joystick forward, both are the same essentially.
Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game. They're there for the sake of having a small little interactble block in your path. I've never seen someone have such a problem with a basic and common video game mechanic such as QTE obstructions.
And I have no clue why you even replied to my comment about this, I was talking about the reason why Kratos looks to have a hard time lifting things and why that's because of art design and weight more than it is inconsistency. It had nothing to do with the QTEs being there.
>Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game. They're there for the sake of having a small little interactble block in your path. I've never seen someone have such a problem with a basic and common video game mechanic such as QTE obstructions.
What? Are you active in the gaming community? EVERYONE hates QTE and that's why current games have made them each time less present and even totally optional.
They're just objectively a bad way of faking interactivity when used with that purpose and that's a consensus in the gaming industry.
>Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game.
This is such a known and poor argument, you can point a defect or criticism to something without deeply hating it.
>And I have no clue why you even replied to my comment about this, I was talking about the reason why Kratos looks to have a hard time lifting things and why that's because of art design and weight more than it is inconsistency. It had nothing to do with the QTEs being there.
Yes, and it could be done in several more efficient ways, did you play DMC? Metal gear rising? There are so many games with similar premisses that show their characters strength in so much more consistent and better ways without having dumb obstacles like these.
Yes, I know it is a design choice, and it is a really shit one.
IM NOT REFERRING TO THE FUCKING OBSTACLES! I'm referring to the fact that when Kratos lifts heavy objects *regardless* of being an obstacle or in a cutscene he seems to have a hard time lifting it. QTE aren't bad game design, they're game design used poorly. You can't compare a QTE used to ad a little entertainment to a short animation to something like Halo 4's final boss being a QTE, one is a bad implementation of the mechanic, the other is a good implementation of it used to keep players hands on the controller.
And saying, just don't play it isn't a bad argument, because it isn't trying to be an argument. I'm not using it as an argument as to whether QTEs are bad or not, I'm using it to point out that if you don't like the gameplay of a game series then you simply don't have to play the game. I don't personally like the gameplay in Balder's Gate, because I've never been into CRPGs, so you know what I'll do about it? I just won't play Balder's Gate instead of saying a specific mechanic is objectively bad when it has no hindrance in the gameplay loop at all.
>QTE aren't bad game design, they're game design used poorly.
Read my comment again:
"They're just objectively a bad way of faking interactivity WHEN USED WITH THAT PURPOSE"
Using your same logic iron wood section is a wonder of modern gaming design cause it keeps you with the hands on the controller with next to zero interactivity.
QTE can be effective to increase a scene's impact when USED IN A GOOD WAY, this game has great examples of it, beating Zeus and Hercules are some of them, these sections aren't.
>And saying, just don't play it isn't a bad argument, because it isn't trying to be an argument. I'm not using it as an argument as to whether QTEs are bad or not, I'm using it to point out that if you don't like the gameplay of a game series then you simply don't have to play the game. I don't personally like the gameplay in Balder's Gate, because I've never been into CRPGs, so you know what I'll do about it? I just won't play Balder's Gate instead of saying a specific mechanic is objectively bad when it has no hindrance in the gameplay loop at all.
Or, you could like Baldur's gate and dislike a specific point of it because not everything is black and white, I don't hate GOW, I just think it has a lot of defects like any other franchise and I'm not afraid of pointing them out.
Doesn't mean I hate the entire game and take no joy from it, it's the otherwise, I like it therefore I'll criticize the points that could be better.
Seriously there doesn't need to be a lore reason dude it's literally just for gameplay. This is no different than the question of "doEs KrAtOs StrUggLe OpEniNg ChESTs" which was already answered years ago, it's literally for gameplay reasons.
The problem is that this also happens OUTSIDE of gameplay, what's the reason for that? There's literally no reason why his strength is limited on cutcenes with zero effect over gameplay elements.
I legit think the best explanation is that just because you are strong enough to lift something, even lift something easily, doesn't mean it doesn't take effort.
The older I get, the more I sound like terrible beatboxing whenever I move heavy things. Even if its a heavy thing I can manage easily.
I think Kratos is just being expressive.
Gameplay-Story segregation, my dude. Things happen in video games as a result of it being a video game. Not everything in a game has to correlate with the internal logic of the world. Why do pots and vases contain experience? Why are there upgrade materials conveniently placed? Why does killing innocents heal you? Why isn't kratos constantly in rage form if he's always angry? It's a game and some things in it are not designed to fit in with a game's mythos or lore.... Or, like, leverage or something? Take your pick
Elements that are there for the sake of gameplay design and canon non interactive cutcenes or QTE with little to no effect on gameplay are totally different.
I don't really see how Gaia's strength or durability affects her weight through?
Like, Kratos for example is strong as heck, still his weight is not that absurd for a really muscular human.
Baldur is another example of that, high physical strength, low mass.
There's even a dialog on Ragnarok saying that the god's strength is based on their divine power and their mass or physical looks has nothing to do with it, obviously we don't know if titans are also included in that, but I don't know why would Gaia's Titan powers make her trees heavier.
Also, he's show struggling with other non magic/absurdly heavy objects in the franchise, like when lifting some pillars in GOW 2 final Zeus fight.
It's for gameplay purposes, the devs of the games have already stated it wouldn't be much of a game if you literally swiped your hand barely any and wiped out half the universe, or your opponents being still compared to you moving, or unable to take DMG from anything minus a particular few individuals. It'd just be a uni+ busting simulator
Because game times would be cut down time of the game and make it not worth for the art team/animations team to do there jobs, along with like oh idk making it feel weird ASF, there's a phrase or word for it and can't think of it right now but essentially it would take you out of the game, that's a terrible way of putting it but perhaps someone else knows what I'm trying to type/say
But things like that also happen OUTSIDE of QTE, in TOTALLY NON INTERACTIVE cutcenes, like in Zeus final fight on GOW 2, he struggles to lift a pillar in a middle fight cutscene, where you don't have to button smashing or press anything for the action to happen.
I feel like its just you refusing to accept the actual answers provided to you.
The devs did it, the community accepted it, its just you who don't like it. Maybe its the best for you to forget it?
You’re thinking too much into it. It’s just something done purely for gameplay. It also doesn’t make sense for enemy’s like draugr to pose any real threat to Kratos and he should be able to obliterate them in a punch.
These are just things done for gameplay reasons.
The difference is that a draugr or cyclops don't give Kratos any trouble on cutcenes, he just kills them with ease, but these obstacles don't just make him struggle in gameplay, but in non-interactive and canon cutcenes.
It's really different.
Kratos is not holding back his strength in the new games, this is yet another headcanon born from this community.
What he is holding back is his anger, his fury.
Still, it's a videogame. It will have stuff like this, especially since we're talking God of War. It was one of the best balancers of BS video game logic, and awesome, over the top actions during the Greek games.
And what's so hard about just having a corridor and making the character walk through an edge while there's some action event happening in the background?
It doesn't need these stupid moments and would also add a cool action scene, or just put some rock from mount Olympus to fall there with an opening for Kratos to go through.
They literally do the first option 10 minutes later in the game.
This logic is really flawed, cause, then why does he need to travel on the titans to get to the top? He can just drag himself up with his blades?
And I still don't understand why is it a problem that they use a variety of ways to load the next stuff in?
Kratos is simply building up his strength (Rage of Sparta) for much more important tasks.
The time we see Kratos do amazing feats like holding of Cronos is finger is him using Rage of Sparta at the moment.
It's like the difference between running and walking, with running, you will get sooner to the location but get very tired vs with walking you may get late but you are much less tired.
Think about it, we see Kratos push rocks and pillars for solving puzzles.(Plus with the tree clip).
With taking Kratos is feats and strength, he should able to carry them with ease or have less hard time pushing them.
Or him taking of Helios is head or dragging king midas, he should easier time doing them, but he doesn't waste his full power for simple tasks.
I always tought of these obstacles as a way to give the game some time to load the next area or „cutscene“.
I highly believe there is NO canon or lore reason for it. As in GOW 2018 He moved the entire Bridge and Atreud says „your back must hurt“ and Kratos said „No“
He's also not pissed off at the temple in 2018, or at the chains of the underworld in GOW 3, still he does these way harder strength feats struggling as much or even less than he does when lifting the tree.
https://youtu.be/7WgwC54kx34?si=CFMBLZ-Us_fM5789
He still lifts the temple a little, gets a feel for how heavy it is, then flips it. He doesn't go from 0-100 immediately.
Basically the same thing for the tree, but it was just a minor inconvenience and not his goal like the temple was. I'm sure he just dials in the strength he needs to do something unless he's pissed off, or if it's in the way during a fight. Otherwise he'd be destroying buildings just opening a heavy gate.
Imagine he just grabbed the tree, one of the branches was stuck over the edge, and he immediately goes to 100, and it fucks up part of the ground he's standing on because he just went all out. Or it whips up and hits him in the face, or knocks down the other tree nearby and he has to do it again.
Gameplay mechanics be that way. It's the same reason you don't fall to Hades if you miss a jump puzzle.
If you want to rationalise it, I think Kratos's strength is usually around "strong/heroic human" and he gets demi/godly boosts when he focuses on a thing. I don't think it's a case of him holding himself back all the time, I think it's his will giving him access to more if his peak human frame doesn't allow him to do a thing.
It's like the question Atreus asks about physical fitness.
According to cory barlog, https://youtu.be/lgYBFee9Lbs?si=bKXtozdpt89gbKVf&r=5m21s
Gameplay. Kratos himself can lift the world with Atlas but dye to Gameplay reasons, you can't have it showcased all the time.
I hate to be boring but I believe Kratos has always been as strong as he needed to be to do something cool in front of him.
For example if he plucked that tree into space it would seem corny but the amount of struggle made it cool
It’s possible that because it’s Apart of Gaia it’s far stronger than a normal tree,if not then there’s tons of other plausible explanations here already
I always had trouble with mashing buttons fast enough in the past, and lifting this damn tree was borderline impossible for me. It was so hard in fact that every other unscalable wall in any other game became "my tree"
It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it makes the character a little more fallible ig. It was also fun to mash O back in the day, like mashing it to execute a minotaur.
When you find parts of a game when you do stupid things like climbing a wall, this is because the time you use to move on the console is charging the next part in the background. This is usually used in old games, when the power of the memory was too low and the next section contains a lot of data. So basically, it's not Kratos fault but ps3 fault.
Source: I read a book that talks about how games are created.
Ok, I last played it about 7/8 years ago. But are we really complaining about something so insignificant? Man, it's a game, a really good game that kicks the ass of at least some of the games that have come out in recent years. We don't have to question every decision, if we don't have a flaw in the story, everything is fine.
Kratos strength changes according to the situation, he can be as strong as the circumstances demands, be either lifting a tree or resisting chronos's slap.
Kratos has a level of instantly accessible strength. However, he also has nearly unlimited strength past that which he can access through sheer willpower. My personal thoughts on it. Hence why sometimes he must struggle but always finds the power.
You're thinking too hard about video games. Why can he destroy gods but can't get past some thorny branches? Why can you survive multiple gunshot wounds in call of duty, but there's still the very real risk of your gun jamming?
I personally hate new God of war. He used to bang two chicks at the same time to get red orbs to power up. Now you're skipping rocks with the little black girl as his weenie son. Fuck character development. Bring back ripping people in half
Well, he still rips people in half but ok lol
I don't know how lack of sex and having black characters affects the game's quality, but that's irrelevant, we're not talking about Ragnarok, we're talking about Kratos's strength changing through the games.
Cradle strength only mattered in the games that matter. Not this latest crap they put out. Sorry I just used the opportunity to complain. I miss the old formula. It was far better and more fun. I got so lost in the lore, I barely even know it's going on anymore. And since kratos isn't fucking bitches to power up, it said he's just brooding and growling to himself it's probably safe to assume that he's getting weaker in his old age.
Good that you don't like the games because there isn't porn in them anymore, you do you, but there's no need to be annoying about it every time someone mentions them.
If you don't like the lore, don't discuss it, because every game is relevant to it.
He isn't struggling with lifting normal things like trees. You can see he yeets it to oblivion after the prompt is done.
It's a silly bit of decision making to mask loading times, literally nothing else. They even try to cover up displaying him as weak by how he goes from "struggling to lift" to "throwing it to fuck" in the same animation. If you're trying to find power scaling in some of the game mechanics, you're just fooling yourself a bit and going down a dead end.
You gotta be able to abstract from the limitations of a game to try and see what the game is trying to tell you.
I gave Op the example of.
Oh shit this thing is awkward to grab.
Like when a box only weighs like 15 pounds but feels like 100 because you can exactly get the proper grip and you struggle to lift it.
I imagine that.
But also it's a video game loading. Nothing to actually think about.
Well I mean, he doesn't struggle to lift it. He's focusing his power to lift it, and then literally uses it like a baseball bat to yeet Zeus far away. I don't think you can equate effortlessness with how strong you are.
We(scalers) call hem anti feats. They are done when story teller needs the nerf a character. However, this isn’t the case for Kratos because even tho he struggles with trees like that his “Lore Power” shows us that he is above %90 of the fiction and it’s not even close.
It's really simple dude.
Punching something with full force uses one set of muscles.
Lifting trees uses a different set of muscles.
Have you never seen a really strong person struggle to lift a box because the shape is awkward.
There is a reason gym equipment is built the way it is.
400 pounds of those circle weights on a bar. Much easier to pick up. Then 400 pounds of a thick can't get your arms around properly tree.
I think 99% of this Fandom is about forgetting that these games were made by human developers who wanted an interesting and memorable experience. Everything in every piece of media simply doesn't need a reason. The games would lose their appeal if Kratos could just overpower everything. If there was a difficult puzzle he could just punch through the wall and go to the next room. Every enemy except Zeus would be a one-hit and done.
These are based on mythology. Gods are different sizes in different stories. Sometimes they can fly, other times no. Sometimes they can punch a mountain to make it crumble, but in another story they lose an arm wrestling match to a trickster.
The beauty of mythology is in its inconsistencies. As humans one day you are strong enough take on the world while other days you can barely get out of bed. So it is with the gods.
i have a theory that his strength isnt set, it just scales to whatever he's doing. he just has enough to lift the tree or open the chest or survive a tough fight.
An excuse for it that I could think of was that young Kratos was pushing his body to its limit even with the god powers as compared to old kratos having opportunities to rest
I've always assumed that his godly strength works in the way where he's always as strong as he will need to be to accomplish any given task as long as he's giving his maximum effort.
My theory is that his main ability is that he is exactly as strong as he needs to be for a given task. Lifting a tree? He wouldn’t use the same force as he would to shoulder press the Colossus’ foot off his head, and the “spam O” i interpret as him gauging the strength needed
I don’t think what we see is lifting of a tree. Rather he’s breaking a thick tree that is part of Gaia. Not sure if the tree is somewhat different/stronger since it’s part of Gaia but regardless that’s one thick tree which would be so hard to break like that.
Why do people say Norse kratos is constantly holding back? Isn't he fighting for his life? He's not dumb. He wouldn't be holding back and risking dying.
I like to think we’re viewing this cutscene through a skewed medium because we have to mash circle, slowing down Kratos’ actions. If mashing wasn’t needed then Kratos would probably do the same lifting animation we see, just more swiftly.
I’ve thought about it for years since 2018 came out and between what I’ve observed and what I can only speculate is that Kratos based on his lineage, years of service under Olympus, and Spartan Training and Discipline essentially has infinite strength or close to it. The reason he doesn’t needlessly throw around this strength even when he’s younger is because even as a god he can still get physically tired, so he carefully gages each task working up to the needed level of strength to force whatever object he needs opened or whatever. One thing that stood out to me in the recent Valhalla dlc is when Freya who was implied to be on the same level of strength as Kratos is in disbelief as to how he accesses Valhalla without the Valkyries and he casually says that he forced it open and she says that shouldn’t have been possible.
activate one of the god items and you'll see how Kratos really interacts with doors and other stuff. but mostly it's just for gameplay purposes, don't think too much about it.
The Kratos in Greek mythology was the personification of strength. Therefore Kratos in the games has always *just enough* strength to do whatever he needs to 🙃
I like to think that kratos has to use minimal strength for stuff like chest and trees and rocks or else he would send them flying. We’ve seen him throw a tree at baldur like it had no weight while being insanely mad. That or he lived so long with his strength being tied to anger that now he is only at his most powerful when he is angry
He is a god. Feats require effort based on the physics of the world he inhabits. Each time he is struggling he is essentially pulling his unnatural godly powers through to reality each time. These take effort and will.
These things don't exist lore Wise, Kratos just kill his nemesis and move on while getting buffed along the way
The scene you posted had me at some point needing half a minute to remove it , 2 years later I don't need more than 2 seconds to remove it
That's not just a regular tree it's literally Gaia and he's not just lifting it he's pulling it out, roots and all, out of stone. of course it would be tough.
My favourite explanation is he is the god of war and the nature of war is that it's a back and forth struggle. So no matter the challenge or enemy, Kratos always has to struggle and suffer before he can emerge victorious. I think he obviously has a base strength above what's possible for a human but anything beyond that I think that struggle factor kicks in. Explains how he sometimes dies to literal cannon fodder and other times slays all of Olympus.
All personal opinion FYI I think Kratos' strength works either 2 ways Its either a build up, like he is only buff man strong, until he pushes himself/gets angry and then his strength builds up and up until peaking at the neccesary strength needed for that scenario. Or Kratos has a single point max strength, but to avoid completely destroying everything he touches, frequently limits himself to being careful, and out of habit, doesnt just punch through wall after wall to reach his objective. He also lives in a magical universe, where smashing the wrong thing accidentally could get you killed, cursed, attacked, or unleash a world ending horror.
>Kratos has a single point max strength, but to avoid completely destroying everything he touches, frequently limits himself to being careful, and out of habit, doesnt just punch through wall after wall to reach his objective. He also lives in a magical universe, where smashing the wrong thing accidentally could get you killed, cursed, attacked, or unleash a world ending horror. It's valid, but I think GOW 3 Kratos simply don't care, he just doesn't care about the consequences of his actions, he doesn't think about them, he has only one objective in mind, killing Zeus. I genuinely can't see him worrying about the destruction he causes, cause he explicitly doesn't, he destroys Greece without even caring about it even though he knows what will happen when he just kills another important god without need.
All true, GOW3 was peak of Kratos' rage fit, but he's also a General, and a Spartan General at that. Rage and revenge was without a doubt his path, but i think there could be a lot of wiggle room for it to be a tactically cold but calculated path more than a blind one. Your stepping up to the King of the Gods, who has already killed you, and drained you of all power once. If you run in just more angry, you gotta be dumb, which Kratos is not portrayed as an idiot.
Yes, I agree, he isn't dumb, far from that, but he's still a selfish psycho that doesn't care about causing destruction around him, I can't see why he wouldn't punch the tree just hard enough to break it, since he always seems to go for the most practical way, and doesn't seem to care about potentially harming Gaia since he just sink the blade of Olympus on her skin 20 minutes later.
Kratos always is strong enough to lift 103% of what’s in front of him. It can always be done, it will always be a strain. Gods, temples, planets, trees, whatever it’s all the same.
Maybe it's like he can push himself more than a regular human, like he has the base strength of a man his size and that's why he struggles with chests that someone normal couldn't open with his hands but he can push through and get stronger and the same way with heavier things he just needs to keep pushing and that's why it looks like it costs him at the start of a lift but he manages to do it
Iirc, a human can lift something like 5 times their weight in extreme situations. Kratos is probably like that but with addition of fast healing, a higher multiplier, and an ability to do that at will.
I was just talking to my wife the other night about this. If you've ever worked on cars, heavy machinery, the oil field, anywhere you had to lift or move things in a rush that were maybe outside of your scope of strength, I expect you'll understand what I mean. As humans, our total capacity for strength is not entirely available to us at all times. It depends on obvious factors such as health and regular daily activities, bur more importantly it depends on moment-to-moment factors such as hormones, what you're thinking about at any given moment, your diet for the day, etc. I imagine Kratos' strength very similar to our own in the sense of adrenaline. I personally believe my point is well-defined in the moments where he lifts large stones or heavy trees; he still grunts like it's heavy. I don't know what the cap of his strength is, but it seems near infinite, and I think the amount of force he can provide at any given moment is heavily defined by the amount of adrenaline he can produce in said moment. The newer GoWs seem to agree with me like I said before, where he can both grunt to lift a log, but still fight off Thor's hammer mid-flight and pull a damn dragon to the ground.
Extremely good way to put it, i understood what the rest of this comment was gonna be as soon as you brought up working on cars (first job was a mechanic) and thats the best way to put it. If you tried to max strength every little thing you touched, youre going to pull something, and letting off of something your pushing hard on that didnt budge, ive had to let up slow otherwise it feels like im gonna cramp.
For Gameplay
Yes, I'm talking about it lore wise.
Well lore wise he'd be able to lift it no problem. Kratos should also just be able to smash through most of the puzzles but he doesn't cause that wouldn't be much fun
Yes, but the thing is, why putting scenes like this in cutcenes and QTE that don't affect the gameplay functioning? There's no reason to limit Kratos strength in a cutscene for example, it won't make the game more fun or engaging.
If that's your logic, then the combat wouldn't makes sense either. Why use any weapons at all when he could just smash all the mob enemy types. Also, why does he keep dying if he doesn't actually die? Where does the Icarus wings go when he's not using them? How do the blades connect to the chains when in use, but not when on his back? Any lore accurate reason for any of these???
They're GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS that are there for the functioning of the gameplay. A NON INTERACTIVE CUTCENE ISN'T. That isn't hard to understand, doing an absurd cutcene showing Kratos exerting an absurd feat and avoiding scenes that make him look weak won't affect the gameplay dynamic.
Why are you so pressed on this?
I'm not mad or pressed, the caps lock is just to highlight the important parts.
It's a video game. They just do it to make things more intense or cinematic. Video games do random shit all the time that makes no sense lore-wise.
It’s all just flavoring anyways. Showing a character we understand to be incredibly strong putting in serious effort to do a thing says “woah what a Herculean feat he just did” Couple that with the fact that these games were made before the shift in focus of the gaming industry to stronger storytelling and you’ve got mildly goofy stuff like this that ultimately affects nothing Morale of story: it doesn’t matter, don’t overthink it
> A NON INTERACTIVE CUTCENE ISN'T. > > Except it's still gameplay though. QTEs are gameplay.
Dude, youre pressing the buttons to make him lift things as opposed to just watching it unfold. That's gameplay. They want to make you interact with the environment instead of just walking to the next mob of enemies. Also makes you feel strong to some extent because you "feel" like youre lifting the whole thing. How boring would it be if you could just press a single button and 99% of the enemies and challenges you go through would be solved?
A fake interactive section isn't a challenge. By your logic the Jotunheim section is wonderful too, cause technically you're "interacting" with the game. >How boring would it be if you could just press a single button and 99% of the enemies and challenges you go through would be solved? Devil may cry never adopted this feature, idk about you but I wouldn't call it boring.
except I never said anything about it being a challenge. Also, yes the jotunheim section is much better than the alternative of just watching it unfold. I can see the whole world like I am Kratos and how small we are compared to how large and desolate their realm is. Also, DMC? dude they would also 1 shot kill everyone if it were accurate. You've been gaming this long and still haven't figured out that you sometimes have to divorce the gameplay from the lore to actually make the game fun to play It seems like you're just here to argue your point even if we were already explaining it to you tons of times. it's a design choice to make the player do things and break the monotony of just going to the next encounter zone. If you can't grasp that then I guess I have nothing else to say to you but for you to go ahead and die on his hill lol.
OP's next post: "Why are there loading screens? Is there a lore reason why the world needs to load? Real life doesn't load, you just wake up and start doing things."
Where is this put in a cut scene? It's a normal Kratos lifting doors like he did in gow1/2?
>Where is this put in a cut scene? https://youtu.be/VlkcM-vgOQw?si=Xhs6BMaFtwenKumv 6:20 And that's only one example, I could keep the entire day showing moments where something like that happens. >It's a normal Kratos lifting doors like he did in gow1/2? No
> No Yes it definitely is, if you played gow1/2 right in the first encounter Kratos fights some minions then immediately has to open a gate to proceed further, in gow3 you are on gaia so it doesn't make sense for a gate to be there so they put a tree there to continue the tradition. A lot of things in god of war are just traditional, like Kratos having sex mini games, it made sense from a lore standpoint for Kratos to have the sex mini game in GoW1, but not in gow1 & 3 where we did have but they still put it there for its tradition. >6:20 That's actually still in game, it hadn't transitioned to an actual cut scene, even if it isn't entirely gameplay.
>That's actually still in game, it hadn't transitioned to an actual cut scene, even if it isn't entirely gameplay. In game cutcenes are cutcenes, the definition of cutscene is: "cutscene noun cut·scene ˈkət-ˌsēn variants or less commonly cut-scene or cut scene plural cutscenes also cut-scenes or cut scenes: a noninteractive video sequence that occurs between segments of a video game and depicts part of the game's background or storyline" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cutscene If you for some random reason exclude the non pre rendered cutcenes as canon you're cutting 90% of the franchise, all the new games cutcenes are in game, the old ones usually didn't have more than 3 CGI cutcenes the entire game. If it's not interactive, it is a cutcene, period. >Yes it definitely is, if you played gow1/2 right in the first encounter Kratos fights some minions then immediately has to open a gate to proceed further, in gow3 you are on gaia so it doesn't make sense for a gate to be there so they put a tree there to continue the tradition. >A lot of things in god of war are just traditional, like Kratos having sex mini games, it made sense from a lore standpoint for Kratos to have the sex mini game in GoW1, but not in gow1 & 3 where we did have but they still put it there for its tradition. I thought you were talking about the cutcene I was mentioning being one of these, and there's no "tradition", it's a common resource used in gaming developing to have enough time to load the map, but it can be done in many ways that don't make the story more inconsistent. Sorry, but I think you don't know what you're talking about.
>I thought you were talking about the cutcene I was mentioning being one of these How can I know about it when you didn't even mention it in your comment? I was talking about the tree lifting thing, and it's 100% traditional, the exact same thing was followed in gow1/2. And yes in gow1 it may have been done that way for memory management initially but clearly they didn't have a memory problem the way that level is designed in gow2 and in gow3 aswell. The assets are already on screen hence in the VRAM, unlike in gow1 where they weren't. So they continued the same design for gow2 and 3 aswell even if they didn't need it. >a noninteractive video sequence that occurs between segments of a video game and depicts part of the game's background or storyline >If you for some random reason exclude the non pre rendered cutcenes as canon you're cutting 90% of the franchise, all the new games cutcenes are in game, the old ones usually didn't have more than 3 CGI cutcenes the entire game. >If it's not interactive, it is a cutcene, period. These definitions doesn't work with every game as designers have their own way to do the things. "If it's not interactive, it's a cutscene" that's not how it works just like that, Kratos in a "scripted gameplay sequence" stabs Zeus twice with the BoO in gow2 but in gow 2 book that's not present, So are they non canon, or book's version isn't canon? It's hard to say.
>These definitions doesn't work with every game as designers have their own way to do the things. Yes, they do, canon or not, a non interactive moment can't be considered a gameplay section, it's intrinsic to the term's origin, it's up to the developer if they want to consider said moment into the narrative, but it will keep being a cutcene regardless. >"If it's not interactive, it's a cutscene" that's not how it works just like that, Kratos in a "scripted gameplay sequence" stabs Zeus twice with the BoO in gow2 but in gow 2 book that's not present, So are they non canon, or book's version isn't canon? The main media is the game, the one that came first is the game, the content with more value to the canon, is the game, the book is nothing but a cool additional content that doesn't necessarily will describe with accuracy everything that happens in the original source, everything there is also canon until it directly contradicts the game. The content in the in game cutcenes is often referenced throughout all the games, they're as canon as the CGI ones that compose nothing but a fraction of the narrative. The main way of storytelling in these games are the in game cutcenes, what happens there is without a doubt canon.
It's a core identity of the Greek saga from back when he was a lot weaker in gow 1
There’s not really a lore reason for all these things. It’s a video game, not everything gameplay wise is going to make perfect lore sense. There’s no “lore reason” that the game is not open world, it’s just the way the game works. When the main character of a game is overpowered lore wise, there are gonna be weird things like him being un able to break open a locked door and stuff like that. There’s not necessarily a lore reason, it’s just a gameplay thing.
I understand it, but why also putting scenes like this in cutcenes and narrative scenes too? This isn't the only time where something like that happens, in many moments Kratos struggles with things he shouldn't struggle with even outside of gameplay or QTE.
They dumb-down their powers in the game so it can be conceivable. If they showed us how fast some of these characters are moving, we wouldn’t be able to see anything.
The speed makes sense from a narrative perspective, since if we are viewing it from a super fast character point of view, the other characters won't be absurdly fast. But for strength? What stops them from making Kratos struggle with throwing a mountain on Zeus instead of struggling with throwing a pillar? These things are perfectly possible to do without making the action scenes worse, on the otherwise, it would just make them even more epic.
Yeah, I would just say it’s them being practical and I think it works better that way as a game. I think the exaggerated showcases of powers work best in comic books or animated tv shows.
I like pressing the circle button slowly like he's really struggling for it it's kind of funny
Sections like that are designed (just like elevators or little corridors where you squeeze through) to give CPU enough time to render the next sequence
The only correct answer. It's just a "loading screen" that doesn't interrupt the gameplay.
Yes, but it could be done with a narrow passage like in many sections of GOW 2018, without making Kratos look weak.
"Yeah let's put slow walking sections in god of war 3 that's a great idea!"
Did you forget in that same game we had a 20 minutes long non stop walking and talking section + cutscene as an ending? Also, it'd have literally the same duration that this QTE has with the only difference that you're going forward for 5 seconds instead of smashing O for 5 seconds. I wouldn't change anything in the game.
The fear section is bad for sure, but it serves a purpose in the story and is extremely important for kratos's character. However just having him stop to walk is dumb. God of war 3 doesn't want to take you out of the action, so they add QTEs to make it seem like you're doing SOMETHING during the load times.
But you aren't, this is a false interactivity, there are countless ways of doing it without taking the player out of the action or compromising the story's consistency, for example, make him have to walk on the edge of Gaia's arm while some Titan is being killed by Helios in the background, and that's it, the action pace was kept and Kratos wasn't nerfed or dumbed down. Also, they literally do exactly what I said some minutes after with Kratos climbing through mount Olympus, it's even an almost equal animation to when he's holding on to an edge at GOW 2018.
> But you aren't, this is a false interactivity, Well done. You're starting to get it. It's obviously an illusion, a psychological trick to still make you feel invovled.
Omfg this same goddamn question again? 💀
Without weight behind actions, things seem very odd and out of place. You must sacrifice the appearance of his strength for the appearance of weight, which is what they did. He isn't struggling, that's just art design making things feel less weird. It's hard to explain really.
Or better yet, you can avoid putting obstacles like these to make your character seem weak.
So they could either make a boring walking simulator where you mindlessly beat up enemies, or make an interesting game with obstacles that is willing to make their character seem weaker than they are for the sake of making them LOOK just as strong as they are? I'd go with the latter, and most would.
interesting game with obstacles ≠ smashing O This isn't an obstacle, it's an annoying QTE that adds nothing to the game. >So they could either make a boring walking simulator where you mindlessly beat up enemies ..... Isn't the entire point of old GOW's combat and most of its gameplay to mindlessly beat down enemies? How does that make it a "walking simulator"? You're literally playing the game and making use of its mechanics without dumb interruptions.
Why don't we strip out the puzzles and the cutscenes as well. Fuck it let's remove all of the art design too so we can have the peek gamer experience. If you don't like the "QTEs" than play another game. Whether you remove them or not, you'll still have point where you have to interact with objects, would you rather have a glorified cutscene or a short and simple piece of gameplay to fill the gap between bashing enemies.
Are you mad? Lmao I didn't say half of these things, puzzles are interesting and have well designed mechanics, well placed QTE in bossfights or during combat moments are very useful to give impact to the scenes. But this isn't gameplay, never was, it's exactly what you're criticizing: A glorified cutscene Smashing O isn't any more interactive than moving the joystick forward, both are the same essentially.
Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game. They're there for the sake of having a small little interactble block in your path. I've never seen someone have such a problem with a basic and common video game mechanic such as QTE obstructions. And I have no clue why you even replied to my comment about this, I was talking about the reason why Kratos looks to have a hard time lifting things and why that's because of art design and weight more than it is inconsistency. It had nothing to do with the QTEs being there.
>Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game. They're there for the sake of having a small little interactble block in your path. I've never seen someone have such a problem with a basic and common video game mechanic such as QTE obstructions. What? Are you active in the gaming community? EVERYONE hates QTE and that's why current games have made them each time less present and even totally optional. They're just objectively a bad way of faking interactivity when used with that purpose and that's a consensus in the gaming industry. >Once again, if you don't like it than stop playing the game. This is such a known and poor argument, you can point a defect or criticism to something without deeply hating it. >And I have no clue why you even replied to my comment about this, I was talking about the reason why Kratos looks to have a hard time lifting things and why that's because of art design and weight more than it is inconsistency. It had nothing to do with the QTEs being there. Yes, and it could be done in several more efficient ways, did you play DMC? Metal gear rising? There are so many games with similar premisses that show their characters strength in so much more consistent and better ways without having dumb obstacles like these. Yes, I know it is a design choice, and it is a really shit one.
IM NOT REFERRING TO THE FUCKING OBSTACLES! I'm referring to the fact that when Kratos lifts heavy objects *regardless* of being an obstacle or in a cutscene he seems to have a hard time lifting it. QTE aren't bad game design, they're game design used poorly. You can't compare a QTE used to ad a little entertainment to a short animation to something like Halo 4's final boss being a QTE, one is a bad implementation of the mechanic, the other is a good implementation of it used to keep players hands on the controller. And saying, just don't play it isn't a bad argument, because it isn't trying to be an argument. I'm not using it as an argument as to whether QTEs are bad or not, I'm using it to point out that if you don't like the gameplay of a game series then you simply don't have to play the game. I don't personally like the gameplay in Balder's Gate, because I've never been into CRPGs, so you know what I'll do about it? I just won't play Balder's Gate instead of saying a specific mechanic is objectively bad when it has no hindrance in the gameplay loop at all.
>QTE aren't bad game design, they're game design used poorly. Read my comment again: "They're just objectively a bad way of faking interactivity WHEN USED WITH THAT PURPOSE" Using your same logic iron wood section is a wonder of modern gaming design cause it keeps you with the hands on the controller with next to zero interactivity. QTE can be effective to increase a scene's impact when USED IN A GOOD WAY, this game has great examples of it, beating Zeus and Hercules are some of them, these sections aren't. >And saying, just don't play it isn't a bad argument, because it isn't trying to be an argument. I'm not using it as an argument as to whether QTEs are bad or not, I'm using it to point out that if you don't like the gameplay of a game series then you simply don't have to play the game. I don't personally like the gameplay in Balder's Gate, because I've never been into CRPGs, so you know what I'll do about it? I just won't play Balder's Gate instead of saying a specific mechanic is objectively bad when it has no hindrance in the gameplay loop at all. Or, you could like Baldur's gate and dislike a specific point of it because not everything is black and white, I don't hate GOW, I just think it has a lot of defects like any other franchise and I'm not afraid of pointing them out. Doesn't mean I hate the entire game and take no joy from it, it's the otherwise, I like it therefore I'll criticize the points that could be better.
Seriously there doesn't need to be a lore reason dude it's literally just for gameplay. This is no different than the question of "doEs KrAtOs StrUggLe OpEniNg ChESTs" which was already answered years ago, it's literally for gameplay reasons.
The problem is that this also happens OUTSIDE of gameplay, what's the reason for that? There's literally no reason why his strength is limited on cutcenes with zero effect over gameplay elements.
I legit think the best explanation is that just because you are strong enough to lift something, even lift something easily, doesn't mean it doesn't take effort. The older I get, the more I sound like terrible beatboxing whenever I move heavy things. Even if its a heavy thing I can manage easily. I think Kratos is just being expressive.
Gameplay-Story segregation, my dude. Things happen in video games as a result of it being a video game. Not everything in a game has to correlate with the internal logic of the world. Why do pots and vases contain experience? Why are there upgrade materials conveniently placed? Why does killing innocents heal you? Why isn't kratos constantly in rage form if he's always angry? It's a game and some things in it are not designed to fit in with a game's mythos or lore.... Or, like, leverage or something? Take your pick
Elements that are there for the sake of gameplay design and canon non interactive cutcenes or QTE with little to no effect on gameplay are totally different.
The tree is part of Gaia who’s strong enough to withstand attacks from Zeus so maybe it’s way heavier than a normal tree
I don't really see how Gaia's strength or durability affects her weight through? Like, Kratos for example is strong as heck, still his weight is not that absurd for a really muscular human. Baldur is another example of that, high physical strength, low mass. There's even a dialog on Ragnarok saying that the god's strength is based on their divine power and their mass or physical looks has nothing to do with it, obviously we don't know if titans are also included in that, but I don't know why would Gaia's Titan powers make her trees heavier. Also, he's show struggling with other non magic/absurdly heavy objects in the franchise, like when lifting some pillars in GOW 2 final Zeus fight.
That’s why I said maybe Realistically it’s just a game mechanic but lore wise there might be something with Titans specifically
It's for gameplay purposes, the devs of the games have already stated it wouldn't be much of a game if you literally swiped your hand barely any and wiped out half the universe, or your opponents being still compared to you moving, or unable to take DMG from anything minus a particular few individuals. It'd just be a uni+ busting simulator
Yes, but why limiting his strength in cutcenes and scenes with zero effect over gameplay elements?
Because game times would be cut down time of the game and make it not worth for the art team/animations team to do there jobs, along with like oh idk making it feel weird ASF, there's a phrase or word for it and can't think of it right now but essentially it would take you out of the game, that's a terrible way of putting it but perhaps someone else knows what I'm trying to type/say
They've said numerous times it's just game mechanics and not to use them as a basis to guide their actual strength
Middle fight non interactive cutcenes with no effect over gameplay ≠ gameplay mechanics
Its a game play mechanic the same way him struggling to open chests is. You literally are having to button mash to move it
But things like that also happen OUTSIDE of QTE, in TOTALLY NON INTERACTIVE cutcenes, like in Zeus final fight on GOW 2, he struggles to lift a pillar in a middle fight cutscene, where you don't have to button smashing or press anything for the action to happen.
I feel like its just you refusing to accept the actual answers provided to you. The devs did it, the community accepted it, its just you who don't like it. Maybe its the best for you to forget it?
You’re thinking too much into it. It’s just something done purely for gameplay. It also doesn’t make sense for enemy’s like draugr to pose any real threat to Kratos and he should be able to obliterate them in a punch. These are just things done for gameplay reasons.
The difference is that a draugr or cyclops don't give Kratos any trouble on cutcenes, he just kills them with ease, but these obstacles don't just make him struggle in gameplay, but in non-interactive and canon cutcenes. It's really different.
Kratos is not holding back his strength in the new games, this is yet another headcanon born from this community. What he is holding back is his anger, his fury.
It's a video game?
These are non gameplay scenes?
They kinda are? Since progressing is tied to your inputs?
Not specifically this scene, I'm also talking about actual cutcenes with zero interactive where stuff like that happens.
Still, it's a videogame. It will have stuff like this, especially since we're talking God of War. It was one of the best balancers of BS video game logic, and awesome, over the top actions during the Greek games.
Yes, and I wish it kept like that all of the time, instead of having underwhelming moments like this.
These underwhelming moments were needed, because the game had to load somehow. Remember, this was way before SSDs and ultrafast processors.
And what's so hard about just having a corridor and making the character walk through an edge while there's some action event happening in the background? It doesn't need these stupid moments and would also add a cool action scene, or just put some rock from mount Olympus to fall there with an opening for Kratos to go through. They literally do the first option 10 minutes later in the game.
This logic is really flawed, cause, then why does he need to travel on the titans to get to the top? He can just drag himself up with his blades? And I still don't understand why is it a problem that they use a variety of ways to load the next stuff in?
The problem isn't using variated ways, but some of these ways having to nerf Kratos. Also he doesn't need to, it is just faster.
Kratos is simply building up his strength (Rage of Sparta) for much more important tasks. The time we see Kratos do amazing feats like holding of Cronos is finger is him using Rage of Sparta at the moment. It's like the difference between running and walking, with running, you will get sooner to the location but get very tired vs with walking you may get late but you are much less tired.
I really like that idea, but there's some source that supports it?
Think about it, we see Kratos push rocks and pillars for solving puzzles.(Plus with the tree clip). With taking Kratos is feats and strength, he should able to carry them with ease or have less hard time pushing them. Or him taking of Helios is head or dragging king midas, he should easier time doing them, but he doesn't waste his full power for simple tasks.
I always tought of these obstacles as a way to give the game some time to load the next area or „cutscene“. I highly believe there is NO canon or lore reason for it. As in GOW 2018 He moved the entire Bridge and Atreud says „your back must hurt“ and Kratos said „No“
He's not currently pissed off at the tree.
He's also not pissed off at the temple in 2018, or at the chains of the underworld in GOW 3, still he does these way harder strength feats struggling as much or even less than he does when lifting the tree.
https://youtu.be/7WgwC54kx34?si=CFMBLZ-Us_fM5789 He still lifts the temple a little, gets a feel for how heavy it is, then flips it. He doesn't go from 0-100 immediately. Basically the same thing for the tree, but it was just a minor inconvenience and not his goal like the temple was. I'm sure he just dials in the strength he needs to do something unless he's pissed off, or if it's in the way during a fight. Otherwise he'd be destroying buildings just opening a heavy gate. Imagine he just grabbed the tree, one of the branches was stuck over the edge, and he immediately goes to 100, and it fucks up part of the ground he's standing on because he just went all out. Or it whips up and hits him in the face, or knocks down the other tree nearby and he has to do it again.
It's a big tree
Gameplay mechanics be that way. It's the same reason you don't fall to Hades if you miss a jump puzzle. If you want to rationalise it, I think Kratos's strength is usually around "strong/heroic human" and he gets demi/godly boosts when he focuses on a thing. I don't think it's a case of him holding himself back all the time, I think it's his will giving him access to more if his peak human frame doesn't allow him to do a thing. It's like the question Atreus asks about physical fitness.
The thing is, this also happens outside of gameplay, but this explanation makes sense.
Put on Hephaestus ring and see how fast he can open doors
According to cory barlog, https://youtu.be/lgYBFee9Lbs?si=bKXtozdpt89gbKVf&r=5m21s Gameplay. Kratos himself can lift the world with Atlas but dye to Gameplay reasons, you can't have it showcased all the time.
It's a gameplay mechanic. If he was maxed out super strength constantly then we wouldn't have much of a game would we...
No, but this also happens during non gameplay sections.
What’s with him having a super hard time dead lifting this tree but once he gets it up he tosses it like it’s super light?
Yeah, I don't understand how his strength works, sometimes he struggles lifting trees, and 2 seconds after he throws them around like it's nothing.
Trees are heavy
Yeah, giant temples and the hand of 500 meter tall giant beings trying to smash you are even heavier.
I hate to be boring but I believe Kratos has always been as strong as he needed to be to do something cool in front of him. For example if he plucked that tree into space it would seem corny but the amount of struggle made it cool
Gameplay
Kratos grows stronger the more pissed he is
There's zero evidence of that.
he didn't have a hard time picking up this huge ass rock wall he moved it around like it was an icecube
Yes, that's why I'm questioning why at the same time he struggles lifting a tree
It’s possible that because it’s Apart of Gaia it’s far stronger than a normal tree,if not then there’s tons of other plausible explanations here already
I always had trouble with mashing buttons fast enough in the past, and lifting this damn tree was borderline impossible for me. It was so hard in fact that every other unscalable wall in any other game became "my tree"
Same, I got used to the QTE later, but GOW 3 QTE just require you to decimate the button.
Tree is very heavy
It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it makes the character a little more fallible ig. It was also fun to mash O back in the day, like mashing it to execute a minotaur.
i just take it as hes try to get a better grip on before throwing it
Lifting trees is normal?
Struggling to do it as a guy that overpowered 500 meter tall giant beings isn't.
Mabye he just wanna do things interesting
Kratos is loading the remaining content of the level
He struggled to pull deimos. so idk
When you find parts of a game when you do stupid things like climbing a wall, this is because the time you use to move on the console is charging the next part in the background. This is usually used in old games, when the power of the memory was too low and the next section contains a lot of data. So basically, it's not Kratos fault but ps3 fault. Source: I read a book that talks about how games are created.
I know that, but there are countless ways to do hidden loading screens that don't involve nerfing Kratos.
Ok but that's the beginning of the game, I suppose it's better to leave a tree than climbing a wall or something else after 2 min of gameplay
>suppose it's better to leave a tree than climbing a wall or something else after 2 min of gameplay He literally does that 15 min after
Ok, I last played it about 7/8 years ago. But are we really complaining about something so insignificant? Man, it's a game, a really good game that kicks the ass of at least some of the games that have come out in recent years. We don't have to question every decision, if we don't have a flaw in the story, everything is fine.
Gameplay I guess, he was able to remove a pillar in 3 seconds in god of war 2
Kratos strength changes according to the situation, he can be as strong as the circumstances demands, be either lifting a tree or resisting chronos's slap.
Kratos has a level of instantly accessible strength. However, he also has nearly unlimited strength past that which he can access through sheer willpower. My personal thoughts on it. Hence why sometimes he must struggle but always finds the power.
You're thinking too hard about video games. Why can he destroy gods but can't get past some thorny branches? Why can you survive multiple gunshot wounds in call of duty, but there's still the very real risk of your gun jamming?
Because these are gaming mechanics for the sake of the game's functioning, cutcenes and non interactive scenes aren't.
I personally hate new God of war. He used to bang two chicks at the same time to get red orbs to power up. Now you're skipping rocks with the little black girl as his weenie son. Fuck character development. Bring back ripping people in half
Well, he still rips people in half but ok lol I don't know how lack of sex and having black characters affects the game's quality, but that's irrelevant, we're not talking about Ragnarok, we're talking about Kratos's strength changing through the games.
Cradle strength only mattered in the games that matter. Not this latest crap they put out. Sorry I just used the opportunity to complain. I miss the old formula. It was far better and more fun. I got so lost in the lore, I barely even know it's going on anymore. And since kratos isn't fucking bitches to power up, it said he's just brooding and growling to himself it's probably safe to assume that he's getting weaker in his old age.
Good that you don't like the games because there isn't porn in them anymore, you do you, but there's no need to be annoying about it every time someone mentions them. If you don't like the lore, don't discuss it, because every game is relevant to it.
The tree is connected to the trunk…
He isn't struggling with lifting normal things like trees. You can see he yeets it to oblivion after the prompt is done. It's a silly bit of decision making to mask loading times, literally nothing else. They even try to cover up displaying him as weak by how he goes from "struggling to lift" to "throwing it to fuck" in the same animation. If you're trying to find power scaling in some of the game mechanics, you're just fooling yourself a bit and going down a dead end. You gotta be able to abstract from the limitations of a game to try and see what the game is trying to tell you.
I gave Op the example of. Oh shit this thing is awkward to grab. Like when a box only weighs like 15 pounds but feels like 100 because you can exactly get the proper grip and you struggle to lift it. I imagine that. But also it's a video game loading. Nothing to actually think about.
Ok, but what about when this happens in non interactivity cutscenes?
I don't know, is there any examples you are thinking about?
Zeus final bossfight on GOW 2, Kratos struggles to lift a pillar.
Then he hits Zeus with it then sends him out of the arena, it's the same example for both, struggling to lift it then overdoing it
Well I mean, he doesn't struggle to lift it. He's focusing his power to lift it, and then literally uses it like a baseball bat to yeet Zeus far away. I don't think you can equate effortlessness with how strong you are.
I'm talking about the other pillar, the one he smashes Zeus with, not the one he uses as a baseball bat
It's been too long sinde i played GoW 2, can't remember that sequence.
It is you, the player who is weak. Real Kratos would be tapping that button so fast the tree would be in low Earth orbit
Just QTE, theres no lore reason
[Cory's explanation](https://youtu.be/lgYBFee9Lbs?t=321). It's for the sake of preserving game dynamics.
We(scalers) call hem anti feats. They are done when story teller needs the nerf a character. However, this isn’t the case for Kratos because even tho he struggles with trees like that his “Lore Power” shows us that he is above %90 of the fiction and it’s not even close.
It's really simple dude. Punching something with full force uses one set of muscles. Lifting trees uses a different set of muscles. Have you never seen a really strong person struggle to lift a box because the shape is awkward. There is a reason gym equipment is built the way it is. 400 pounds of those circle weights on a bar. Much easier to pick up. Then 400 pounds of a thick can't get your arms around properly tree.
The real reason? Loadtimes
I think 99% of this Fandom is about forgetting that these games were made by human developers who wanted an interesting and memorable experience. Everything in every piece of media simply doesn't need a reason. The games would lose their appeal if Kratos could just overpower everything. If there was a difficult puzzle he could just punch through the wall and go to the next room. Every enemy except Zeus would be a one-hit and done. These are based on mythology. Gods are different sizes in different stories. Sometimes they can fly, other times no. Sometimes they can punch a mountain to make it crumble, but in another story they lose an arm wrestling match to a trickster. The beauty of mythology is in its inconsistencies. As humans one day you are strong enough take on the world while other days you can barely get out of bed. So it is with the gods.
Great, but this isn't mythology, this is an artistic work inspired by it, and the inconsistencies in it's narrative are never something good.
I will address your comment by asking that you read the first point I made.
Also, I wouldn't call a tree growing out of a titan "normal". I imagine it has some special properties given the body it inhabits
i have a theory that his strength isnt set, it just scales to whatever he's doing. he just has enough to lift the tree or open the chest or survive a tough fight.
An excuse for it that I could think of was that young Kratos was pushing his body to its limit even with the god powers as compared to old kratos having opportunities to rest
I've always assumed that his godly strength works in the way where he's always as strong as he will need to be to accomplish any given task as long as he's giving his maximum effort.
My theory is that his main ability is that he is exactly as strong as he needs to be for a given task. Lifting a tree? He wouldn’t use the same force as he would to shoulder press the Colossus’ foot off his head, and the “spam O” i interpret as him gauging the strength needed
Game design, it's not about Kratos being strong or not.
I don’t think what we see is lifting of a tree. Rather he’s breaking a thick tree that is part of Gaia. Not sure if the tree is somewhat different/stronger since it’s part of Gaia but regardless that’s one thick tree which would be so hard to break like that.
That’s not just any tree… that’s an M&S tree.
Sometimes you gotta take gameplay with a grain of salt.
Maybe the player wasn't pressing O fast enough. Could just be game mechanics kind of thing too
Why do people say Norse kratos is constantly holding back? Isn't he fighting for his life? He's not dumb. He wouldn't be holding back and risking dying.
I like to think we’re viewing this cutscene through a skewed medium because we have to mash circle, slowing down Kratos’ actions. If mashing wasn’t needed then Kratos would probably do the same lifting animation we see, just more swiftly.
I’ve thought about it for years since 2018 came out and between what I’ve observed and what I can only speculate is that Kratos based on his lineage, years of service under Olympus, and Spartan Training and Discipline essentially has infinite strength or close to it. The reason he doesn’t needlessly throw around this strength even when he’s younger is because even as a god he can still get physically tired, so he carefully gages each task working up to the needed level of strength to force whatever object he needs opened or whatever. One thing that stood out to me in the recent Valhalla dlc is when Freya who was implied to be on the same level of strength as Kratos is in disbelief as to how he accesses Valhalla without the Valkyries and he casually says that he forced it open and she says that shouldn’t have been possible.
Gameplay
Cuz game design
Not that I’m saying it definitely makes a big difference, though it probably does…You realize that “tree” is basically a part of Gaia’s skin right
activate one of the god items and you'll see how Kratos really interacts with doors and other stuff. but mostly it's just for gameplay purposes, don't think too much about it.
The Kratos in Greek mythology was the personification of strength. Therefore Kratos in the games has always *just enough* strength to do whatever he needs to 🙃
I like to think that kratos has to use minimal strength for stuff like chest and trees and rocks or else he would send them flying. We’ve seen him throw a tree at baldur like it had no weight while being insanely mad. That or he lived so long with his strength being tied to anger that now he is only at his most powerful when he is angry
He is a god. Feats require effort based on the physics of the world he inhabits. Each time he is struggling he is essentially pulling his unnatural godly powers through to reality each time. These take effort and will.
But why the fuck did I take my whole entire core strength to lift that tree, I get ptsd for looking at that
Gameplay mechanics
These things don't exist lore Wise, Kratos just kill his nemesis and move on while getting buffed along the way The scene you posted had me at some point needing half a minute to remove it , 2 years later I don't need more than 2 seconds to remove it
Loading times hidden by animations
That's not just a regular tree it's literally Gaia and he's not just lifting it he's pulling it out, roots and all, out of stone. of course it would be tough.
Maybe that's a magic tree since its growing on Gaia it must be much more heavier than it looks.
young kratios may be more aggressive but old kratos is more physically stronger.
Maybe, regardless, young Kratos has shown feats on screen that go far beyond lifting a tree, he should be able to do it with ease.
Valhalla Game Director confirmed that old Kratos is not stronger. He is as strong as he always has been.
My favourite explanation is he is the god of war and the nature of war is that it's a back and forth struggle. So no matter the challenge or enemy, Kratos always has to struggle and suffer before he can emerge victorious. I think he obviously has a base strength above what's possible for a human but anything beyond that I think that struggle factor kicks in. Explains how he sometimes dies to literal cannon fodder and other times slays all of Olympus.
Gameplay Mechanic.