Kratos's Ancient Sins: Why God of War Remakes Need to Keep the Messy Bits
AI Gaming News Author · kotaku ·
Sony's announcement of God of War remakes has sparked debate over the controversial sex minigames from the originals. While seemingly gratuitous, these scenes are crucial for understanding Kratos's nihilistic descent and, ironically, bolster his powerful arc of redemption in the more recent Norse games.
Right then, gather 'round, mates. We've got a bit of a digital archaeology project on our hands, and it's thrown up a rather thorny question about Kratos, his past, and what we *really* want from a remake.
So, Sony, in a move that had many of us blinking a bit, announced at a recent State of Play that the original God of War trilogy – you know, the one where Kratos was less 'grizzled dad trying his best' and more 'homicidal rage machine with a penchant for smashing everything in sight' – is getting a full-blown remake for the PS5. Brilliant, right? A chance to revisit those glorious, gory origins with a fresh coat of pixel paint. But here's the kicker, and it's got the gaming community doing its usual frantic squawking: what about those infamous sex minigames? Yeah, you heard me. The ones where Kratos would, shall we say, 'engage' with multiple women, all soundtracked by frantic button mashing and shaking furniture. Bloody hell, remember those?
Now, anyone who's played the more recent God of War entries (2018 and Ragnarök, which are, frankly, masterpieces) knows that Kratos has been on a bit of a PR tour for his own soul. He’s spent the better part of a decade trying to bury his sadistic, overtly sexual past. The modern Kratos is all about paternal introspection, grappling with his inner demons, and trying to shield Atreus from the full, brutal truth of what his old man used to be. It was a brilliant reinvention, making him more than just a barbaric living weapon, giving him a heart that wasn't just pumping pure vengeance. And honestly, it worked a treat.
But this shift, this character rehabilitation, casts a long, knowing shadow over the prospect of remaking the original trilogy. If we're going back to Kratos's roots, how much of that wild, early-2000s edginess are we willing to bring forward? The violence? Absolutely, it's integral to his very being and the story. But the sex? That's where things get proper dicey, isn't it?
I’ve been sifting through the digital tea leaves – otherwise known as forum comments and social media chatter – and fair dinkum, there’s a real split. A vocal chunk of players are practically begging Santa Monica Studio *not* to 'censor' the games, worried that anything cut would be an affront to the originals. And yeah, those button-mashing, QTE-laden sex romps are usually top of mind for 'things not to touch.'
Let’s be honest, those minigames were gratuitous. They were cartoonish, over-the-top power fantasies, treating women as little more than another 'achievement' in Kratos’s conquest. If they were made today, they’d be rightly savaged as juvenile and completely out of step. They represent a very specific moment in gaming history – a moment where 'edgy' often meant 'borderline tasteless' and wasn't afraid to show it.
Here’s where it gets interesting, though. If you squint past the clear intent to titillate, if you look beyond the surface-level shock value, you find something genuinely important for Kratos’s character arc. And this is what a lot of clever folks, myself included, have been pondering. When we first meet Kratos in the original God of War, he’s not just a hero on a righteous revenge tour. Oh no, mate. He’s already in a horrifying downward spiral. He’s indulging in sex and violence not just for pleasure or power, but as a twisted, desperate attempt to cope with the unimaginable pain of being tricked into murdering his own wife and daughter.
It’s a nihilistic descent, isn't it? As some observers have pointed out, the later games in the original trilogy hammered this home: Kratos’s vengeance wasn't about justice; it was an excuse to kill and destroy for the sheer sake of it. And in that context, those outlandish sex minigames, as uncomfortable as they are now, help convey the depth of his brokenness, his complete detachment, his slide into sadism and self-destruction. They're a dark mirror reflecting how utterly lost he was.
To strip those moments out, to erase them from the narrative, would be like trying to perform an ancient ritual but conveniently leaving out the bit with the goat sacrifice because, well, it’s a bit messy for modern tastes. You might clean it up, but you lose some of the raw power, some of the *truth* of the original spell. The Kratos we know and admire in the Norse sagas – the one full of regret and trying to be better – wouldn't exist without the truly monstrous, broken Kratos of the Greek era. His redemption only truly matters *because* he had so far to fall.
Of course, there’s the undeniable pull of the online 'culture war,' isn't there? Remove them, and you'll have one camp screaming about 'woke censorship' and the erosion of artistic integrity. Keep them, and another camp will decry the game as outdated, misogynistic, and tone-deaf. It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for Santa Monica Studio, I reckon.
We still don’t know much about the scope of these remakes. Will they be mere graphical glow-ups, a full overhaul of mechanics, or a complete ground-up reimagining? Whatever their approach, the more I tinker with this idea, the more I lean towards leaving those 'messy bits' in. They’re load-bearing beams for the series' overarching ethos. They give Kratos more to look back on with genuine regret, more ugly truths to reconcile with. It’s the ultimate narrative honesty, isn’t it?
If the whole point of the Norse games is Kratos confronting his past, learning from his mistakes, and not hiding who he was from his son, then the remakes themselves shouldn’t shy away from that same challenge. Hiding the truly regrettable parts of his journey, even the ones that make us squirm, would be a disservice to the complex character arc that has made God of War such a compelling series. Sometimes, the dirt under the fingernails tells the most important part of the story.
Tags: God of War, Remakes, Gaming Culture, Narrative Design, Character Development
Original article: kotaku