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Writer's pictureSam John

Decoded: God of War 2018 by Santa Monica Studio

Decoded: God of War 2018 by Santa Monica Studio


How do you take a character that has overstayed his welcome and who's relentless brutality has long since been left behind in search of the why behind actions.

How do you find a way to resurrect his impaled corpse without falling into the trap of attempting to drain blood from a rock.

How do you take this one-dimensional, tired character and revitalize him to create a compelling storyline and arc that serves his story and the stories of the interweaving cast of characters for decades to come.


You step back, give your creatives the time and resources to succeed and remind everyone who this character could have been.


Santa Monica Studio struck gold with their brand new rendition of the God of War.

Kratos not only feels renewed but like his story is accompanied by an unrelenting tension between the pull of continuing to live and the push of a life of guilt, rage, and betrayal.


Christopher Judge and Sunny Suljic lead from the front and deliver performances that stand head and shoulders in their industry, revolutionizing what performance capture could be and tell a tale of a father and a son, at odds with their core humanity and the parts of them that they can't help but deny.


This story is crafted with a level of intentionality and attention to detail that is hard to come by and leads the audience to question everything not just about the work they are engaging in but in the ways the themes of breaking cycles and working to be better can echo into our own lives.


The narrative is met with a brilliant score that leaves no beat vacant with space to breathe and crescendoes with pacing and nuance that is hard to find in any other work in the past decade.


The world-building and highly-satisfying combat serves to elevate every moment of hack-and-slash in between the incredibly timed and purposeful emotional beats while weaving in beats of comedic brilliance that treats the audience at the highest level of their intelligence.


God of War is a masterpiece and the start to a redemption arc worthy of the Ghost of Sparta.


Yours faithfully,

SQJ.


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