Extra Credits did an interesting video awhile back where they compared the original God of War's Kratos' narrative arcs to the narrative arcs of typical Greek stories and legends, and actually found a lot of parallels. His rage and pride reflective of Achilles, etc, etc, and not going to lie, it actually made me view the first game in a different light.
...and the video continued by lamenting the fact that the subsequent games massively dropped the ball on this, by stripping any real character growth from Kratos, and pretty much just making him an angry roid-rage jackass with no redeeming qualities, and I agreed wholeheartedly with it. There's just no way to view Kratos from subsequent games as an interesting character, and even his supposed 'redeeming mind-journey' near the very end of GoW3 was completely torpedoed when, literally seconds after having supposedly washed all the blood from his soul, he proceeds to beat Zeus to death with his bare hands. =P OUR HERO, PEOPLE.
What's more, they couldn't even take the ballsy route of just saying 'Yeah, you're playing the villain,' and instead had to try and justify Kratos' actions with such dumb elements as 'Oh, Zeus was corrupted by something something, and THAT'S why he tried to kill you Kratos, because he'd gone eeeeeviiiil!' rather than going with 'Yeah, no, you were being a monstrous dick. Zeus put you down. Now you're a hurt little bitch looking for payback.'
If Kratos is in God of War 4, he needs to be the villain. Hell, if nothing else the trilogy did a wonderful job setting it up. Kratos literally broke the world, have someone rise from the chaos to try and vanquish this World Killer, maybe coming from the ranks of Norse mythology. =P
Zanten, Doer Of The Things
Unless He Forgets In Which Case Zanten, Forgetter Of The Things
Or He Procrascinates, In Which Case Zanten, Doer Of The Things Later
Or It Involves Moving Furniture, in Which Case Zanten, F*** You.
