God of War is a third-person action-adventure game that
follows its lead protagonist Kratos, a demigod and Spartan warrior, on his
quest to kill Ares, the God of War, after he tricks Kratos into murdering his
family. Postmodernism is a movement recently established now that tropes,
conventions and stereotypes within media have been set. It subverts these by
blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and good and evil, and recycling
old concepts with a fresh spin.
Kratos is a postmodern character as he is an antihero. This
means he lacks heroic attributes. He is a killer and struggles to control his
rage. Since the death of his family (by his own hand), he stopped caring. He
goes around killing everybody in his path, not just antagonists who mean him
harm but also innocent civilians without reason. He is barbaric, and wreaks
havoc without considering the ramifications his questionable actions might
have. This dubious, ugly, aggressive character contrasts with a typical
videogame hero such as Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series.
Kratos does not have the appearance of a traditional hero. He
looks more like a villain the hero has to defeat. He has a bald head, he’s covered
in tattoos that serve as emotional scars, he’s massively built with huge,
rippling muscles, he’s never happy, always grimacing, and carries big,
dangerous weapons such as swords or chains. He skin was tainted pale white by
the ashes of his family, which gives him a frightening and formidable
appearance.
God of War is a postmodern game as the story has its roots in
Greek mythology. The makers of the game have taken the characters and
conventions of Greek mythology and given them a new spin with graphic violence
and sexual content, which makes it more contemporary for a modern audience that
has come to expect this from current games. The antagonist is a god, who an
entire civilisation of people once worshipped, and has now been flipped to the
point that audiences are expected to root against them.
The bloody violence is so excessive and gratuitous that one
might take it as an ironic jab at the action-adventure genre, which is
typically controversial for its violent content, especially among Christian groups.
It may also be intended as irony that a game that features a villainous ‘god’
that the player must kill that might offend the Christian community is about an
outdated god from mythology, rather than a religious deity that is worshipped
today.
In conclusion, I believe the game God of War and its
character Kratos are both separately postmodern, each in their own way. Usually
a character and its game are one and the same, and the character is synonymous
with the game rather than being open to its own critical and cultural
examination, but God of War and Kratos are each operating on their own playing
field, and therefore open to their own examination.
