How can God of War and Kratos be considered an example of postmodernism?

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a game that features a villainous ‘god’ that the player must kill that might offend the Christian community is about an outdated god from mythology, rather than a religious deity that is worshipped today.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.