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God of War: Ascension (PS3, Series Prequel) - Live stream 8AM PST 4/30

Athena, Pandora and the MASSIVE CHAMBER OF BOXES were the only lowpoints of GoW3 and not enough to bring it down from the fucking glorious opening and each and every amazing boss fight.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Athena, Pandora and the MASSIVE CHAMBER OF BOXES were the only lowpoints of GoW3 and not enough to bring it down from the fucking glorious opening and each and every amazing boss fight.

I was disappointed in the length. The game was really short and considering that, you spend a lot of time in giant box room, and with LOVE AND HOPE pandora.
 

ScOULaris

Member
I was disappointed in the length. The game was really short and considering that, you spend a lot of time in giant box room, and with LOVE AND HOPE pandora.

I didn't find it to be any shorter than the previous games and/or other games in the genre.

The only truly unforgivable aspects of GoW3 to me were Pandora's character and the ending. Other than that, I loved the whole thing.
 

KalBalboa

Banned
Another new director? This series is such a mess, it's embarrassing.

Every God of War game has had a different director, I think, and the series has averaged 3 million units per game (God of War 3, in fact, has sold the highest thus far). I think it's a great idea to have new directors approach familiar material, which prevents it from getting stale.
 
I agree that GOW3's room full of giant cube crates to be anti-climatick when compared to near end levels like the Temple Of Sisters of Fate in GOW2
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
I didn't find it to be any shorter than the previous games and/or other games in the genre.

The only truly unforgivable aspects of GoW3 to me were Pandora's character and the ending. Other than that, I loved the whole thing.

2 was pretty damn long for me, atleast double the time it took me to go through 3. 1 might have been the same but it felt like I got more done, I think 3 just recycled the areas too much and they weren't all that visually distinctive to begin with.

I hold 2 in a much higher regard than 1 and 3 though.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
I'm really curious to see how they plan on topping the Titan stuff from GOW3, damn getting too excited for this already, going to have to stay away from info as much as possible. atleast until we get a date for release, which will probably be March next year.
 

Robot Pants

Member
Yea 2 is definitely the best. 1 and 3 are tied for me.
1 was great the first time through, but on replays there are some really slow parts that hold it down.
 

Jb

Member
I was disappointed in the length. The game was really short and considering that, you spend a lot of time in giant box room, and with LOVE AND HOPE pandora.

The game definitely felt like it had been rushed towards the end. Still my favorite of the series though (fluid combat, bosses, production values...).

I wish they had gone a different direction for Ascension but who knows, maybe it'll be the MGS3 of the GoW saga.
 

-viper-

Banned
As far as the adventure goes, God Of War 2 is the best game in the series.

As far as the combat and boss battles goes, well I honestly think God of War 3 is the superior game.

It's hard to say though, because in all honestly, GOW2 was so damn good!
 

AngryMoth

Member
What bothers me is I just don't see SM voluntarily making a 3rd god of war prequel when they could have moved on to something new (I know there is probably another team that did so but still). I hope they come out and say otherwise because I'll have a lot more faith in the project knowing the decision came from the team, but this just reeks of being a Sony mandated game. The franchise has grown too big for them to let go of.
 

KalBalboa

Banned
I'm really curious to see how they plan on topping the Titan stuff from GOW3, damn getting too excited for this already, going to have to stay away from info as much as possible. atleast until we get a date for release, which will probably be March next year.
I'm interested to see where it goes too. The jump from God of War 1 to 2 was staggering, so try and imagine what leap we'll see from a game that was gestated so early on in the PS3's lifecycle.
 

Endo Punk

Member
The way I see it:

GOW1 hads the best story and pacing, GOW2 had best puzzles and variety and GOW3 had the best gameplay, weapons and wow moments. Now Ascension has its work cut out but it needs to really up the sense of adventure which I want more than anything else.
 

Loudninja

Member
The way I see it:

GOW1 hads the best story and pacing, GOW2 had best puzzles and variety and GOW3 had the best gameplay, weapons and wow moments. Now Ascension has its work cut out but it needs to really up the sense of adventure which I want more than anything else.
Thats what I think it is going by it being the most ambitious title
 
Another new director? This series is such a mess, it's embarrassing.

A mess? Probably one of the best well made series in recent memory. Excellent quality all around, excellent cinematic production values, great gameplay, etc.

Not seeing the "mess" here.
 

Endo Punk

Member
What bothers me is I just don't see SM voluntarily making a 3rd god of war prequel when they could have moved on to something new (I know there is probably another team that did so but still). I hope they come out and say otherwise because I'll have a lot more faith in the project knowing the decision came from the team, but this just reeks of being a Sony mandated game. The franchise has grown too big for them to let go of.

I don't know, Sony really tends to support dev decisions, that's why they didn't force ND to add Move support on UC3 and let me them do a new IP as well. Im sure the decision for a prequel came from SSM. And the studio from my understanding is much larger than ND so they could still be doing a whole new game while also working on Ascension.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
I'm interested to see where it goes too. The jump from God of War 1 to 2 was staggering, so try and imagine what leap we'll see from a game that was gestated so early on in the PS3's lifecycle.

Yeah I know, I don't know if we would see an Uncharted 1-Uncharted 2 jump, but i'm expecting some significant upgrades.

It would be pretty amazing if we get to control The Spartan army and go to war with Kratos leading the charge. It also sounds from the trailer that he won't be as ragefilled as he was previously which would make sense if this takes place before the death of his family.

I wish we could have gotten Balrogs ending for the trilogy though, the idea of Kratos becoming Death is pretty awesome to me. Jaffe's ideas were cool to, so personally either would have probably been better than the ending we got in 3.

The end is really my only issue with 3, other than that the game is a masterpiece. Anyone up for playing through the series soon? Maybe we could do a Gaf Plays thread.
 

KalBalboa

Banned
I beat three about a year ago with a friend for the second time, but I'd definitely be down with playing the PS2 collection on PS3.
 

Endo Punk

Member
There hasn't been a single bad GOW game. Anyone else surprised? I mean it's one of the 3 action series from last gen -the others being DMC and NG- to make the transition to current gen successfully but unlike the other titles God of War has remained a consistently great franchise. Man I hope I didn't jinx it :p
 

Hela

Member
I wonder what do they mean by most ambitious - multiplayer perhaps?
And why now, and now at E3 few weeks from now.
 
I'm disappointed this is a prequel , i would of thought that the two psp prequels covered alot of ground of why Kratos is the way he is , Ghost of Sparta especially did a damn fine job in covering that , so really have no clue why they have to go backwards instead of forwards!

Still got faith in Sony Santa Monica though and i fully expect to be amazed and blown away by them on the 30th.

And i hope they amp up the big boss fights , i fully expected alot of Titan killing in GOW 3 but only got 1 :-/

Either way i'm excited there's another GOW game but not as excited as i would of been for a
GOW 4 reveal which is obviously coming for PS4 :)

I wouldn't be surprised if GOW A ends with some sort of connection to GOW 4!!
 
Story and direction wise, gameplay is just fine.

The story is really not much of a mess. Shit happens in God of War 1, Kratos vows to kill Ares. More shit happens in God of War 2, Kratos vows to kill Zeus. Even more shit happens at the end of GoW2 and the beginning of GoW3, Kratos vows to kill Zeus, all the gods, and the Titans. At the end of it, most if not everyone Kratos was aiming for is dead. At least they stuck with it.

There's definitely some unappealing parts in 3 like Ghost Athena and Pandora's shitty character, but other series have far more narrative issues that completely break down the point of the story they're trying to tell. At least God of War is consistent.
 
I will reserve judgement for when we actually see some stuff from this but here is my concern with it being a prequel:

Other than the gameplay obviously, GoW to me has always been about being epic (like classically epic) and about scale. GoW3 took that to the logical conclusion by having you literally kill all of the gods (and some titans) one by one and it doesn't get much bigger than that. I don't know how you escalate that and apparently Sony didn't either so they went prequel.

The problem is I just had a taste of Kratos taking down Zeus and a bunch of mountain sized creatures so why should I care at all about his adventures as a man? If the GoW story was anything more than generic revenge/rage journeys using Greek mythology tropes then I might, but story has never really been the focus of these games other than to serve the gameplay setting.

In other words, I don't see how a prequel (specifically one that takes place during his arguably physically weakest) can serve to do anything but hinder the actual gameplay experience. Maybe they have some interesting ideas in store and have a different direction for this one though (thus not calling it GoW4). We'll just have to wait and see.
 

Derrick01

Banned
The same can be said for both NG and DMC.
To me there has not been 1 bad GOW game yet .

The japanese action games don't focus on story or plot or characters though, it's just combat to them and that other stuff is just there because it has to be.

GoW does try to focus on that a bit but it fails in 3 and even 2 to a lesser extent. 3 was just terrible in that regard though and really screwed up near the end.
 
I also believe GOW3 to be the worst of the main game trilogy. Game played nothing like the "Fear Nothing" trailer. The Titan's were so underwhelming and the main quest paled in comparison to climbing Pandora's Tower or exploring the Temple of the Fates.
 

Truant

Member
Never played 2, but I love 1 and 3. I hope they focus a bit more on the adventure and RPG elements, because some of the hub-ish areas of 3 were great.
 
I don't know, Sony really tends to support dev decisions, that's why they didn't force ND to add Move support on UC3 and let me them do a new IP as well. Im sure the decision for a prequel came from SSM. And the studio from my understanding is much larger than ND so they could still be doing a whole new game while also working on Ascension.

They probably also created a ton of extra assets and rejected concepts during GoWIII that they could use to build another game on. A shame to let all that work go to waste imo.
 

GQman2121

Banned
I would love a Kratos game where you play as the man in the flashbacks. General Kratos on horseback just fucking people up and commanding an army would be a nice change of pace.
 

RawPower

Banned
I was hoping for a sequel, honestly. Like maybe Kratos would redeem himself (like the teaser from a few days ago implied) by undoing the damage he had done to the world. I had to force myself to finish God of War 3 because of all the shitty things Kratos was doing to the world/people around him. On another note, the Gods were pretty underwhelming, except for Poseidon. It was disappointing that Hades, Zeus, Hermes, etc never grew to a colossal size and unleashed the full force of their powers on Kratos. It always felt like they were holding back.
 
I always like 2 the least, too long and other things like story was worse than the other 2. 3 and 1 are tied but 3 is recent and more replayable but the story isn't as good.
 

Your problem is the same as with Athena, writing Kratos off as a senseless brute simply because he's a soldier. He kills, maims and dismembers without flinching, but only because that's what he has been trained to do for a lifetime. Even so, there is still a sliver of empathy within him. It's not that hard to believe that Sparta, a militaristic nation, trained soldiers to be ruthless and unfeeling in combat but still honour and respect a set moral code. It's humans embracing their nature, which is violent and egotistical. Those are prime examples of elements of tragedy.

When DMC filters all the cheese and melodrama, we can say it's on par with GOW.
 

Kinyou

Member
Schrödinger's cat;37098280 said:
What about that spectacularly misjudged rhythm-action bit? (or was that what you refer to as Pandora?)
That guitar hero bit was.... ugh. I was thinking "why?!" the whole way through

I always like 2 the least, too long and other things like story was worse than the other 2. 3 and 1 are tied but 3 is recent and more replayable but the story isn't as good.
The problem with 3 is that it just doesn't have much of a story. Kratos fights the gods and that's it. The only really new thing was Pandora, and that was rather stupid and not fitting the games tone.
 
The japanese action games don't focus on story or plot or characters though, it's just combat to them and that other stuff is just there because it has to be.

GoW does try to focus on that a bit but it fails in 3 and even 2 to a lesser extent. 3 was just terrible in that regard though and really screwed up near the end.

Bullshit they all try to tell a story , hell DMC2 mess up the story so bad they did prequel right after which had near 90 mins plus of cutscenes .
This whole idea that Japanese action games don't focus on story is a joke IMO.
If you want to say they focus on combat then that makes it worst as DMC2 was awful game in terms of combat and NG3 seems to be the same way .
GOW IMO has not hit the low point that's both those series have which is why even thought i don't like prequels i still look forward to the next one .

Hell GOW is not even my favorite action series DMC is but GOW has done allot of things right .
 
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