God of War (series)/Headscratchers


 * Why hasn't Artemis appeared in person yet? She's the only Olympian who talked to Kratos at Pandora's Temple who hasn't appeared since then.
 * This bugs me too especially in GoW III where all the boses were gods, titans, and the most iconic greek hero...and then they throw a giant scorpion at you. They could have had Artemis pestering Kratos throughout the Labyrinth.
 * The Giant Scorpion may be the one Artemis sent to kill Orion the Hunter. So, she "appears" somehow.
 * I the myths Apollo was the one who sent the scorpion to get rid of Orian and keep him away from Artamis.


 * Why did Kratos killing Hera affect the vegetation of the world? Did the developers confuse her with Demeter?
 * Unlikely, Demeter herself is mentioned in one of the games...
 * And besides, only the vegetation in her garden dies. That makes more sense, if it were only for her plants.
 * You might want to look at that scene again. If you look closely, you can see the trees and fields beyond the garden die as well. I think the developers simply wanted Hera's death to have a huge impact on the world like Poseidon's flooding the world or Helios' blotting out the sun but couldn't think of a way to visualize marriage being destroyed. Certainly not in a destructive, apocalyptic way. So, since they knew that Demeter wasn't getting in the game, they decided to give Hera the whole vegetation sphere-of-influence. Kind of like the Romans dumping Helios' job as the God of the sun on Apollo.


 * In the first game, an astute player will notice copious amounts of blood and corpses in the Temple of Pandora, right up to the last challange room. This tells us that not only have others tried to retrieve Pandora's Box, but came pretty close to succeeding. Not a problem on its own, but throughout the temple, Kratos is breaking barriers and pottery, looting untouched chests, moving keys from one place to another, even retrieving Posidon's Trident, a priceless artifact in its own right. So, who is putting everything back together between attempts?
 * That would probably be the various humanoid monsters, like the skeleton zombie knight dudes (never was sure what to call them)
 * You do remember that undead groundskeeper you encounter at the entrance to the temple? One would assume his duties extend beyond simply burning corpses.


 * On a related note, in the second game, Kratos meets someone he ran into at the beginning of the game, a person Kratos tells to head to Sparta while he travels to the "Ends of the World" (to quote the trailers). Bearing in mind that Kratos was traveling via a Pegasus with flaming wings, how did the guy he met arrive that far in the palace BEFORE Kratos did?
 * I had the same question. He says he was attempting to obtain an audience with the Sisters so he could save Sparta. Deus Ex Machina: a God did it?
 * Well, he IS a Spartan.
 * Kratos first made a detour to Typhon who, judging by the substantial difference in weather (arctic vs. tropical), is probably half a planet away from the Sisters' Island. After making that roundtrip, Kratos went to the island and landed about as far away from the Sisters' Temple as humanly possible. We don't know where the Spartan guy landed, but it can't have been further than Kratos did, and he went there without visiting the arctic first.


 * Is Kratos a demigod, or mortal now? From what I can tell, all a god is is a human with god like powers. Kratos was a demigod before the end of God of War 1. Then, between that time to the end of the first level of God of War 2, he is 100% god. But then, Zeus takes "all his godly power" rendering Kratos "a mere mortal". Does this mean he is 100% human now? All the dialogue seems to point to it, but he still maintains his superstrength that no human should have. So which is it?
 * He has his own internal demi-god powers. Then he absorbed the powers of Ares. Then he got those (and the gifts from God of War 1) sucked out.
 * Kratos is specifically stated at the end of Go W 2 to be Zeus' son, probably in much the same way Hercules is. As such his enormous strength and superhuman abilities, even the ones he had before he killed Ares, were probably because of his heritage. He might not have the power he got from killing Ares anymore, but he's still half god. Also, gods aren't just really powerful humans, they're more like forces of nature incarnated into humanoid form.


 * The maze designed to protect Pandora's Box in the first game, and the isle of the Sister of Fate in the second were both supposed to be really hard to reach, right? Just look at what Kratos had to go through to get to them. Now even if Kratos took the hardest route possible, it still seems to me that there were an AWFUL lot of people in both places that were supposedly incredibly hard to reach.
 * Well at least in Go W 2 most of those people are either demigods, heroes and special people of the Greek mythology (not counting Theseus since he acted as a guard). Such Perseus, a son of Zeus and champion of the Gods, and if you know your mythology very favoured by the Gods. Jason and his Argonauts, which were badass (although not that badass) warriors and just guessing they might also can be Spartans. Icarus, sure not much heroic about him but he could easily fly to the point you encounter him. The Last Spartan, well... he is a Spartan, and also to presume one of high status since he was in charge of Sparta's defences.


 * In God of War 2, a big deal is made about Kratos going back in time to before he was killed by Zeus to change his fate. The problem is, at the point in time he returns to, Zeus had already impaled past-Kratos with the Blade of Olympus before present-Kratos sucker-punches him. We even see Kratos pull the Blade of Olympus out of the body of his past self (though it is offscreen at the time). Despite all this, Kratos is no worse off for any of this.
 * It might be justified though, since he had to die, otherwise he wouldn't have made the trip to the sisters of fate in the first place.
 * There are other issues with pulling a sword out of yourself and then having yourself disappearing... okay, look, time travel in the God of War universe appears to work by having only one version of a person at any point in time. If you time travel back to say, an hour ago, you replace yourself. This is kinda weird, and it brings up questions of what happens if you do what Kratos did with the Titans, rescuing them before they go and get imprisoned (including Gaia who talks to him during the game) ... anyway, it doesn't matter since the Fates' chamber appears to have exploded after that. Kratos suckerpunches Zeus, replaces himself, and then reabsorbs his own godly essence from the sword. If he had saved himself from being impaled, his scar would probably have disappeared.
 * Except that's not true, he was fighting one of the sisters while he past self was fighting Ares. They both still existed.
 * The replacement obviously doesn't happen instantly, since Kratos suckerpunches Zeus as Zeus stands over Kratos' past self.
 * On a related note: why doesn't Kratos, armed with the power to change time, go back and save his family? Had it really been so long that that he had forgotten about them? Did they just not matter? Plot hole?
 * Most likely case IMO: the thought didn't cross his mind. It's a bit of a weak excuse, but this is a guy whose mind is constantly on one thing, vengeance. And if I remember correctly the temple of fate was collapsing, he might just not have had enough time to pull the string any longer.
 * Great, another mini-discussion about time traveling paradoxes. It's not like we don't have enough of those already.
 * While were at it, perhaps we should also mention that the Sisters of Fate should be alive when Kratos went back because he hadn't killed them yet, or one could theorize that they were still alive and were in fact controlling the events of God of War III.
 * After Kratos time travels back to stop Zeus he tells him that the sisters are dead. It sort of implies that the Sisters, as well as their realm, operates outside of our idea of "time".
 * This troper is very confused. Over all three games Kratos has demonstrated the ability to return from the dead by climbing out of the underworld. So... Why can't you do this during regular gameplay? Is this a case of Cutscene Power To The Max? Because otherwise, logic would dictate that every time the player should have gotten a game over, it would instead be transported into some kind of mini level that has to be finished to continue... It actually sounds like an interesting mechanic, I think.
 * Well, in God of War 1, he needed that gravedigger to dig him an opening so that he could escape through there. In God of War 2, he needed Gaia to motivate him to get revenge on Zeus, thus making him climb out. Then, in God of War 3, you're in Tartarus for a while, but then you kill Hades himself, so you probably wouldn't have anywhere else to go if you died.
 * In each case he had a god revive him. In GOW 1 one can argue Zeus or another god restored him to life. In GOWII Gaia restored him to life. In GOWIII he did not die. He physically fell into the underworld. Otherwise, when he died he would just be shade with his body and weapons staying on Earth. Not every body was pulled physically into the underworld only one's spirit went. So it makes more sense to think various gods are bringing him back to life.
 * His ability(inability in some cases maybe) of not dying, might be even more justified after the events in the Ghost of Sparta game, where he kills Thantanos the embodiment of death, and therefore and Zeus states in the end of the game that he had become "Death, the destroyer of world". So since Kratos now is death, he is even harder to kill. Also could explain why he might still be alive in the end of Go W 3


 * As the third game show, every time Kratos kills a god, it somehow majorly fucks up the planet, ie: killing Poseidon causes floods, killing Helios blocks out the sun, etc. Does this mean that killing Athena (even if it was by accident) made all knowledge and wisdom leave the world?
 * Must...resist...urge...to...make...horrible...joke... But seriously, I think Athena's ghost still being around might mitigate that. You know, there really should be some kind of clause for gods whose spheres of influence aren't tangible...
 * Why is it the gods constantly belittle and insult Kratos, calling him a mere mortal and a weakling? They know perfectly well he is a son of Zeus; that makes him a demi-god, which makes him more of a threat than any "mere mortal" could ever hope to be. Add to that the fact he has shown himself perfectly willing and capable of killing gods, otherwise they would never have asked him to kill Ares in the first place. Did the others really expect to be able to antagonize Kratos and get away with it?
 * How nice would you be to someone who was killing off every member of your family? Also, they're the gods; phenomenal cosmic ego is kind of part and parcel. Unless you're Hestia, it probably goes something like "Oh, I'm SO much smarter / shrewder / better than (insert dead god's name here)!!"
 * In III, why is such a big deal made about Pandora's Box containing "The Power To Kill A God", when Kratos managed to kill Poseidon, Hades, Helios, Hermes, Hephaestus, Cronos and Hera without the damn thing? Also, he killed Hermes by cutting off his legs and he killed Hera and Poseidon by snapping their necks. If Pandora's Box or the Blade Of Olympus is needed to kill gods, how can he kill them with what, to a god, must be no more than a boo-boo?
 * Not all gods are created equal. Zeus is much more of a big deal than any of his lesser siblings.
 * That doesn't explain how Hera died of a snapped neck.
 * Some people didn't pay attention to the ending.
 * Furthermore, why didn't Kratos ever take into account that he's already opened the box in the first place?
 * Because Athena was talking about it like there was still something in there, and he figured she knew best. Besides, not being really big anymore, he probably believed as she did that the power from the Box had returned to it.
 * Why did Kratos go after the box anyways? He already beat Zeus at the end of the second game without it.
 * This always bugged me, too. Kratos was even killing the Titans without need for the power in that box. I was just anticipating the moment when he'd open the box and
 * I took it that Kratos is something of a moron. He rarely if ever thinks beyond killing whatever he is angry at at the moment. He thinks enough brute force and violence will solve any problem. The only time he does think is when it is absolutely clear it is not enough. That is what enables him to be so easily manipulated. You just find some reason to get him angry/annoyed at something and let him go.
 * Kratos knows that he's already taken the power from the box. He protests as much when he realises she's just brought him back to Pandora's Box. When Athena says there's more power that he didn't take in the box, he defers to her judgment because she should know better.
 * In II, Kratos needed to get past Theseus to get onto the Isle of Creation. So how did Perseus and The Last Spartan get there first?
 * By sailing to the Isle of Creation instead of to the island next to it that Kratos had the misfortune of landing on. Kratos had to get past Theseus to bring the two islands together so he could reach the Isle of Creation, but someone who just sailed to the Isle and scaled the cliffs wouldn't have the same problem.
 * What happened to Demeter? And Hestia, and Artemis, and Morpheus, and Apollo, and...
 * Word of God stated that what ever gods were in the games were the gods they wanted in the story, so if none of the others are there its because they didn't find any use for them.
 * Timesaving. Adding all the Greek gods would've made for quite a long game. Hell, we'd be on God of War 16 by now if we had to watch Kratos kill his way through the entire Greek pantheon. It might've worked if they'd limited the roster to the Twelve Olympians but jamming them all into one game simply wouldn't have been feasible.
 * I personally think that Morpheus was executed by the gods after his attempt to Take Over the World in Chain of Olympus. About the others, they may have survived, or have been killed offscreen by Titans, Zeus or by the fall of Mount Olympus.
 * If Hercules is Perseus's great grandson, how come Hercules is clearly older than him?
 * Because the devs decided research is for dorks.
 * It could have been some strange effect of the island manipulating time.
 * Dudes, Size has nothing to do with age. For example, this troper was the youngest and tallest student of his class. Sure, Hercules is indeed a giant of a man, but maybe he's younger than it looks. Or Maybe Perseus, as Demigod, aged far more slowly than mortals.
 * I'm inclined to agree with this theory. It also explains how come Hercules acted like some petulant ten-year-old kid, smashing Kratos around and then immediately turning to Hera (his sort-of mother figure) for acknowledgment
 * In GOW III, Hephaestus explains how he hid Pandora's significance from Zeus, and it seems the other olympians were also unaware of her purpose, and thought her only a quaint plaything of Hephaestus'. If this was case, and they were unaware of her connection to the box, WHY was it named after her, and housed in a temple also bearing her name?
 * Maybe they liked the sound of the name?
 * After reading the above complaints, something occurred to me. To open Pandora's Box, one must sacrifice Pandora to the Flames of Olympus surrounding it so they vanish. Why were said flames not coating the box in the first game? Also, in the second game, you have to drop Prometheus into what are referred to as the Fires of Olympus. Why are they not only a different color than the FLAMES of Olympus, but in an entirely different location?
 * Similar names but different flames?
 * I think so, the one in II was the Primordial Fire that Prometheus stole to Hephaestus and brought to the mortals.
 * So in the end of God of War 2, you go back in time and sucker punch Zeus when he was killing you. Does that mean that in the current timeline (That God of War 3 takes place in) that God of War 2 didn't happen? So Perseus, The Kraken, Sisters of Fate etc etc are all still alive? And for that matter, who fought Zeus, the past Kratos or the Kratos we control throughout the game?
 * Zeus did kill him. All we see of Past-Kratos is Future-Kratos pulling the Blade of Olympus out of him. After Zeus and Kratos bolted for the final arena, Past-Kratos got dragged down to Tartarus by those hands, just like from the beginning. Kratos probably didn't see himself because he was unconscious.
 * Also, with the Sisters of Fate dead, time probably doesn't work like you'd think it would.

So, going by that, Athena couldn't have removed the white mark, and none of the gods could have just removed the nightmares either. Also, each and every one of the Titans has to climb. That means that taking them out is only really a matter of knocking them off balance and/or whacking them in the hand until they have to let go. It is extremely difficult to fight while rock climbing.
 * Now, a serious question: I know that things have changed quite a lot during the preparation of the games, but why Hades (the location) keeps changing over and over in each game! Look at River Styx! It was a bloody swamp in Chains, I and II and then in III it becomes a black soul-infested river. Sob.
 * Persephone. She keeps her interior decorator hopping because what else can she do to pass the time?
 * "because what else can she do to pass the time?" ...Hades?
 * Given the extreme lengths she went to in order to escape her marriage, I think Persephone would murder you for that suggestion.
 * Similar to the rant above, why the Domain of Death in Ghost of Sparta, despite being the home of the most feared creature in the universe (Thanatos) looks so... earthly! I mean, look at it! It just look like a foggy castle with spiked chains, huge plants and not-so-otherwordly traps!
 * I seem to remember that the Spartans are the descendants of Hercules. So why in God of War 3 Hercules claims he was doing the 12 Labors, the quest that made him a legend, during the events of God of War 1 when he already done it before Sparta was founded?
 * One of the problems with many adaptations of Greek mythology is that they tend to portray many if not all of the greek myths happening at basically the same time. This, of course, isn't helped at all by how much greek myth itself ignores any type of continuity.
 * Yeah, I'm pretty sure at least one reading of the myths has it that Haphaestus is responsible for his own birth.
 * Kratos killed Thanatos, Death itself, so how in Olympus's name is he able to kill the other gods, or anyone really, with DEATH dead?
 * Thanatos is more like the "personification" of Death, not exactly Death itself. Since people still die in the sequels (II and III) it's safe to assume that Thanatos wasn't vital to the world.
 * So in God of War we learn that Kratos is white because Ares stuck the ashes of Kratos's family onto him as punishment for murdering them, to mark his sins. At the END of God of War Athena absolves Kratos's sins so surely that means his skin should go back to normal, he should no longer have to wear that mark?
 * She also said something like "Only you can forgive yourself".
 * This sorta goes back to the original Greek myths. Gods had a lot of powers, but one thing they explicitly could not do was reverse something that had already happened. Like Orpheus, for example. He was blinded by Hera for siding with Zeus in a disagreement . Zeus (though it might've been Hera in a moment of remorse, I can't remember just at the moment) felt sorry for the guy but couldn't restore his sight, and so gave him the power of prophecy instead.
 * Greek Mythology does have a God of Dreams, and a magic river that causes memory loss. Between those, they could have resolved Kratos' problems.
 * If the Flame of Olympus can kill any mortal or god that touches it, why did Kratos even bother with the whole Pandora's Box deal and just chuck Zeus into the flames? Or if Zeus was immune to the flames, why didn't Kratos use Zeus's arm (either arm-locking him into pushing the lid off the box or hacking the arm off and working from there) to open the box?
 * Because the inherent flaw in using Zeus to open the box is that it requires either a great deal of cooperation on Zeus's part, or for Zeus to be so overpowered by Kratos that the Box wouldn't even be necessary anymore. If Kratos, at the time, had believed he could take Zeus in a straight-up fight, he wouldn't have been jumping through hoops to get the Box open in the first place.
 * In God of War II, how come Zeus survived when Kratos fought him, slashed him repeatedly, battered him around, blasted him, impaled him, slashed him some more, and impaled him some more for good measure... and then Athena dies (spectacularly, at that!) when Kratos accidentally impales her? You know it's bad when the freaking gods are Made of Plasticine.
 * Um, because Zeus is the ruler of all the gods maybe? I dare say he's a lot more powerful than Athena.
 * In God of War 3, after Kratos  the sun is blocked by clouds and it starts raining. In the Icarus Ascension (where you're flying in a vent), you meet up with Perses, that lava titan,   In that entire sequence, it was perfectly sunny and not raining. The next time you see the outside at the top of Olympus, it's dark and raining again. What's up with that?
 * Maybe it was a small mistake. That, or the fact that Helios was freshly killed, so there weren't much clouds.
 * The Titan's total ineptitude and failure to matter in God of War 3. Poseidon and Hades spend the first few minutes of gameplay casually dispatching Titans not carrying Kratos left and right, and by the halfway point they basically stop showing up at all, until Gaia arrives at the final battle... and fails to do much more than provide the battleground for Kratos and Zeus.
 * I guess they're overestimate themselves too much.
 * Another problem was that the attack group was like a fraction (I think it was about 8, maybe 9) of how many Titans there really was, by adding up the original tweleve, their offspring and apprently Gaea and Typhon, that's 26 of them. Even if some like Helios were on the Gods' side or Atlas, whose stuck holding up the world, going back in time could show other neutral ones like the other original female ones ones that the Gods winning wasn't a good thing. Or Hell, use the time-travel thing to bring back the Giants, who also hated the Gods and tried to help the Titans out in the Gigantomachy.
 * Maybe they're keeping Giants for the sequels. And again, remeber that God of War is based on Greek Mythology, not necessarly the very same Greek Mythology we're familiar with.
 * I also think a problem was they had no real powers besides being big. Even being made of elements, none of them seemed able to project them like some of the Gods could.
 * The Titans were implied to have powers in God of War II, this game removed that element, and if they had no powers beyond their size, then why are the gods so afraid of them?
 * I thought it was pretty simple: The gods won the war the first time, and they've had thousands of years of living the high life which either didn't diminish them, or made them stronger. The Titans, however, were chained up/dead/punished for thousands of years (or if they're right from the War itself, they're coming fresh from a raging battlefield).
 * The Titans were fine, Kratos prevented them from being imprisoned.
 * Thats right. History had proved that those who have the higher ground have a major geographical advantage and usually end up as the victors of a battle. Just look at the battles of Tours, Adrianopolis, Gettysberg, Hill 262, etc. They were all won by those who had the higher ground, while those who lost had to climb up of the hills or the mountains to attack them, wasting so much energy that they were too tired to fight proprably when they finally got to the defenders' lines. The Olympians have the higher ground in this battle, and Mt. Olymus is much higher than a hill so they have a major advantage over the Titans, who are spending their energy trying to climb up that thing.
 * Fridge Brilliance: One may wondered why the writer of GOW III decided to make the gods' individual deaths catastrophic for the world, then realized that if functioned as a reset button of sorts, removing the Desert of Lost Souls and killing of all of the big bad beasties that populated Kratos's world.
 * Fridge Logic: At the end of God of War 3,
 * In God of War 2, when Kratos, why didn't he use them to go back in time and stop every tragic part of his life from happening? He could have stopped himself from  , and so on. There might not have been a God of War 3, but he could've saved himself years of anguish and some serious trouble.
 * Maybe Kratos has been so corrupted by power that he would rather be the  than back with his family. We've already established that he's evil. And personally, I would throw my family under a bus to be an incredibly powerful, immortal, apparently well-endowed god.
 * Yes except for the fact that himself said that power he had wasn't worth losing his family.
 * We all know that Kratos tends to not make the best decisions when he's angry. Maybe he was so blinded by rage and need for vengeance that it never occured to him.
 * What was Kratos going to do?  Many Kratos knew all along that he is screw so this was his only option.
 * In part two, How did the last spartan get to the Island of Creation or even know how to find it? Kratos had to fly there, and getting onto the surface of it wasn't exactly a walk in the park either!
 * In God of War 3,
 * GoW seems to have mashed the portfolios of several gods together in multiple places, probably in order to keep the cast size manageable;
 * release of disease upon his death makes sense using the following justification.
 * Yet another God of War III example:
 * Again in the GOW 3, much is said about Hephaestus' status as a freak, and little seems to be said about Hades. This is justifiable in the myths, as Hades was supposed to be just about as attractive as his brothers and his black smith nephew was the ugliest of all deities, but it is rather strange that Hephaestus is the one discriminated when his uncle looks like a decaying demon, while he looks like an old man with a slightly distorted face.
 * Why is Hera so messed up?
 * She's drunk off her ass.
 * Why don't the other gods Kratos kills explode like Ares did?
 * Well, each of the Gods when they die have some sort of release of what they personified, right? Well, what better then what looked like a A-Bomb going off for the God of War? So, it does make sense, to a degree.
 * At the end of the first game, Kratos attempts suicide to escape his tortured memories. "Death would be his release from madness..."except for one thing...Kratos knows for a fact that the afterlife is real. So he should know that's no escape...
 * Why does God of War 3 refer to Heracles by his Roman name, Hercules? Every other name is Greek, even the more obscure ones, but they leave Heracles out. Why?
 * Because Herakles isn't well known in the public, while the character has always been called Hercules in every media depiction pretty much ever.
 * At the end of the first game, Kratos attempts suicide to escape his tortured memories. "Death would be his release from madness..."except for one thing...Kratos knows for a fact that the afterlife is real. So he should know that's no escape...
 * Why does God of War 3 refer to Heracles by his Roman name, Hercules? Every other name is Greek, even the more obscure ones, but they leave Heracles out. Why?
 * Because Herakles isn't well known in the public, while the character has always been called Hercules in every media depiction pretty much ever.


 * So, seeing as how the Greeks and Romans shared their Gods, what sort of ramifications does the death of Jupiter and his ilk have for them? Also, I recall reading that the Thracians too worshiped Ares, do they also worship Kratos? And finally, why wasn't Steve Blum in later games? The voice acting suffered greatly from his absence.
 * As far as the Greek and Romans there may be none. Some fantasy settings have them as two completely different pantheons. This works some because in the real world the Romans had their own deities that lacked distinctive myths and personalities so they just adopted Greek religion. It makes a bit more sense when considering the different (sometimes radical) personalities and characteristics of the gods. So while Zeus may be dead Jupiter may still be out there.


 * So, is a sequel series actually planned, or more of a concept. All I've heard is rather unclear on the matter.


 * Why did Hephaestus make a key to Pandora's box if Zeus never wanted it opened?
 * The same reason programmers write backdoors into programs that only they know.
 * When Gaia tries to kill Kratos at the end of the game, she says that he left her no choice, as he was plunging her world into chaos. Out of curiosity, what exactly did she expect to happen when you killed the sun god, the ocean god, the king of the gods and, oh yeah, every other god on Olympus? Did she just assume that all would be hunky dory?
 * I think she was intending on restoring the Titans back to the old jobs, so like Oceanus would replace Poseidon, Hyperion to Helios, so on and so forth. When she said that, pretty much all the God and Titans were all dead.
 * In the end of III,
 * It could be that the Blade of Olympus acts as a vessel for such supernatural powers, and that when someone with power is killed with the Blade, the wielder gains the power for themselves.
 * But the power of hope wasn't in the blade, it was in Kratos. You can see it in his eyes and hands during the final fight with Zues.
 * The power of Hope was buried under Kratos's feelings of regret. It literally couldn't get out.
 * How did Kratos kill Persephone if killing a god requires Pandora's Box?
 * Never mind, actually playing that part seems to have answered my question: he uses The Power of the Sun.