Here’s their trailer, which looks quite interesting.

Over on Facebook my dear friend and esteemed colleague Anjin Anhut posted a small rant about being unhappy with the God of War Story, calling it a „total weak point“, and „lazy in writing or exploitative“. Afterwards a nice discussion started in the comments, one that I refrained from joining without having thought about this some. Now this post is me trying to adress his criticism in a structured manner and to provide a counterpoint to this discussion.

Why? Because I enjoy discussions and yeah, because I enjoyed God of War.

So a few words before I start: Anjin is generally spending a lot of his precious free time to write about discrimination and sexism in games. He fashions thoughtful, well-written and well-meaning articles that I enjoy to read. His work in that regard is invaluable and I appreciate it highly. The game industry has a series of serious issues with discrimination that we need to deal with. This article will touch on that topic since the protagonist Kratos is, as Anjin rightly put it, „a misogynist sadist inhuman monster“. By no means do I intend to belittle this issue.

Dissecting Anjins criticism I identified the following points, which make him believe God of War to be a terrible story:

1. The game forces you to be a „misogynist sadist inhuman monster“. That makes it propagate unacceptable values.
2. The game does not question or critzize the portrayed atrocities wreaked by the player and the protagonist. It provides no context. That makes it lazy and thoughtless.
3. The game explots this inhumanity and depravity for show and effect. That makes it exploitative.
4. The game is marketed as an epic story and the face of the Playstation brand, emphasizing it’s cultural effect. That makes it just plain worse.

Some of these points I can’t much disagree with. There is an especially strong case to make for the third and fourth points. Given the strong reliance on violent and gory imagery in it’s marketing and the oddly juvenile sex mini-gameplay, Anjin does have an argument there.

Still I disagree with the first two. These issues do not make God of War a bad story and one that we need to avoid in the future if we want our storytelling to mature.

And here’s my line of reasoning. Let’s start with the first point.

Kratos is an inhumane character and thus propagates values of inhumanity.
If we believe that games are a medium to tell stories, stories about the human condition and all it’s pleasures, pitfalls and peries. And if we believe that what makes games unique as a medium is that they give the player agency as the protagonist, that they put them into the shoes of a character, more than any other medium can, then we do need violent, sadistic and misogynistic characters in our games.

Whitewashing out despicable characters just because they are the protagonist of a game seems like unusually restrictive. A great many respected movies, tv series or books would not be able to exist with such a restriction. Breaking Bad anyone?

If we want to tell stories about sadism and misogyny (and we should), then that might (in some cases) require us to take on the role of such characters. Kratos is not a nice person. He is not a role model. Quite the contrary, he is despicable.

Simply by commiting acts of inhumanity in the guise of Kratos does not neccessarily glorify them. Quite the contrary, they can disgust the player, maybe going so far as to question the protagonist or even turn off the game, as one commenter in the facebook thread remarked.

Granted, God of War often visually emphasizes acts of violence (zooming, slow motion) and portrays women as weak sex objects (naked breasts, sex gameplay). An argument would be that this are tropes of the action genre and the time period of ancient Greece. The issue still stands that this is problmatic in and of it self. at least there is some cultural context for the nudity though, when compared to purely exploitative games such as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

And adressing the second point:

God of War does not provide context for Kratos’ actions.
I simply disagree and personally believe God of War provides a sufficient amount of context. It does so without lecturing and obviously spelling it out for everyone. It also does not place the following at the center of it’s themes and makes sure the player notices but it is there.

Let’s first look at many action games where the protagonist murders hundreds of enemy combatants and is heralded as the hero. Gears of War is an excellent example, that Anjin previously dissected and brought up in the Facebook thread. Here the game ends with a genocide of the „evil“ Locust race and the protagonists cheer and celebrate. The basic story of many an action game.

In God of War on the other hand Kratos is not a hero, at least not in the modern sense. Nowhere (as far as I can remember) does the game portray Kratos as the „good guy“. Quite the contrary. The inhabitants of this world fear him and flee at his sight. He is infamous for the atrocities he has commited. He is capable of great feats. And just like the heroes within ancient stories „great“ does not mean „good“.

Yet the game does not explicitly tell us that Kratos is not a nice person. It doesn’t say „you are playing the bad guy“. The player has to come to his own conclusions. Which is often helped since gameplay and story are well intertwined.

While personally playing God of War there is a section where Athens is being attacked by the gods and Kratos storms the city searching for something. Now here the player can simply run through the streets toward his goal, or he can break open doors and open chests. Since chests often contain valuable items as soon as I spied the first chest through a window I started breaking in all the doors and clearing out all the chests. After a few doors I suddenly noticed that I, out of my own accord, spurred only by the promise of reward, had effectively pillaged and ransacked houses without the game ever telling me to. And there were a few scenes like these in God of War.

Without giving clear context, God of War leaves things open to interpretation and of allows us to come to our own conclusions. Granted that might mean that some people come to conclusions I (or Anjin) do not agree with (such as idolizing Kratos and accepting the values he acts by) but that does not invalidate the story.

So to reiterate:

1. To tell stories about the human condition, we do need despicable protagonists with questionable morals and values, who perform inhumane acts against their fellow man.
2. Context does not need to be spelled out completely. (It needs to be there though) Stories that make you come to your own conclusions are stronger for it.

There’s a wealth of great pictures there. Granted, most of it is derelict and abandoned places but these have a certain charm. So if you’re interested in the topic of space (which you are likely to be judging from you looking at this page) give it a look.

Especially since I’ve joined him and will be starting to bring my brand of space and inspiration to the page. Where Kai focuses on photographs I will try and add concept artwork from artists around the world. If you’re interested and want to have some inspiring images in your stream every now and then simply like the page. Also if you have nice artwork, feel free to send it our way – please refer an artist though since we do not want to upload images without proper credit.

We hope you enjoy what we do.

Also yes, I’m still working on the Archetypical Spaces articles. A new one will be up sometimes this month. I promise.

Aliases: The Labyrinth*, the Puzzle, the Dungeon, the Cave, the Caverns

Sidenote: A labyrinth has only one convoluted path and no crossroads. A maze has dead endss and at least one correct path. Thus a maze is not a labyrinth but people often confuse the terms, which is why the term is listed above.

The Maze, like the Wilderness, is a common space. My theory for this lies in the fact that many video games focus very much on challenges, and these two space archetypes have very strong obstacle components. You’ll see what I mean by that during this article.

Core Theme

The Maze is at it’s heart a spatially complex place. Finding one’s way around a Maze is not easy to do because the space is deliberately made hard to read and understand. Either through visual similarities, structural complexities, shifting tectonics, impossible connections and other things. This makes it very difficult for the visitor to create cognitive maps of the region.

So here the key challenge is to get from point A to point B through the seemingly interchangeable corridors and rooms. The goal is to reach the Mazes exit (or a special place within) to progress. And to do so one has to successfully navigate the complex layout.

As with the Wilderness, the Maze is not a place of habitation for the visitor. He is a stranger and clearly not at home here. However there’s less of an urgent threat, so the visitor may linger and ponder his choices before pressing on.

Diegetic Layer

In the storyworld the Maze is a place that people stay away from. It is less an actively hostile place like the Wilderness but its danger stems from it’s treacherous structure. Where the Wilderness has a danger that radiates outward, the Maze draws it, it swallows people: Many an adventurer or curious youth ventured forth into the Maze only to get lost forever.

So whether the Maze is of natural or man-made origin, it is not a place to live in. Instead it is feared and guarded or locked as to prevent other unfortunate souls from vanishing within it’s cavernous depths. And there are certainly many myths and stories surrounding the origin and/or purpose of a place so strange. All of them built on half-truths since there’s nobody who can bring forth actual first hand knowledge from within. It’s a sort of perceptual void.

Spatio-visual Layer

The presentation and shape of a Maze often emphasizes the similarity and uniformness. For example to make it more difficult to navigate the Maze, the walls all look the same and have similar spatial characteristics (same height and width). This makes different rooms and corridors hard to tell apart, further complicating the players process of forming a mental map of the place.

This similarity of spaces is also well illustrated by an example from the the classic game Colossal Cave Adventure. While the entire game space has characteristics of a Maze it is most evident in its two actual maze sections. In one maze the text output is the same regardless of user input (“You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”). In the other there are slight variations in the text, while the main content remains the same and thus easy to confuse.

Another route of making it harder to form cognitive maps is by actively changing the layout of the Maze, whether it is with or without awareness of the player. That is the structure and setup of the Maze change as walls twist, shift, move and transform.

And if that doesn’t do the trick there’s still the option unique to virtual spaces to create truly illogical spaces. Linking far removed doorways with one another or building escher-like constructs with changing perspective and gravity are perfectly possible.

Regardless of the means used in the construction of the maze it is often a very unusual place. Such a structure is unlikely to be man-made in many semi-realistic scenarios. Because of this the Maze often takes on the mantle of caves or caverns. Through their unstructured rocky surfaces they are difficult to discern from one another both spatially and visually. This uniformness thus stems from their nature and not from a conscious architect.

Additionally an indoor or underground presentation effectively rules out aerial reconnaissance or climbing over walls, something that might be possible in open air Mazes such as garden mazes.

One further advantage of the often used cave presentation is the fact that this makes it easy to include darkness and reduced sight conditions to further hamper navigation.

Another way of bringing the Maze into a more realistic scenario is, oddly enough, for it to exist elsewhere. The Maze often makes an appearance as an imagined, dream-like space. An Example are the drug-fueled fever dreams of Max Payne 1 and 2.

The Maze also makes demands in regards to the perspective used. Due to the nature of the spatial challenge it is not really suited for games of perfect information. That is to say if the player has a perfect overview over the Maze it’s spatial challenge is effectively negated.

Seeing a maze completely is at best suitable as a challenge for children as found in coloring books. Otherwise the space often takes on the form of a different archetype, even if it is presented as a maze. The level in Pac-Man for example: Even though it looks like a maze it is not a Maze archetype. The challenge is not to reach a goal and to figure out how to get there. Instead it is much more likely to be an Arena, another archetype I will deal with at a later date.

Narrative Layer

If the Maze is given narrative significance, which it often is, then it is usually done as a challenge for the protagonist. He sets out to do what many have failed at: to successfully navigate the treacherous Maze.

There can be many different reasons for this such as the search for the elixir or to rescue someone lost. Whatever the reason, the fact that it is hidden in a Maze can tell us something in itself. Usually it means that the target is so valuable that it is worth hiding it in a structure built for that express purpose. A structure that has no other purpose but to guard the target. And if the Maze is man-made then it speaks of a certain obsessiveness and protectiveness in the character behind it’s construction.

In cases where the Maze is a non-real place it can come to represent the inner strife of a character. Here the character is the architect of his own maze, building elaborate mental defenses to protect himself. Here the cues that help the player navigate can also tell us something about the character. A protagonist led by a cleansing light will be a different than one following the blood trails of his slain family.

Functional Layer

In essence the Maze is a spatial puzzle. Unless it’s randomly generated or changed, it meets all the criteria for a puzzle: There is at least one solution to the problem (getting to the “exit”) and the solution is perfectly repeatable once it’s been found.

Puzzles within Puzzles

Because the Maze on its own is a spatial puzzle it usually puts the player in a mental state of cerebral problem solving. This is why it is often combined with other riddles or puzzles. Usually progress is restricted unless a certain puzzle can be solved. Very often these puzzles include locks and keys in some form or other.

Features such as hidden passages, secret rooms and treasure can also work well here. This way the exploratory player can be rewarded, even if he does end up in a dead end, there might be something else to find there.

No Maps

Providing a map to the player would quickly destroy the spatial challenge of the Maze. Because of this it is often omitted but the player may easily draw one of his own as he progresses. Since he has drawn it himself though it is often far from perfect and may have some faults. Especially if the place shifts or changes things and the map starts to be unreliable. These changes may be hidden to confuse the player or he can be made aware of them. Either way, this tremendously complicates map-making if that is desired.

Visceral Mazes

As mentioned in the introduction, the Maze is a rare archetype to meet in it’s purest incarnation. It is a cerebral and slow challenge and thus often provides too little tension for many games and gamers. If it is included it is usually done so by adding more visceral (as opposed to cerebral) elements to it. Countdown timers, traps or active spatial challenges such as jumping or movement timing can often be found in Mazes. This can quickly move the focus of the space away from the Maze and change the key challenge. An example would be a Maze filled with monsters where defeating the beasts becomes the key challenge and objective. This then changes the flavor of the space and turns it into a different archetype: The Dungeon, as can be found for example in Diablo.

Example: The Mansion

The complex, gigantic mansion is an often seen trope in video games. This can be found in action games (Wolfenstein 3D) and horror games (Resident Evil). Most notably though, it’s often found in adventure games. Maniac Mansion is a prime example. Considering that many old adventure games are basically a set of narratively connected riddles this makes a lot of sense. Most adventure games are exclusively Maze spaces: A set of riddles interlinked in a larger spatial puzzle. Granted the challenge is not set through having all rooms look similar, but because the path to be traversed is abstract and obscured.

Summary

Diegetic

• Dangerous to visit
• Seductive Lure, draws people in
• Surrounded by myths and stories, no real facts

Spatio-visual

• Reptetive geometry and visuals
• Illogical tectonics
• Restricted perspective, often indoors

Narrative

• Space is a challenge
• Something or someone valuable is well hidden
• Can represent the complicated inner world

Functional

• Changing, shifting or randomly generated geometry
• Riddles, puzzles, secret passages and rewards
• Often combined with more visceral challenge to provide thrill

The Wilderness is an incredibly common trope in video games. It will become evident why this is the case as I dissect this trope. The Wilderness is so common in fact, that many games are built only of spaces that belong to this archetype. Action games very often use only this one pattern, something they can do because their stories are often so minimal. Would they want to tell more complex stories, they would most likely have to include a wider variety of spaces.

Core Theme

(this section describes the essential kernel that determines this archetype and makes it recognizably different from all others)

The Wilderness is a place of danger and uncertainty. At it’s core it is an untamed place. Barely touched by civilization it is a dangerous place, a sort of manifestation of the ever present fear of the unknown.

This space is not fit for people to dwell in. In this space the player is a stranger. He is not at home nor is he welcome. He is – so to say – in enemy territory. It is not a place to stand around in idly.

The Wilderness is usually a place that has to be traversed. Often the reason is simply to get to a new place. And since these islands of civilization are far apart one has to cross the intermittent wilderness. Another common reason is to seek out something within the Wilderness. This may be a treasure or object of renown or importance, or a person that has removed himself from civilization for one reason or another.

Diegetic Layer

(This section describes how the Wilderness is treated and seen by the inhabitants of the storyworld)

In the storyworld itself the Wilderness is usually what demarks civilized areas. It is the space that surrounds safe places and thus marks their borders. Beyond the city the Wilderness begins.

For the people living in the predictable safety of civilization the Wilderness is a place to be feared. Most people of this world hesitate to tread there lightly – and if so then only if they are well protected. Only a hardy few make their living in this dangerous place, as guides or hunters. And even fewer dare live there. And even those are most likely dangerous, driven into exile and twisted by their environment.

People urge you to be careful, giving (or selling) you equipment to get you through the wilds. [It is dangerous to go alone. Take this.] They will tell stories of the Wilderness and the things that dwell within. Tales of people succumbing to the hazards, vanishing forever.

But that’s not enough, because when night comes, they lock their doors and man the walls. Not only is the Wilderness a dangerous place, it’s influence also extends beyond its borders. It can be the cauldron from which terrible beasts spring forth. Out of the thick underbrush they come at night to steal human children.

Spatio-Visual Layer

(This section explains typical tropes when it comes to the architectural make up of these spaces and their visual presentation)

The core themes of the Wilderness are uncertainty, uncontrollability and the danger that grows out of those.

Uncertainty often manifests as a limited visibility. It is difficult to overlook what’s happening and to get a complete sense of the space. This means that the geometry is often complex and fractured with many hidden nooks and crannies. There’s a lot of visual cover and sight lines are usually uncomfortably short.

There’s no clear road or path which to follow. The lack of a safe path makes it impossible to see which way is the least dangerous. The Wilderness also often features very poor lighting conditions and/or fog, additionally obscuring it’s dangers.

Narrative Layer

(This section details the typical purpose of the Wilderness in the context of a story)

As with all places in a story it can be of vital importance or provide only a short intermission. In the latter purpose the Wilderness can easily provide some action and suspense to create contrast to the slower paced segments of a story.

If the Wilderness is the place of a vital story beat then it is often where the character is tested. Its uncertainty brings forth many challenges that the protagonist has to face. In video games these are usually to be mastered to continue but in other narrative media a failure is an equally acceptable outcome.

However it can also be a place of unexpected revelations or encounters. Since little is known about the Wilderness, it is where new insights come to light or old items, places, people or truths can be found.

This can also bring out new facets of known characters. The way they deal with the dangers of the Wilderness (or their fear of those) can tell us something about them.

Also like all challenges the Wilderness can be used to show the growing power of the characters. A place that was to be feared has grown familiar and harmless.

Functional Layer

(This section talks about game and interaction mechanics that correspond with the core themes of this archetype)

In Gameplay terms the wilderness is where danger lurks. This can be anything from bandits or pirates to wild beast and natural hazards.

It’s key challenge is usually to reach one’s goal, suffering as little harm as possible.

Uncertainty of Navigation

Navigation is often unclear. There are no or few man-made roads or paths and so a degree of exploration is required. This unordered uncertainty is important to make the space feel unsafe.

Often the space supports exploration beyond a bare minimum, offering hidden spaces, both rewarding and dangerous. The meaningful choice can be whether to risk the danger and leave the beaten path in the hopes of discovering something or to stay safe.

Uncontrollable Danger

Danger is often hidden and unpredictable. The movement patterns and appearance of enemies is hard to predict and so every step needs to be carefully measured.

Often the Wilderness features random encounters, where the dangers are different every time one visits the place. These encounters are also usually infinite, that means the supply of danger is never exhausted. It is usually impossible to make the space secure through violence.

On the other hand in many RPGs this can lead to using these spaces for grinding. If this happens then the space has lost it’s danger and has become something else to the player. This also leads to something else, where the environments need to keep up with the escalating power of the protagonist. This makes the Wildernesses grow increasingly diegetically absurd.

Example 1: The Dark Forest

The clearest and most traditional expression of the Wilderness is the dark forest. A trope that often appears in classic fairytales. From Hansel & Gretel to Little Red Riding Hood, the Forest is a place of danger, where one is likely to be lost and eaten.

Example 2: The Dreamland

Another common and very pure manifestation of the Wilderness is the dreamland. The dreamland is a space that is not truly real within the diegetic world. It is strange and dangerous through this alone. An example use of this in video games is the Fade as it appears in Dragon Age: Origins.

Summary

Diegetic

• Untamed
• Dangerous to be in
• Feared by the general populace

Spatio-visual

• Fractured geometry
• Visual cover, short sight-lines
• Poor visibility (fog, lighting)

Narrative

• Danger can be a challenge
• Hidden truths, facts and items can be uncovered
• Can show growing power of the protagonist(s)

Functional

• Exploration through varying paths and niches
• Hidden treasure and hazards (exploration, random)
• Random encounters, unpredictable enemies