Inverse - ⚔️ Reviewing 'God of War: Ragnarök'

Friday

Nov 04 2022

Gaming's favorite sad dad is back — and sadder than ever. God of War Ragnarok, the continuing saga of gruff Spartan warrior Kratos and his twiggy son Atreus, launches for PlayStation 4 and 5 on November 9. Ragnarok somehow manages to outdo the epic, Norse-inspired spectacle of its predecessor. Impeccable combat and exploration make for a world you'll want to get lost in, even if you'll probably get your butt kicked a few dozen times along the way.

But if you loved the terse and understated storytelling of 2018's God of War, you might find yourself a little frustrated by the sequel's "tell, don't show" approach to narrative. Ragnarok is a thoroughly entertaining romp, but can't quite overtake Elden Ring in 2022's Game of the Year race.

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Review

Gaming

God of War: Ragnarök is an incredibly epic sequel with one big problem

“So you still kill gods, you’re just sad about it now?”

That’s the gist of what someone says to our grizzled Spartan warrior Kratos in a critical scene about two-thirds of the way through God of War Ragnarok. It’s a chuckle-worthy throwaway line in the moment, but it stuck with me after seeing the credits roll.

That’s because it’s representative of why Ragnarok never quite manages to meet the remarkably high bar set by God of War (2018), despite being expanded and enhanced in so many ways. What begins as a somber tale of a father and son out to save the world quickly becomes too chipper and snarky (dare I say Whedonesque?) for its own good.

Spelunking around the Nine Realms of Norse myth is exhilarating, with more refined combat, badder boss brawls, and dazzling spaces to explore. But God of War Ragnarok makes a handful of strange narrative choices — most of which I can’t explicitly talk about here — that undermine the growth of its central father-son duo and the stakes of their journey. It’s definitely more God of War (2018), which is far from a bad thing. But it still plays like a late-gen PS4 game, and never quite manages to feel as groundbreaking or fresh as its predecessor.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Science

One of the coldest places on Earth is on fire — and it’s getting worse

On a summer day in June 2020, a small town in the typically frigid Far East of Russia set a new world record — and not a good one. The temperature exceeded 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time ever in the region above the Arctic Circle. The World Meteorological Organization said the temperature was “more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic.”

2020’s record-breaking temperatures in Siberia hit home to the world what scientists knew: the Arctic was warming faster than the rest of the planet, creating devastating consequences like massive wildfires.

Two new studies reveal the extreme fire season in 2020 was no mere anomaly, but, rather, a pattern we can expect to become chillingly common in a warming world. These findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Inverse - ⚔️ Reviewing 'God of War: Ragnarök'

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