Poseidon’s Princess
Don’t let the continued alliteration lull you into a false sense of security, this one just feels genuinely icky. From deep within Poseidon’s Chamber midway through God of War 3, a voice cries for help. Kratos finds her, a slave chained to the floor, chest bared for no apparent reason other than boobs for boobs’ sake, and a young woman whose day is about to go from bad to worse.
Despite her protests, he frees her from her imprisonment and forces her to join him on a merry venture, eventually shoving her under a heavy crank to keep a door open so that he may progress. He takes only a few steps before he hears a shriek and the door falls, but only halfway. Whether it’s from morbid curiosity or sickening titillation, most double back to learn of her fate, and find her mangled body jammed in the wheel, a pool of blood painting the floor red.
In the same manner as the Athenian soldier, this hapless woman is nothing more than a solution to progress Kratos’ agenda, but there is a cruelty, if not an underlying glee to the whole affair. To the soldier, Kratos declares, “The Gods demand sacrifice, from all of us.” To this prisoner, whose first reaction upon seeing him is to recoil in horror: “Hold your tongue.” She is an object, no different from a crate, to be wedged in place.
On a storytelling front, it could be considered the degeneration of a man whose lust for vengeance has rendered him practically heartless. On a game design front, however, there is much more to unpack. How exactly are we supposed to care about Kratos’ attempts at becoming a better man in the Nordic hinterlands, when we ultimately know that he is already beyond redemption?
