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tapioca-puddingg · 4 months

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Why GoWR Valhalla Is Important

Hey. It's me again. This time I'm not yelling about Kingdom Hearts or Drakengard, but I wanted to talk about God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla today and why I think it's important in trauma-centered narratives. This isn't a detailed analysis, just me spitballing.

SPOILER WARNING: There will be spoilers for God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla, so please proceed with caution!

EDITED: 2/26/24

As a brief summary, Kratos spent almost the entirety of GoW 2018 refusing to talk about his past. His guilt, shame, and trauma deeply affected his relationship with his son, to the point where he didn't want to be around Atreus bc he was terrified of being a bad influence on him. It was only when Atreus' life was in danger did it force him to finally admit just a sliver of the truth. Now I don't mean to say that Kratos revealing his godhood wasn't a big deal because it absolutely was, I'm just saying that it's just one piece of a MUCH bigger story. Anyway, he recognized his past mistakes, but the shame was too much for him to openly acknowledge it until damn near the end of the game.

Come Ragnarök, Kratos was pretty much an open book. He had grown SO much in those short years of fimbulwinter: He openly talked about his trauma to Mimir and Freya. He worked so hard to be a good father and a good support system to his friends. He went out of his way to make amends with Freya and restore their friendship. And he fought to restore peace to the Nine Realms.

But come Valhalla, Freya wants to recruit Kratos to be the new God of War of the nine realms, or at least to be a part of the new peacekeeping council that she's putting together. Kratos is extremely hesitant to take up the mantle. He doesn't feel worthy or deserving enough to hold this position given all that he's done. He and Mimir (and later on, Tyr) are constantly going back and forth about it. Both perspectives are completely valid. Valhalla is about Kratos facing his past in a more literal sense; parts of Greece have been manifested from Kratos' memories of it, so it's like he gets to be there in real time again. This is about helping him process what happened and to add some nuance to the conversation. It's like free therapy for Kratos.

It's funny too bc you have both opposing viewpoints being represented. On one hand, you have Mimir and Tyr being the supporting/validating voice, and Helios is the contrarian. Since he's a manifestation of Kratos' memories, he represents the doubts that Kratos has about himself. The harsh voice to show how hard he is on himself, and not without good reason.

The reason why I think Valhalla is so important is bc in media, survivor narratives are often linear. The character just "gets over" their trauma and then that trauma isn't addressed again. It's presented more as a hurdle than a lifelong battle. I guess this goes to show how misunderstood survivorhood is. But that isn't how healing works. We regress sometimes, and sometimes we still mull over the things that have happened to us. We might heal, but that trauma does leave emotional scars. So even after the many leaps and bounds Kratos has made, he's not "over" his past, far from it! It still haunts him every day and every night. Valhalla is Kratos still processing everything. From my own healing journey, I've learned that it takes a long, long time to fully process your trauma, if there even is a "fully", anyway. It takes a long time to learn and understand all the complexities and how it affects you in current day. And it takes even longer to process such a complicated history like Kratos'.

Generally speaking about the idea of processing trauma, I said earlier that survivorhood is extremely misunderstood by the masses. Imo, our society is very anti-victim/anti-survivor. So with that in mind, from the perspective of the audience, some might perceive the processing trauma bit as repetitive or "milking it". These are mediums of entertainment after all, so ofc I understand wanting to put out an engaging story where the audience doesn't lose interest. But screw those ppl lol. We have to understand why we do what we do if we want to do better, and it's amazing that a video game is willing to have these conversations. Being more open about all the nuances of processing trauma, grief, healing, etc will go such a long way.

Even the roguelite gameplay style perfectly reflects this theme. Processing this stuff is slow. It doesn't happen overnight. Unless you're in Valhalla, I suppose.

Okay I said this wasn't a detailed analysis but I lied. I'm a liar now