In Round 1 of the debut edition of Vs. Mode, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo praised God of War II's epic feel, but accused it of covering familiar territory in its level design and story. We countered with our position that the quality of gameplay is far more important than originality or innovation. After returning to our corners overnight, Totilo and Level Up came out swinging for Round 2 of our exchange. If a game is so good that its sequel can't be improved upon, does that prove that the medium is maturing? Can a videogame's story match those of ancient myths? Read on to find out. Of course, we'd get your reaction to both God of War II and this debate, so please add your own comments in the message boards.

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To: N'Gai Croal

Fr: Stephen Totilo

Date: March 5, 2007

Re: Why God of War II Is A Different Kind of Sequel

N'Gai,

I confess. God of War II made me shake my ass. Happy now?

I'm on a flight to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, having left my PS2 and GOWII in New York, with the game saved a little past the halfway point. (You forgot to tell me how far into the game you are. Let me know next time, ok?)

So your email: you're trying to squeeze some honesty out of me. You're trying to get me to acknowledge the undeniable ass-shaking power of Kratos' second heavy metal album. Well let me clear something up. I like the game. I said so the first time. I'd recommend this game to quite a few gamers. (Not to everyone mind you-.I see God of War II as a somewhat alienating taste: picture a world the opposite of ours, in which almost all games are played by women and girls. Some suit in marketing decides The World Needs Games for Boys and Men Who Miss Being Boys. They produce their equivalent of some girl-game with ponies and a pink box, a game starring a snarling, muscular action-figure who rips off his foes' sword-bearing arms the better to stab them with, snaps the backs and twists the necks of beautiful women who live to harm him and pulls the wings off bugs before crushing them beneath his boot--all that's missing is a magnifying glass secondary weapon and salt for the slugs.)

Anyway...don't get me wrong? The game's damn good. But you brought me into this with your initial Newsweek post, and in the process raised the idea that this fine game is part of a special breed of fine game: the kind of late-gen triumph the likes of Paper Mario and Yoshi's Island. It is to that standard I held the game while playing it and then writing an email about it to you. And it is that standard that I feel GOWII doesn't quite fit, not for entirely bad reasons, as I'll get to in a moment.

First, though, let me answer your questions about originality and my apparent demand for it. If I really can't stand [a lack of] originality I've certainly chosen the wrong favorite type of entertainment. Hell, I think the first game I ever owned for a home console was K.C. Munchkin. So I knew what I was getting into. Also, I've bought enough pints of the same flavor of ice cream to certainly relish the return of certain, familiar sensations.

So you asked me if I'd dock an artist points for sampling themselves. Probably I would not, but I did stop buying Mobb Deep albums quite some time ago, because a couple of albums after the impeccable "The Infamous" they were still rapping about the same stuff to the same style. Why should I care for their carbon copies when I can get more enjoyment from the original? Games are different, though, right? They tend to get better in sequels? Repetition and refinement of content benefits the gamer? So shouldn't GOWII be the better for repeating stuff? That's what this Pikmin 2 and Sly 3 devotee would have thought. But, no, there's a difference.

Your other question, asking why Cory Barlog shouldn't be able to borrow from David Jaffe, is similar enough that I want to handle this all at once.

Okay now: Why GOWII Is A Different Kind of Sequel.

In the history of video games, there are a few examples where simple technology didn't prevent creators from Getting It Right the first time. Donkey Kong needed no improvements. Nor did Tetris. Most everything else, however, benefited from repetition and refinement. Artistically sublime as it is, Super Mario Brothers is not as fun as some of its sequels, and if you don't agree with that, you probably can about enough other big game series--Final Fantasy, Zelda, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto--to agree with the notion that video game sequels are often better than their predecessors, far more frequently than movie sequels and Meatloaf albums are.

Complains of sequelitis are, from a consumer-who-wants-good-games standpoint, a canard. The Bestest Games Everrr lists are always loaded with sequels.

I bet we agree on this. The shifting sands of the shifting silicon used to power ever more advanced game systems have given game developers the technical headroom to always push game design further. So games, mostly, keep getting better. This has been going on even as so few fundamental problems of creating interactive entertainment have been solved: how to make a memorable character, how to make swimming fun, how to keep a camera focused on what the player needs to see, how to make video game characters not seem dumb, how to make complex controls intuitive for novice, how to write one memorable line of speech as memorable as "I'll be back" or "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn," etc. Technological improvements aided the effort to solve some of these. But still, game developers have had a long list of achievements to get to.

So may I say, uncreative, chattering reporter that I am, that with so little truly and timelessly accomplished in video game creation, it has been (about to get myself in big trouble) EASY for games to stand out as being great, especially when improving on the ideas packed in games that came before?

Moviemakers have it comparatively rough. There have been dozens--hundreds?--of movies that were brilliant from start to finish. There have been thousands of movies (more?) that have had brilliant moments or qualities. You can articulate this better than me. Film is one of your fortes. But games? The teams making these things are juggling so much and working with such temporary technology, that few games they create can't be trumped in years--sometimes months. Last year's graphical breakthrough game would get lost in the crowd by next year. The game-with-great-control-innovation of 2007 may merely the source material for a new standard three years on. So it goes. It makes things exciting. The tide of quality rises year after year; it's yet to recede because more smart people are pouring in every year.

Eventually, however, there will come a time, when technology either stops improving, or the technological improvements cease to matter as much as they used to. And when this happens I believe games will become more like movies. Game developers will be getting their genius creations right the first time. Classics that are made will remain classics a decade later with no caveats needed that you have to be in the right frame of mind to tolerate their frame rate or other archaic aspects.

Getting to the point--finally!--I think God of War II and my reaction to it might signal that, for me, gaming is getting really close to the milestone I just described. The reason is because this second game confirms the first's excellence.

I think God of War (the first one) is great. It's exciting. It's fun. It's svelte in design. And I cared about it. That last comment is a bit weird, I know, because caring isn't widely seen as a standard for games. That it's not is actually potentially odd to an outsider. Hit TV series are often hits because you care about the characters. Same with hit novels. But caring was never a prerequisite for gaming. I didn't really care about Princess Peach or Mario's quest to save her. I just did it, because I knew there was fun in doing it. God of War surprised me, then, in making me care about Kratos. In between savoring the wonderful combat mechanics and spectacular set pieces I found myself caring about the life of the man I was controlling. Was it because he started the game leaping off a cliff to kill himself and I was playing out a flashback? Was it because the twin stock plots of selling one's soul for power and losing one's family to greed somehow added up to a compelling quest for revenge? I felt Kratos' anger. His sufficiently violent stabs and strikes triggered by my fingertips felt proportionate. He was pissed. He was guilty. And I was going to help him work his issues out, one severed head at a time.

The first note the sequel hits involves an homage to the suicide dive of the first game. Nice touch. Then we get a wonderful battle against a colossus, establishing a game-long visual theme of Kratos in combat against giants. Fun stuff. Then we get the plot: a god betrays Kratos, a powerful sword is lost. And I've got to say, I didn't real care. I cared when his quest involved his family. With the sequel: this time it's impersonal.

Believe me, not caring about this new quest isn't a showstopper. The game is really fun. But I don't care about what's going on. I feel like I'm controlling a Kratos who signed up for a return role just to cash in. As such, I feel like what this game lacks in heart. It's compensating for that by trying to one-up the artistry and spectacle. In many levels it is succeeding. Ultimately I find the second game sumptuous but less driving.

So when I see Kratos running across a big chain or sacrificing a soldier or plunging to Hades I appreciate the nod to the past, but I wonder if the game has the stuff to be greater than the first. This was not the standard I held Yoshi's Island and Paper Mario to back in the day for two reasons. For one, both games tried to do some fundamental things different than their series predecessors (I mentioned those things in my last letter). For two, their predecessors didn't leave as much room for improvement. That first God of War does character, place, adventure, gameplay variety, spectacle, fun all so well, that its sequel has a brutally tough act to follow.

So here's the siren going off in my head while I'm playing it: I'm playing the rare game sequel that can't trump its predecessor because the original did too much well that still holds up.

In my book this is great news. The harder it gets for game sequels to trump game firsts - the more things get like movies - the more advanced we can measure game design's overall progress to be.

Now let's dig into this game. Here come the spoilers. SPOILERS!

-Kratos loses his abilities early in the game and has to get them back--or get new powers--one by one. Just like in all the Metroid games. What do you think? Archaic design? Or necessary gameplay device to train new players into the game and give veterans a new way to feel themselves becoming empowered?

-Kratos is no longer propelled by his own guilt. Now he's looking to find the sisters of fate. Do you care as much? Does it matter if you do?

-The blocking button. I never use it. I'm probably not getting the most effective combos because of that. But who cares? I button-mash this game, with the occasional moment of picking a specific attack. You?

-Player can't control the camera. I like this! The game controls the camera well enough. As I wrote recently in my MTV Multiplayer blog, we gamers should get to be actors, not forced to be cinematographers. Agree?

-Rumble vs. gesture. I'm loving the rumble feedback I'm getting during combat. And I couldn't tell you what motion control could add to this. Maybe better Pegasus controls. That it?

OK. You talk some specifics too. What do you want me to chew on?

-Stephen

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To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: March 13, 2007

Re: We're Definitely Not on Sera Anymore

Stephen,

We've previously discussed your observations about the nature of videogame sequels (that they generally get better) as compared to movie sequels (they're often worse), and I of course agree. I also agree that God of War was a great game that, when all summed up, God of War II hasn't surpassed. I even agree that so far--when I left New York to go to San Francisco for GDC, I was at the end of disc one, trying to get disc two to load [Note: while a pair of review discs were sent to journalists, the finished game ships on a single DVD]--it hasn't had an emotional hook as strong as Kratos stepping off the cliff to fall to his death, or an emotional beat as powerful as the revelation that Kratos had inadvertently killed his wife and son--and that his ghost-white pallor resulted from their ashes being bonded to his skin--along the gameplay that ensued following that story point. (Though you're misremembering the original when you say that the quest involving his family is why you cared about that game. First of all, his quest was for revenge against Ares; second, you didn't find out that his family had anything to do with his quest for revenge until the last hour of the game.)

My caveats notwithstanding, you're still dead wrong about the game's accomplishment--it is a late-gen triumph. Here's why:

The vast majority of videogame sequels don't make any radical changes to the lead character between games; while situations may change, the characters rarely do. So when Cory Barlog and his collaborators at Sony Santa Monica sat down to outline God of War II, they must have already decided that despite his ascension to Olympus, Kratos was still going to be angry with the gods and pissed off at the world. Hey, if I'd killed my wife and child under a god-inspired berserker rage, I too would still be pissed. But by not letting go of my rage, I'd be petty, childish and tragically human--the same attributes that typify the major figures, divine or not, in Greek mythology. And if I were the petty, childishly human side of a newly minted god, I just might engineer my own fall from grace, and use that as an excuse to let a whole new crop of deities taste my rage.

That's good writing.

Barlog and co. took their creative constraint--that Kratos has to be more or less the same man that he was in the original game--and used it as the jumping off point for a compact, compelling premise. It's not as simply moving as the opening of the first God of War, but it's psychologically sound, and it's far from impersonal, as you wrote. They didn't phone this one in.

SPOILER ALERT!

Where God of War II becomes even more thrilling is in the setup that comes immediately after the opening chapter, which concludes when Zeus deals Kratos a mortal blow. Kratos is then saved by the narrator of the first and second games, who finally reveals her identity: she's Gaia, one of the Titans, the elder gods who birthed the deities of Olympus. That came as a surprise to me; I thought she was just the narrator. Then Gaia (re)tells the story of Zeus slaying the Titans--a story that in the usual telling, casts the Titans as the cruel antagonists to Zeus' heroic protagonist--from her own point of view. And in her telling, Zeus becomes the cruel antagonist, punishing all of the Titans for sins committed by his father Cronos alone.

Gaia then offers the assistance of the Titans to Kratos so that he can kill Zeus, which Kratos eagerly accepts. (Notice how he's always getting the gods to help him get his kill on?) Does this make Gaia good and Zeus evil? Or is Gaia merely another capricious god with her own agenda, whom we perceive as "good" because she's helping our protagonist? Was Gaia watching Kratos all along to see whether he could serve as her instrument of revenge against Zeus? Those questions hadn't been answered by the point at which I put the game on hold to get on a plane for San Francisco.

This is terrific writing. Most games don't raise such questions or support such interpretations.

MORE SPOILERS AHEAD!

In the first God of War, when Athena was Kratos' patron deity, his enemies were the traditional villains of Greek literature: harpies, Cyclops, gorgons and the Minotaur. But in what is God of War II's narrative and gameplay masterstroke, now that Kratos is backed by Gaia and the Titans, encounters, he's not just fighting the same old villains--he takes on the heroes from Greek mythology: Prometheus, Theseus, Jason and Perseus, as antagonists, rivals and boss characters. In the first game, Kratos was a literary anti-hero; in the sequel, he's literally an anti-hero.

We're definitely not on Sera anymore. This is incredible writing.

It's good enough to stand alongside the original myths. So fine, Paper Mario and Yoshi's Island were late-generation gameplay innovators, whereas God of War II is a late-generation refiner. But I seriously doubt their storytelling was as innovative as what Barlog and his collaborators have achieved here. If this were the story of Theseus, Jason or Perseus, Kratos would be their Minotaur, their Medusa, their Polyphemos; a test that they would face on the road to completing their respective quests. But it's Kratos's story, and these legendary heroes are the tests that we must face in order to complete the game. With this shift in perspective from the first game to the second embodied not only in the narrative, but also in the gameplay, the "gametelling" (that's my second neologism in this series, for those of you keeping score at home) in God of War II is easily among the best of any game I've played.

Were the College Board to hire me to revamp their SAT analogies, God of War II would be to God of War as "Aliens" is to "Alien," as "Terminator II: Judgment Day" is to "The Terminator" or--dare I say it?--"The Godfather Part II" is to "The Godfather": creations that, while they don't surpass their predecessors' out-of-the-box high water mark, are still great works in their own right. When Universal Pictures bought the film rights to God of War, I thought that it was a great premise for a movie bolstered by a strong visual hook, but I didn't really see how they could make a great movie from the source material story without beefing up the story. But after playing through half or more of God of War II "and having experienced the series of revelations at the end of Act I, the reversals of perspective and the confrontation with one Greek hero after another--the world that David Jaffe created and Cory Barlog expanded upon is finally rich enough for a movie, a novel, or any other narrative-first medium. That's why God of War II is an unquestionable late-gen triumph.

I'll stop here so that we don't lose our remaining readers. But in my next post, I promise to tackle your questions. And I plan to point out some areas where the gameplay--and the gametelling--could have been improved.

Cheers,

N'Gai