God of War: A Narrative Analysis

Robert Cassar's 2013 Eludamos analysis examines the God of War trilogy (GOW1 through GOW3) through a close-reading, structuralist lens, with the author playing the games on PlayStation 3 over six weeks. The central thesis is that the series' narrative is largely fixed by its developers and only loosely tethered to gameplay. Cassar maps the story against Christopher Vogler's twelve-stage Hero's Journey, finding that each installment and the trilogy as a whole conform to a three-act structure that recurs at the level, title, and series scales. Quick-time events, in this reading, serve to test skill and reflex rather than to alter narrative outcomes, and players' choices rarely shape the story outside of boss encounters.

The analysis frames the series as a Greek-style tragedy centered on Kratos' search for catharsis, and it devotes considerable attention to the role of violence. Cassar argues that the trilogy openly incites and celebrates brutality, which drives progression and pushes the protagonist toward a homicidal figure, thereby implicating the player in that violence. Against this backdrop, the ending of GOW3, in which the player is compelled to kill Kratos, is read as a limited but genuine moral dimension. Cassar concludes that Kratos is a fully developed, consistent character whose redemption through forgiveness follows the monomyth.

Methodologically, the paper draws on Nielsen et al., Campbell, Murray, and Thompson, and it relies on interpretive rather than quantitative evidence. Its broader conclusion is that narrative in video games remains subordinate to gameplay, a position it supports with reference to Tavinor's argument that interpretive engagement is driven by gameplay challenges. The author notes, however, that developers increasingly bridge the two through techniques such as quick-time events and camera-pan overviews. Drawing on Murray's predictions of media convergence, Cassar contends that mature themes can be handled without diminishing enjoyment, while cautioning that nonlinear formats adopted for their own sake are not necessarily the best path for games' storytelling.