Even with Xbox’s recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Sony’s future line-up of first-party exclusives is looking very bright. Within the next year or so, PlayStation fans will get to play a sequel toHorizon Zero Dawn,Marvel’s Spider-Man,andGod of War. Each of these titles have already proven themselves to be some of the best video game experiences around, with the promised sequels acting asa primary incentive to pick up a PlayStation 5over an Xbox Series X/S.
However, these games weren’t perfect. Despite repeating waves of critical and commercial success over the years, Sony’s first-party line-up has its fair share of flaws, some of which should be fairly easy to remedy in upcoming sequels.God of Warhas one such problem when it comes to its animations, andRagnarokshould aim to solve it.
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God of War’s Repetitive Animations Are a Chore to Sit Through
The 2018God of Warreboot/sequel hybrid was met with immediate critical acclaim on release. While the series had always been a PlayStation mainstay, and had its own set of die-hard fans,God of Warwas never really considered a “mature” series, despite its gratuitous amount of blood, guts, gore, and nudity.God of War2018 elevated the series to brand-new heights, both in terms of gameplay depth and emotional resonance.
Still, there is one aspect ofGod of Warthat hasn’t held up all too well when revisiting the game a few years later: the game’s repetitive animations. DuringGod of War’s opening hours, the player will learn the basic ins and outs of combat usingthe Leviathan Axeand Kratos' bare fists. These opening combat encounters aren’t perfect, with the same enemies being copy-pasted multiple times, but they do serve as a decent narrative-focused tutorial.
The real problem with the game’s first few combat encounters is the recycled animations that play. The Leviathan Axe and Kratos' fists only have a few animations each, matching the God of War’s combo attacks. The animation that plays for each weapon’s combo repeats every time the player inputs the command. The Axe swings from side-to-side a few times, then swings downward for the combo’s fourth and final move. Kratos' fists have a similar pattern, with a right hook starting the combo and a shield-bash ending the combo on the fifth hit.
The animations themselves are clean and naturalistic,giving Kratos' hits real momentum and weight. But once a player has seen the combo once, they’ve seen all that it has to offer. Unfortunately, these animations start to get very repetitive very quickly.
In a game that’s so laser-focused on quality and polish,God of War’s repeating animations start to stick out like a sore-thumb. The problem only gets worse over time, as the more a player participates inGod of War’s combat encounters, the more they’ll see, starting to take notice of the same cycle of animations.
While players do unlock some upgrades and other weapons later in the game that change up this animation cycle a little, the general structure of the light attack combo will still be seen well up to the final moments of the game. This is undoubtedly an area in whichGod of War Ragnarokneeds to improve.
What God of War Ragnarok Needs to Do To Improve on the First’s Animations
KeepingKratos' combat animations varied inGod of War Ragnarokshould be a relatively simple task. While making a game of such high quality is no easy feat, and nailing a character’s animations can take literal years, Santa Monica Studio is an extremely talented developer and should be able to increase the number of animations for Kratos' weapons with relative ease.
God of War Ragnarokcould even look to its fellow PlayStation exclusiveMarvel’s Spider-ManandMiles Moralesfor an insight into giving players a varied range of animations.Marvel’s Spider-Man- even more so in its spin-offMiles Morales- has a vast range of swing-out animations, helping to keep the game feeling fresh and engaging since the player rarely ever sees the same cycle of repeated animations.Ragnarokcould implement a similar system, whereby Kratos' light attacks have a few different variations that can be swapped in and out at random to create unique cycles.
God of Waris available now on PC and PS4.
