In the face of God of War’s status as a pre-ordained cultural behemoth (the glowing reviews hit a full week before anyone was allowed to actually play it), the question “but is God of War good?” is somewhat futile. Do you enjoy video games? Then you will enjoy God of War. It does all the things that good video games do. It looks pretty. The story is engaging. It dispenses various forms of open world content at an acceptable rate. It may be a tedious grind with mediocre combat, needless loot systems, puddle-shallow story and regressive worldview, but you know, it’s still good. I am a heavy podcast listener, and I have lost count of the God of War segments that involve all parties agreeing that it’s a remarkable achievement, and then proceeding to talk entirely about their frustrations with the grinding, pacing and combat. The game’s failings are not so hidden that only truly enlightened contrarians can see them, they’re out in the open and being expressed by its biggest fans.

And while it would be easy to disagree (check this out: God of War sucks), the reality is that this consensus is — if not true — then certainly somewhere in the ballpark. A little thing like being kinda crappy doesn’t change the fact that God of War is the platonic ideal of a video game, making good on some of our subculture’s most treasured myths.

To back that up: God of War, despite being a massive departure for the series, is not a reboot. Instead, God of War exhibits growth — it is a game about growth. With its opening shot of Kratos’ bending down and placing his hand upon a tree in solemn tribute, God of War plants its flag and says “look how far we have come,” as you press the R1 button and the slam your axe into the wood. And this growth is not merely for show, it is the game’s beating heart. The game wants us to marvel at Kratos, his beard, his love for his son, his twisted yet well meaning wisdom, all while thinking of how he slammed a door into the cracked and bleeding head of a Greek God every time we jammed the circle button. Kratos has grown up with his audience, with his creators, with all of us, with video games themselves. The growth resonates because it is built on perhaps video games’ greatest lie: that we are always moving forward. That with every passing year and technological breakthrough we move further from toys and closer to art. Despite all of this purported growth, God of War is never a critique of the player, or the creators, or even Kratos himself; for it is not redemption, it is validation. It is how far we have come. It is a GTX 1080 for your soul.

God of War perfectly threads the impossible needle, balancing the aesthetics of quote unquote “serious art” with player empowerment, making its audience feel like they’ve confronted something within themselves while never for a single moment making them feel truly threatened. It hits this sweet spot with greater precision than any game before, never committing too much to its themes that it loses the audience, nor so little that it completely collapses into empty nihlism. It is the landing Ken Levine could never stick.

All God of War needs to make this magic trick work is the collective amnesia of its audience.

Because God of War only works when the series exists as half-forgotten memories of a past long left behind. The illusion breaks when you go back and play them and see for yourself just how far we have come. Despite its framing in the new game, and in culture at large, the God of War trilogy is both more and less than an indulgent parade of hyper-violent revenge. The bulk of God of War (2005) is an extended, quiet puzzle dungeon, the mythical scale of the gods cast against the smallness of Kratos’ mortal form. All three games flow effortlessly from setpiece to setpiece, with a sense of pace that has been lost as the budgetary concerns of AAA video games have abandoned a unique progression of designed levels for repeatable content and loot grinds. Hell, God of War III already gave Kratos a child to escort and a redemption arc!

Fun fact: The Hope of Pandora’s Box was inside Kratos’ heart all along. I know. I know.

Along the other axis, the series’ most grievous crimes are so much more precise than this vague notion of “violence” that God of War (2018) hangs its critiques on. Everyone knows that in God of War III, Kratos ties a topless woman to a gear, using her broken body as a doorstop as he progresses through the level. Less mentioned is the way her voice quivers as she sees Kratos coming, and how explicit the game is about her direct fear of him as an avatar of masculine sexual violence. What is horrific about God of War is not the extremity of the violence, which often borders on parody, but the terrifying familiarity of its misogyny. Similarly, this is a series where limbs are ripped off in bloody combat every few seconds, yet the most disgusting special move is one where Kratos grabs a siren by the face, and smashes it into the ground. The siren’s head does not explode into red orbs, but she hesitates, and brushes it, and stands to face you once more. When you kill her, you gain the trophy, “Don’t They Ever Shut Up?”

God of War (2018) never even attempts to grapple with this particular legacy. By removing the layer of cartoonish excess, all it does is present a more insidious and cruel set of patriarchal values under the veneer of maturity. The game’s only living woman is an almost comical caricature of motherhood, beautiful but never sexual, overflowing with empathy which she is ultimately condemned for. She loves her son so much that her love turns to fear and she casts a spell on him so he can never feel pain, or anything, ever again. For this, Baldur seeks murderous revenge upon her. Kratos has spent the whole game curt and distant, always ready to discipline his son, but never willing to love him. And at the end we see Freya with open arms, ready and willing to die for her son’s hollow revenge, because that’s what love is. Love is cowardly, and no one loves like a mother. If only Daddy had been there to raise him right.