*God of War SPOILERS*
*Spoiler Alert* God of War III ends with Kratos dead, assuring everyone Santa Monica wasn’t bluffing about this being Kratos' final game - or were they? Santa Monica is obligated to “we’ve seen the last of Kratos.” But why then, after the credits, does the camera sweep over Kratos’ dead body to show, lo and behold, he is not there?! Again this could just be a “leave it up to the fans for the final game” treat, or it could be a “Master Chief’s story is over” followed by the announcement of Halo: Reach repeat.*Spoiler Alert Over*
With my completion of God of War 3, I began wondering - why are studios so verbally dedicated to declaring games trilogies? Halo, Ratchet and Clank Future, Metroid Prime, and now God of War, all have creative directors that had a compulsion to say the third entry “is the last story in the series.”
Yet at the end of the final act, cut scenes litter the ending with imagery implying a fourth installment. Is this just a style of ending a story left open to the player’s interpretation? Or perhaps studios, scared to end their franchises for good, are still bold enough to simply say they will.
Trilogies are fine; my quarrel is not with the old practice of introducing the protagonist, introducing a dilemma, and finally showing the protagonist overcoming this dilemma. My misapprehension lies in a director’s inability to let go of their franchises after committing to the ending of the storyline.
It seems when a franchise wants to go out at its prime, it retires the main story arc and does a prequel or origin story. Are we going to see God of War: Origins, Kratos: Bloodlines, or God of War: Reach all because Santa Monica bound itself to trilogy talk?
In a recent interview with Stuff, lead in-game animator Bruno Velazquez was asked if this really was the end of Kratos. "We'll see how the game goes and if fans want to see more Kratos, who knows? Right now, stay tuned."
Shocking.
Through the long development process of God of War 3, Santa Monica assured fans Kratos would be gone after this game. What is it about the number four that is so terrible about the number four?
