Last week, after years of hopeful speculation, Sony’s Santa Monica Studio announced it will be remaking the original God of War trilogy. T.C. Carson, the original voice actor behind Kratos, stepped in front of the camera to reveal that the project is in the “very early” stages of development, and that we’ll have to wait a little longer for any of our questions to be answered. And there are a lot of questions.
Will this be a graphical facelift à la Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls, or are we revisiting Greece with the Norse duology’s controls and overhauled game design? If the latter, will Kratos have a companion accompanying him to Pandora’s Temple and the Isle of Fates? Will there be a blacksmith NPC popping up in expected places to provide armor and weapon upgrades? Will we be able to jump and fly, like in the original games? And what about those sex minigames?
That last one almost sounds like a joke, but fans who’ve brought them up seem to be deadly serious. “You better not edit out Aphrodite,” one of the top comments on the announcement video posted to the official PlayStation YouTube channel warns, referring to the particularly graphic minigame from God of War 3. “Do not censor original material,” reads one of the – as of the time I’m writing this article – 256 replies to that comment. “Dont ruin it.”
Fan fixation with these minigames makes sense, and not just because of the franchise’s initial target demographic. They are, for better or worse, as much a part of the Greek saga as the Blades of Chaos, appearing in every mainline title except for Ascension. Even the two handheld games, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, have their own versions of them: one in Attica, while fighting off the Persians, the other at a brothel back in Sparta.
They’re also a product of their time, one when both gamers and game developers were overwhelmingly male, little if any thought was given to the way women were represented, and hack and slashers generally relished in all things lewd and bloody and pubescent. But times have since changed, and changed profoundly at that. Once taken for granted, today the minigames stand out like a sore thumb. They are perhaps the only aspect of the Greek saga I could envision its developers regret adding in, and hence it’s unclear whether they will return alongside the togas, sandals, and cyclopes.
Personally, I’d be surprised if they did. Santa Monica Studio seemed to have soured on the minigames as early as 2013, when the team working on Ascension decided not to include one – maybe in response to backlash, maybe out of post-orgasm clarity after visiting Aphrodite. In that game, Kratos’ obligatory trip to the bordello plays out in a cutscene, and the women there turn out to be an illusion created by one of the Furies.
At the same time – and, please, hear me out here – I do think there’s a place for them in the Greek games, at least in concept. More than a crude joke, I always found that they contributed to the saga’s story and themes. In the first God of War, the sex minigame – like that part where you burn the caged soldier to progress through Pandora’s Temple, or condemn the ship captain to his death after taking his key – adds a welcome sense of moral ambiguity. It demonstrates that Kratos is not a conventional hero, and suggests there’s more to his quest to kill Aries than the desire to avenge his family. If visions of his dear, dead wife haunt him so, how could he lie with other women? At least, that’s what went through my head when I encountered the minigame for the first time.
Both God of War 2 and the trilogy’s final entry make clear what the first game only insinuated: that Kratos’ vengeance is not a crusade for justice, but an excuse to kill and destroy for the sake of killing and destroying. In both games, the minigames help convey his downward spiral into sadism and nihilism. In God of War 3, for example, you enter Aphrodite’s chambers right after killing her husband, Hephaestus; a tragic, ultimately well-intentioned character who, up until this point, acted as your only ally, Athena and her ulterior motives notwithstanding. At every turn, the developers stress that Kratos cares for nothing except the gratification of his own, basest desires. At this point, lust and bloodshed are the only things he lives for, and that won’t change until he meets Faye and fathers Atreus.
The horniness of the Greek saga also feels somewhat appropriate when considering its source material. The ancient myths woven into Kratos’ world are full of sex, as is the Greco-Roman visual culture that inspired Santa Monica Studio’s talented concept artists. The goddess of love and beauty is not the only one with her nipples out: Kratos, Zeus, Hades – everyone, man and monster, is bare-legged and bare-chested, their bodily features every bit as sculpted as the marble statues at the MET.
Most importantly, perhaps, the minigames help bring home the Greek games’ meta-commentary – a commentary present throughout the trilogy but most pronounced in its concluding chapter, where Kratos is at his ugliest, meanest, and most pathetic, and the franchise’s cinematic endorphin rushes pivot from tasteful indulgence into nauseating overindulgence. Where impaling Aries was uncomplicatedly epic and triumphant, Kratos’ actions in God of War 3 hit differently. Brutalizing Poseidon’s and Hercules’ faces, ripping off Hades’ mask, cutting off Hermes’ legs, snapping Hera’s neck, beating Zeus until the screen becomes completely covered in blood – each “victory” leaves the player feeling a little uneasy, ashamed, hollow. Boss battles in the first God of War and its sequel made you feel like David taking down big, mean Goliath; no matter how brutal the finishing moves, your opponents had it coming. In God of War 3, you’re more like a playground bully, kicking another student when they’re down.
The minigame with Aphrodite also veers into garish over-indulgence, but to a slightly different effect. Instead of making you feel like a bully, you just feel like an idiot. I certainly did when, playing with a childhood friend, we just sat next to each other in awkward silence, going through the motions to get all the red orbs while keeping an ear out for my mom walking up and down the hallway. Very manly indeed.
Some might think that the Norse games walked back on the Greek saga’s abundance of sex and nudity because the gaming industry decided to chase inclusivity, and Barlog and his team tried to stay on the good side of a culture that considered the minigames offensive and misogynistic. This is not the case. First and foremost, the Norse saga walked back on these things because they play no part in this leg of Kratos’ story. Once again, his wife has died. But this time, he channels his grief into something more constructive: rather than destroying the world, he tries to be a better parent to his son.
For the remakes to succeed, they have to communicate – as effectively, if not more effectively, than the original trilogy – how Kratos ends up at the personal low-point from which the Norse games set off. If the sex minigames are in any way included, this is the purpose they should serve. If they’re removed on account of being tasteless – not unthinkable, as that was kind of their point – no matter. Surely, Santa Monica Studio can think of other, more respectful ways to convey Kratos’ downward spiral, and for players to go down that spiral along with him.
Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.
