So, I recently finished God of War Ragnarök. It’s a great game! I had a blast. Though in my opinion it’s not as great as its predecessor GoW 2018. 2018 has quickly become my favourite game after playing it the first time and since then I played it four or five times more always finding new ways, new things to enjoy. Since I’m still ordering my thoughts and developing my opinion about Ragnarök, I won’t write about it yet. But I will write here about one of the things I love in GoW 2018.
Journey to Helheim
God of War 2018 does a many thing right. For now I want to highlight one that still plops into my head from time to time. It’s the use of Hel in the story.
See, in the game you can travel to some of the different realms of norse mythology. You start your journey in Midgard, which is the realm of us humans. Then there are Muspelheim and Niflheim, two excellent realms from a gamey perspective, they both provide fun challenges to grind in. They have some lore of course, but don’t add much to the immediate story. For the story you first visit Alfheim, the realm of the Elves that are damned to an eternal war. This part I like the least in the story. It’s a detour to obtain some of it’s mystical light, so you can advance on your actual quest, where you need that light. I don’t think it adds a lot to the story except, if you look at it as a set up to your return to the realm in Ragnarök, where the theme of war is much more prevalent in the story.
Anyways. The rest of the realms are closed off. Jotunheim is your goal and only in the end of the story you may enter it. The last realm you are able to visit, is Helheim.
Helheim is literally Hell in the norse mythology, where all the unworthy souls (those that didn’t die in battle) go after death. It’s icy cold and inhospitable. Fittingly, and that’s the great part about it, it’s also the metaphorical Hell for the story.
When Atreus falls sick because of his identity crisis caused by Kratos reluctancy to tell his son about his godhood, Kratos has to go to Helheim and retrieve an ingredient for his son’s medicine.
The second time you end up in Helheim, is immediately after Atreus’ decision to attack Kratos, giving their antagonist Baldur the upper hand, resulting in a chaotic fight, which causes them all to get stranded in Helheim.
The story of God of War 2018 uses Helheim as the consequence of bad decisions of our main characters. It’s a place of remorse. Both are forced to descend into Hel after hurting the other. They have to suffer not only Hel’s animosity but also visions of their past, forcing them to reflect on their actions. With Kratos having to retrieve something from Hel, and the two of them searching for a way out of the realm later on, it also serves as a place where they have to earn their redemption.
I love this use of Helheim, since even though it is a real existing place in the videogame, mythology can also be interpreted figuratively. It mixes the border between reality and inner world. Helheim provides an opportunity to visually tell the inner struggles of our characters, because it’s invention in the norse mythology is most likely intended to do exactly that. I like how the writers of GoW 2018 – at least in some places – used the exterior journey to reflect the interior journey. At the same time, it is a really resourceful writing since they seamlessly implemented what the story world provided anyways. While the trip to Alfheim feels forced, Helheim feels natural to the story.