God of War Ragarok is the favourite to win Best Narrative at The Game Awards. That's no great surprise – gaming is still feeling its way through this new era of narrative focus, still reliant on stoic characters confronting emotional arcs reluctantly. While gaming's storytelling at a triple-A level could stand to be a little more creative and expansive, God of War Ragnarok is considered our peak. It follows in the footsteps of God of War (2018), which was similarly emotionally driven and built around moments engineered to tug at your heartstrings. Shadow the Hedgehog could, and if there were any justice in the world, would be next in line for a narrative examination.
This is not a shitpost, nor is it just desperately churning out a headline that encompasses both Ragnarok and Frontiers after their release. It's unlikely, granted, but I still do mean it. For all of you whippersnappers out there, the reason we call it God of War (2018) is because it's not the first God of War game. Originally, God of War was a very different game. Rather than a slow and soulful action RPG occasionally punctuated by extreme violence and puzzle solving, God of War was a furiously frenetic hack n slash with so much edge you had to wear special protective gloves to put it in your PS2. It was dripping with mid-'00s angst and aimless rebellion, pumping up the blood and gore to the extreme and relishing in its forbidden fruits as the juices ran down its chin, mingled with the salty, copper red of viscera.
God of War was not alone in this regard. Much as it is one of the kings of the sad dad narrative adventures these days, it was Edgelord Almighty when it first appeared on the scene. Many other games from the era have faded away completely, but God of War has been given the chance to grow into something more modern and mature. While it tackled mature themes and fairly tragic storytelling for the time, God of War’s identity was primarily concerned with boobs and blood, but it was given an opportunity to evolve. Shadow the Hedgehog should get the same chance.
Shadow was born of the same design philosophies that first gave us Kratos. Shadow was designed as a more '00s-ready version of Sonic, a counterculture emo positioned against the friendlier mascottery of Sonic in the '90s. It included Dark missions where you could work for the villains, and even gave Shadow a gun. It was a level-based platformer like most Sonic games of the time, but threw in a bunch of mature elements with a desperation to be cool. This desperation was felt by the players, and while Shadow became something of a cult hit and the character was welcomed as a fresh part of the wider Sonic mythos, the game itself has been consigned to history, despite minorly successful sales.
Shadow and Kratos feel very similar in that regard. Both were tailor-made to be very of their era, and both were a collection of various edgy tropes in the hopes something would stick. The original God of War games did have narratives, but they were typical of '00s video games. Everything was melodramatic and exaggerated, nothing ever landed or was given any weight, and every beat was pushed aside for Kratos to do a bunch of cool kills or have endless misogynistic sex with women offered up as trophies. God of War is not the sort of game that needed a narrative-heavy reboot.
While some have retroactively suggested the game was always a deep and meaningful introspection of violence, the fact is it was mostly a 'turn your brain off and have fun' sort of time. That worked well enough, and indeed some prefer the action-packed nature of the original games, but there's very little in God of War's mythos that suggests it needed to be elevated to the emotionally resonant stories we have now. Likewise, Shadow the Hedgehog feels like some silly emo spin-off to Sonic, but in the right hands it could have a lot more depth.
Prior to 2018's reboot, it was Shadow who had grown more since his debut than Kratos, who had largely been treading blood-filled water. Shadow, through his ongoing connection to wider Sonic properties, has been constantly developing and growing. He just needs another chance to show the world what he can do.
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