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Written by Bryn Gelbart.

I haven’t played God of War (2018) or God War Ragnarok, but I do have a degree in cinema studies. I have seen games over the past 15 years adopt the language of cinema. With your perspective firmly over Kratos’s shoulder, Ragnarok offers 30 plus hours of cinematic action and storytelling. Never once leaving his side, you are supposed to empathize with Kratos, believe in his struggle. Finding the balance between parenthood and the fate of being a video game main character forever.

These Sony games are the pinnacle of what gamers consider cinematic storytelling. For these relatable stories of parenthood and epic stakes, your camera is fixed behind the back, over the shoulder of the anti-hero Kratos. It’s not too different from many of the industry’s most “cinematic” titles. The third person perspective is the new first person, championed by Rockstar and Naughty Dog.

God of War commits to this new perspective. Ragnarok committed so hard in its marketing to this notion of the one-shot game. A long tracking take with no cuts. This is the storytelling method used in God of War: Ragnarok.  I haven’t played the game, but I have been watching movies.

Tracking the history of the modern tracking shot, long take craze has me wired. The typical paranoia of not knowing how far back to go kicks in.

Use of the technique in American cinema dates as far back as Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil in 1958 but certainly dates back further. Nobody working on God of War: Ragnarok was thinking of Touch of Evil.

For decades, the long tracking shot was not a gimmick. It was one of many cinematic techniques directors of all calibers used sparingly for effect. It’s easier, though, to remember the good ones. The iconic openings. Boogie Nights. The Player. Hyper choreographed action. Hard Boiled. Oldboy.

Ok about that last one.

How Oldboy was discovered by most Americans is important here. The fact that the fucked up twist still got so many of us and was not the word-of-mouth selling point of this Korean movie spoke to how movies were already changing. The first scene everyone I know saw of Oldboy was the one-shot hallway fight. And we all saw it on YouTube.

There began a proliferation of plucking these types of scenes out of context and holding them up for their technical prowess. Around the same era, Alfonso Cuaron managed to stuff an absurd amount of long takes into Children of Men without ruining the film.

Not until the 2010s did the gimmick one-shot begin to infiltrate modern prestige cinema. It became a key ingredient in the recipe for Oscar Bait. And you know when the video game industry got a scent they were on that shit like piranhas. That is materializing now, thanks to the long and hellish development schedules titles like God of War are subject to.

This trend metastasized around 2013. Iñárritu’s Birdman was a critical and commercial peak for the long take. And then it won Best Picture. Thus began a full embrace of the one-shot as a means to tell a story in its entirety, instead of a storytelling tool. When Game of Thrones started to do it every season, I could see the horse still had some life to beat out of it.

In both of these cases, award shows legitimized these works not just as good for what they were doing, but as the pinnacle for all art to strive towards. Of course, as soon as something is announced on live TV the blood is in the water. Same can be said for video games. Look at everything to win the Game Awards for the past 10 years and we have a list of titles whose cumulative properties add up to God of War: Ragnarok.

Speaking of HBO bullshit, it was probably the True Detective home invasion drug raid long-take that sparked a nerve first. The thing about using the technique as a one trick pony is that it is never quite as impressive as the first time. This True Detective scene is still my high watermark in this modern context simply because it came first. It is pure spectacle in a trashy way that pales in comparison to what Kubrick could make with 90 seconds of film, a camera on a dolly, and a child.

So here we are, in 2022, looking down the barrel of a game of the year season where most of the awards will go to a game that has a nonfunctional understanding of the cinematic techniques it’s aping. And there is only really one detail in God of War: Ragnarok that I need to point out to prove its lack of merit. You have to pause the game constantly. God of War: Ragnarok is Birdman if Michael Keaton spent 30 minutes of the run time in his fucking inventory screen.

It might seem that this fundamentally comes down to an issue of UI, one that was solved by Dead Space in 2008. The in-universe UI not only was a presentational trick but added tension to Dead Space’s combat by taking the pausing out of inventory management.

Having your health on your back, ammo displayed on your gun, and a holographic inventory that springs up from your wrist are all inherently sci-fi ideas. I admit this, but I’m sure some of Sony’s highly paid clever designers could find an in-universe excuse to make this work in God of War. No, the problem here is God of War Ragnarok has no fucking idea what it wants to be. And that is crystal clear from a distance.

The nice way of saying this is that Ragnarok’s ambitions to be a great action RPG get in the way of its storytelling ambitions. So there, I said it nicely. But the reality is God of War: Ragnarok undercuts its core presentational concept constantly. Players are spending minutes at a time in the inventory menu comparing gear and admiring their beefy dad. If you are not trying to make something absolutely seamless what is the point of restricting the perspective of the camera this hard? Why limit your storytelling options so much for this gimmick?

I don’t know why this specific type of visual storytelling has resonated with game creators so much. The Last of Us would not exist had Neil Druckmann never seen Children of Men, on that I can assure you. Would God of War in its current iteration exist without Oldboy? Or does it not even go back that far for Cory Barlog? Do we owe Birdman this great honor?

Ever since Metal Gear Solid 3, it’s been clear the dudes making the games most people play fucking love movies. Reaching parity with cinema has always felt like a driver of the games industry. But in so many ways it has arrived. We have arrived but the arm is still reaching. To what end and at the benefit of whom, exactly?

The year’s biggest games now chase the aesthetics of last decade’s Best Picture winners. Even the high-budget middlebrow B-horror game of the season hires Hollywood C-listers. The pursuit is relentless. The games, however, aren’t getting any better. In noticeable ways, many of them are getting worse. I don’t know how to quantify this belief. This shared feeling that — despite Metacritic scores and sales numbers pushing higher and higher to tell me the opposite — big games are getting worse.

I don’t have answers to any of the questions I’ve asked in the paragraphs above and that is frustrating. The reasons major game development decisions are made are still obfuscated to anyone on the outside.

So let me ask a question I do have an answer to.

From an artistic standpoint, the decision to style an entire 40 hour game after a couple of scenes from great cinema is one that doesn’t hold much muster beyond the pitch. It’s a neat idea, but artistically it doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a waste of resources. So why does God of War Ragnarok do it?

Because it can. When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It was a decision made with everything in mind except for art.

The PlayStation 5 is the technology of the future, leading the charge in seamless video game experiences with no loading screens. Games like God of War: Ragnarok, which has no cuts whatsoever. All the better to show off the processing power of the PlayStation. See what our magic machines can do.

And yet you can play the game perfectly fine on a 9 year-old console. Another thread in the web of contradictions. Ragnarok doesn’t need the power of the PS5 and it seems like neither do you. But it has to sell you something and this is what Sony currently sells.

Not just selling the PS5. Selling the PS5 as the home for cinematic games. The home for experiences that will be adapted into prestige streaming television. Games for adults.

Video games want to be movies because movies are not toys. Movies tell stories and make you feel things that last. Toys get played with for a time and then discarded. In proving it can tell the story of Children of Men (or The Road or wherever these archetypes actually come from), The Last of Us showed us that it was not a toy. Nearly 10 years later, with an HBO adaptation on the horizon, who would argue otherwise?

In striving to use the language of legitimacy, these ambitious life-ruining AAA games reinforce the notion that games are not things to be played with. Widespread adoption of Sony’s visual language of prestige will only flatten the possibilities. This urge to keep pushing games in directions where the medium doesn’t naturally excel is shrinking markets and reshaping consumer expectations for the worse. John, 27, from Denver wants every game to be his next Assassin’s Creed. Even the new Plague Tale is bordering on 40 hours.

Clearly these are the games many people want and are happy to keep playing. Make something huge, polish it up to pretty and the gamers will call it ambitious. Or a masterpiece.

It’s a bit like groundhog day. Every time I see a new God of War Ragnarok or a Red Dead Redemption make the rounds, collecting the 10s, I feel the inevitability of the future. Six more years of winter.