The combat is not as comically overblown as it once was, but this is still a very violent game, with deliberate, intense fights against creatures ranging from the frozen undead to building-sized monsters. The game not only pulls this off, but turns Kratos and his son’s journey into one of the best games of recent years: a deft intertwining of relatable familial drama and awe-inspiring mythological epic. This God of War wants us to see Kratos as a person, rather than an instrument of extraordinary violence. He and the boy set out to scatter his wife’s ashes from the top of a distant mountain, getting unwillingly caught up in the affairs of Norse gods along the way. He has retired to Scandinavia, is recently widowed and father to a tweenaged son who knows nothing of his god-slaying, blood-soaked past in Greece. Until now, his sole character trait has been angry. On the face of it, Kratos, the vengeful god who powered the excellent (and gratuitously violent) God of War games of the 00s, is an absurd candidate for such humanisation. In the last decade, formerly two-dimensional avatars from Lara Croft to Wolfenstein’s BJ Blazkowicz have been retrofitted with backstories and motivations – with varying success. A s the average age of video-game developers and players has crept upwards, everyone has started to expect more from their characters.