God of War: Chains of Olympus

Hey, does anyone mind if I rant about nipples at great length?

RANTING ABOUT NIPPLES AT GREAT LENGTH

I don’t know how else to articulate this subject in a manner that won’t offend anyone, so I’ll just be blunt: nipples. Nipples nipples nipples nipples nipples. This game features nipples. The other God of War games feature nipples. This is a series with many recurring themes, one of them being nipples. Now, I do not intend to praise the presence of nipples in God of War, nor am I crying out for the eradication of nipples from video games. I merely noticed the unusual presence of nipples in a video game, and that got me thinking: why are we suddenly being exposed to nipples?

Since Pong, video games had been considered children’s fare for decades. When anything adult-oriented was featured in a video game, parents cried foul. Violence, booze, and nipples were considered no-nos. Eventually, games for adults started trickling into the market, and today, they are commonplace. Could the presence of nipples be an expression, indicating that this is a game for adults? This implies that they used nipples as a medium for pandering. The problem with this thought is that the nipples are in the game, not on the packaging. We can’t have that; there could be children browsing the store shelves. Instead, the packaging promises brutal violence, and that’s all we need to convince us that this game is for adults. Oh, and there’s also that ESRB “M” rating in the corner, making it obvious.

OK, so we’ve ruled out pandering. Maybe they were aiming for historical accuracy? This is Ancient Greece, after all. It kinda feels like a moot point, seeing that there are harpies and minotaurs scampering about, but this mythological fantasy does have some foundations in reality. So, how would we go about establishing historical accuracy? Well, Ancient Greece did produce quite a bit of art. We’re all aware that they’ve created many sculptures featuring naughty bits, including our pal, the nipple. When looking over these artworks, one could assert that they provide examples of what people wore (or rather, didn’t wear) in Ancient Greece. However, a cursory Google search reveals otherwise. Not only did they wear sufficient clothing to conceal all of their naughty bits, but wore undergarments as well. Clearly, this is a culture that had thrived after the invention of shame.

Well, we’ve deduced that this has nothing to do with sales or history, and yet, the nipples taunt us. Perhaps it’s meant to be pornographic? It’s a simple conclusion; porn has nipples, this has nipples, and nipples are rarely found anywhere else. Surely, these nipples must be porno nipples! Unfortunately for this dirty thought, it is just one more victim in a firing line of easily-refuted hypotheses. God of War serves a specific purpose. Porn serves a specific purpose. People simply don’t have enough hands to facilitate both at once. Perhaps in the future, some disgraced scientist will successfully fuse video games with pornography, and perhaps this has already happened (please don’t provide me with examples). For now, we can be certain that God of War’s nipples are not of the pornographic variety.

At this point, my pool of nipple theories has nearly run dry. I’ve written more paragraphs about God of War’s nipples than any sane person would dare, and the subject has reached the point of exhaustion. Maybe… could it be art? Nipples for the sake of nipples? A presence of nipples that would spur thoughts about nipples? Perhaps. But then again, when you really stop to think about the nipples, a hole appears in the logical fabric of the game, which immediately spreads and tears the whole universe apart. Whose nipples would be powerful enough to accomplish something so terrible? Why, that would be Eos, the dawn goddess. When you meet her, she’s sitting in a cave, just above a river with a rapid current. She wears a large skirt and a length of cloth haphazardly draped about her neck, but her entire chest is left bare. It seems like this place would be really, really cold, and she should be wearing more clothing. However, there are two lit braziers behind her, presumably keeping her warm. Because there is a great source of heat here, another problem is raised by this scene: since there is a rapid water current running through most of the cave, it must therefore be really humid in there. If she isn’t freezing, she’s sweating. Both of these problems can be mitigated simply by wearing more clothing, but no, we need to show the world that Eos has boobs. It feels like the design of this set was focused entirely around nipple presentation, and not plausibility. This leads me to my final conclusion: the nipples in God of War are nothing more than a gratuitous inclusion, crafted by people who want to see nipples, for those who want to see nipples. Nipples!

While I’m near the subject, I should address the elephant in the room, or rather, the elephant just off-screen. A recurring element of the God of War series is the sex mini-game. In Chains of Olympus, the mini-game is found early on, immediately after fighting the Persian leader. Kratos finds two ladies, and a O button icon appears to let you know that they can be interacted with. As the interaction occurs, the camera zooms in on a candle to provide censorship. The candle will suggestively rock and drip wax, in order to discourage any lingering assumptions that Kratos is juggling, or building something out of legos. During this sequence, numerous button and joystick prompts will appear, which make Kratos perform… I don’t know, dong tricks or something. This mini-game epitomizes the nuisance of quicktime events. I’ve mentioned earlier that these sequences are distracting, and often disconnected from the actions Kratos performs while you’re responding to the prompts. Well, this is much worse. Here, you’re responding to random button prompts without any perceivable effect. We’re pushing the buttons for the sake of pushing the buttons. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the most pathetic facet of the mini-game. I timed this sequence from start to finish, and a successful completion of the mini-game clocks in at 20 seconds. I certainly hope that Kratos wasn’t trying to get his initials on the high score table.