 Ford boy keeps sail while I intro the video. If I'm losing my grip, Stoics and media are a delight in this world. N- What happened to the Gary Coopers? The strong silent types. Not Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper. Gary fucking Cooper. Strong silent type. He was gay, Gary Cooper. Will you shut the hell up? Or the old western cowboys with little to say. Even the space cowboys had little to say as well. You know, before getting eaten by a sand-hold. Come out bald. Help me, I can't- KEEP ROWING ME GAAAAN! A stoic is a person who can endure pain or hardships without showing their feelings or complaining. And while movies and shows have a good amount of iconic stoics, the true best place for stoic representation is in video games. Video games are the best medium for stoic characters because for a long time video game protagonists didn't have dialogue due to limited technology. I have no math that I must scream. Mario and Link never had time to book a therapy session and talk about their feelings because they were busy getting business done, rescuing princesses, stomping out- The coo- He was stomping out- And they did all this while thugging out their problems, never complaining or crying because they were men. Very short men, but still men. Jokes aside, a lot of iconic video game characters are stoics due to the trend of the silent protagonist. Where developers wanted you to feel like these people, so they kept quiet to give you immersion. Gordon Freeman, Isaac Clarke before the remake, Doom Guy, most Call of Duty protagonist, a ton of other guys as well. All these people saved the day. Some killed a lot of people and left without a single word said. But now we enter the age of talking stoics that instead of being mute, are now just guys with a few words to drop time to time. Solid Snake, Kratos, Marcus Phoenix, the Master Chief, Geralt of Rivia. These are not silent protagonists in some talk more than others, specifically one that likes to tell you he's pissed a lot. Goddamn son of a bitch! They all still do badass shit, but now this time with a couple one-liners thrown into the mix. Go to hell. Yeah, it was just kind of cool. Okay. Blade Runner 2049, Cyberpunk 2077, Yeet 2093, put all of them down, except for Yeet. You stay. You like Cyberpunk? You like gaming? Well, 110 Industries have this game that has Cyberpunk and violence and gaming. I mean, you'd hope so, right? Wanted Dead, a Cyberpunk retro world representing the late vibes of the 80s and 90s, but with guns from the future. One of Kotaku's and Gaming Bolt's top 10 games last year. Are they glazing? Or were they cooking? Hack and slash Gun Fu, ramen eating minigames, crazy finishers, and 8 to 10 hour single player campaign experience. Cool, but also challenging boss fights. Are we back in the Xbox 360 peak era when everything was simple? 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And you can check the game out by going over the description and clicking the button a lot of times. Now back to the video. But then at some point as games started evolving, developers saw that it was hard to make Stoics the main character of stories. If there's no stakes in development within the emotions of the character. So some of these old Stoics that were just emotionless vessels for the player to chameleon into began to get some character, which then evolved the mold. So now we have Joel Millers, John Marston's, Arthur Morgan's. Yes, I have played a lot of Red Dead 2 recently. And eventually even the iconic Stoics who evolved the mold were revisited to take them to the next chapter. And that's where the discussion gets interesting. Adding depth to iconic Stoics has been insanely controversial over the last 15 years. And now the discussion has been flamed up again due to the original creator of God of War, making some comments on Corey Barlog's reimagining of the Ghost of Sparta. Here's what the God of War guys were saying. They were interviewed by IGN about this. This is the problem, by the way, that I have with Indiana Jones after Last Crusade. I thought 2018 was great, Ragnarok, not my cup of tea. But there's the problem with Indiana Jones. I don't want these characters to grow. I don't give a fuck what you're going through at the studio. And I don't mean that disrespectfully. If you're going to build a brand new IP, or you're going to build a character into the God of War lore, and that character is struggling or dealing with your problems that a lot of you guys that have gotten older and girls at the studio have dealt with, that's wonderful. Do that shit all day long. But don't take the character Kratos. Indiana Jones, and go, you know what? I'm Steven Spielberg. I'm older now, and I'm really into family. And I want to tell stories about fathers and sons, and God, no, fuck you. That is not what this character is, whether it's Indy or whether it's the goddamn Kratos. Stop. It's just like someone needs to be able to tell these people no sometimes and say, look, we love that you're Artie Farty. We love that you're taking shit from your personal life. We love that you're treating the medium, and Sony always has, as an art form, as well as a business. You know, we get it. We love it. We support it. But somebody still needs to step up there and go, you need to do all that within the pin that we've put up a fence for you. And if you step outside, the electric shock collar is going to get you. You need to do all that within the pin that says, this is what God of War is. You cannot change. You will always be a monster. All right, so this is a lot to unpack. So when discussions like this happen in comparison games are played, a lot of people fall to the defensive tactic to square up one piece of media over the other. But what David said about Spielberg and Indiana Jones is interesting because in some way it applies to himself as a creator, which raises a question. How much should a creator get say of their art? David calls out Spielberg for taking the character of Indy in a direction no one wanted, which is the focus of family. David doesn't like how the original creator lost vision with his own creation, seeing Indy as a fun adventure hero that molded into something else. He then applies this reasoning to Kratos and God of War Ragnarok, about how he's annoyed that Kratos has evolved to being a dad instead of being what he was in the first three games, which is surprising since Ragnarok is a sequel to 2018, which is also about Kratos being a dad with the same family shit. David even did a whole playthrough of the game and liked it, but David's problems with Spielberg losing touch of his creation could also apply to David's mindset in the opposite way with Kratos. Like how going off track could be a problem with the character being stagnant and repeating the same type of formula could also make a character become one dimensional and predictable. So while David is the creator of God of War, you have to disconnect what he thinks about his baby and look at the results of others who were in the similar predicament because what David believes for Kratos has not been the way to go for other Stoics. So first, let's look at Xbox. Xbox had two of the best Stoics in gaming, the Master Chief and Marcus Phoenix. Similar to God of War, Gears of War continued with Marcus having a son, being the new protagonist to a new Locust threat. And for Master Chief, I'll get to it, but let's talk about Gears of War first. Gears of War's reboot is a failure of a franchise at the moment. It hasn't had a new entry since Gears of War 5 in 2019 and has been struggling since Gears of War 3 that released in 2011, when it was still owned by Epic Games, meaning that Gears of War hasn't really been good at all since being sold to Microsoft under its new-made studio, The Coalition, in 2014. It's been so bad that the original creator of the first three games before the purchase, Cliff Blazinski, said that he believes Gears of War needs a reboot like God of War, where they get experimental instead of playing it safe to hopefully give the franchise a breath of fresh air. Because what killed Gears of War really was changing too much of its art style and vibe, but not evolving its gameplay and narrative. Then we have Halo. After being sold to Microsoft from Bungie under the new-made 343 Studios, 343 decided to take a chance on the Chief and do something different from what was previously loved, and this was the first real spark of controversy to the stoic discussion. Before the change of Kratos in 2018 and 2012, the change of Master Chief happened, and many Halo fans carried the same sentiment as David about the man in green, missing the age of Halo where the Chief was a silent, respected badass. Many did not enjoy him having more dialogue or his dynamic with Cortana, and instead of doubling down on their vision, 343 pivoted and regressed some of the development of the Chief while also keeping one foot in the door, trying to still evolve their vision while also wanting to please the people who enjoyed the old way. And what followed next were two of the worst Halo campaigns with the company now being in shambles not knowing what to do next, leaving Halo with irreparable damage to its reputation. And reflecting back, Halo 4's ideas with Master Chief weren't bad at all. Halo 4 has a lot of problems. From its gameplay to some of its narrative decisions, it wasn't perfect. But there was potential, and some of the core ideas would have been respected today if they played the long game and kept cooking. Halo 4 had a more out-of-place Chief who was an old piece in a new puzzle, and at the same time, he's questioning where he fits in this puzzle while also having his only friends slowly die. Multiple times in the game, it's displayed how Chief's judgments are the right ones, thinking in terms of heroism rather than protocol, defying traditionalism for the greater good. He's not bitched or disrespected just more nuanced. In the game, he's challenged, he has internal conflicts and compelling conversations. Even if you don't like Halo 4, you can't deny the potential this direction could have had to the series, especially now with hindsight, if it was to continue to play on this maturing existential idea of the Master Chief. But instead, they held back and tried to please their fanbase while also not pleasing their fanbase at all, and instead pissed them off even more. So after pleasing nobody, they tried to do it again, wanting to please everybody, and stripped Chief back down from 5 with some sprinkles of 4, but it was too late and that same fanbase they wanted to please outgrew the brand, and were not pleased by the safe, desperate approach infinite did. And for multiplayer, they still made everyone mad. As we've seen from all types of entertainment, things are constantly moving and shifting, same with life around us, including us. As people, we're not in the same place for too long, and while a slice of your mom's special red velvet cake can be cool and tasty, if you give me the same piece every day, it might not taste bad and regress in flavor, but it's still not going to feel fresh like that first time I bit into it. This is why video games are so cool, because when I was a kid, I played the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask on the 3DS, and when I was an older kid, I bought the Switch to play Breath of the Wild, which pun intended, was a breath of fresh air. And now, years later, after they did it a second time with Tears of the Kingdom, I enjoyed that too, but I'm satisfied and do not want that piece of cake a third time. It's time to change up the formula again. Which now brings us to Kratos and God of War, because as I see it now, God of War evolving might be the best decision I might have ever seen for a beloved character, and for general storytelling. Kratos is one of the most popular examples of having two different audiences, who enjoy him for many different reasons. I have many friends who have not played the original God of War games, but have Kratos as one of their favorite fictional characters because of the new games. And at the same time, I got friends who played the originals, grew up, and now feel a more special, personal bond with this Kratos, because they knew him when he was younger. And after playing the Valhalla DLC for God of War Ragnarok, I think Kratos is one of the best written video game characters ever, and that Corey's decision saved the character from not only being identified by iconicism, like the Master Chief. Being identified by iconicism is okay, because like I said earlier, Link has not changed. He's still a silent little elf idiot, but God the world has changed around him, like look at this place. And for Doomguy, I would even say the opposite. I think Eternal gave him too much character. I loved how silent and rude he was in 2016, just breaking everything in sight. For gameplay though, yeah, this shit's a blast. We need great mascots in the world, but while I like him, Doomguy has never ripped open my chest to grab out my soul, like in Arthur Morgan. Arthur Morgan is a badass piece of shit, robbing trains, robbing banks, and robbing people. It's the Wild West, people like to rob stuff, it happened. But then by the end of the game, I stopped robbing as much and decided not to kill literally everyone, because I began to see Arthur change and want to redeem himself. So now I wasn't just attached to the cool exterior cowboy gunslinger, but the cool interior dude got me as well. Same thing with a game like The Last of Us, it's sick to see Joel kill zombies, but now I'm a dad and I care for my daughter. Kratos, like the Master Chief, is not a bitch. He is strong and violent and likes to kill a lot of shit. He's just more nuanced now. So you still got that cool ass Kratos, but now you got that soul ripping element as well. Kratos is so beloved because of how much respect his old dad gave him, as well as his new daddies have given him. He's not getting shot in the head by Harley Quinn 10 years later after saving Gotham. Kratos is still masculine, capable, but now has maturity, complexity, and responsibility, because he now has to be a father. And I'm not a father, thank God. But if any of you are fathers, it's probably changed your worldview a lot. Kratos regrets his past and holds trauma because he wants his son to not be influenced by his past, but rather be better. But his past is not swept under the rug. The new games don't villainize the previous ones, they do the exact opposite even. They use it as a source for his pain, which Kratos develops on as a character. And then two games later, after climbing a mountain of progression, he comes to terms with his past and accepts that he is not the monster he thought he was. The Valhalla DLC even challenges Kratos' shame, showing that some of the stuff he did in his youth was justified or the only option. The old God of War games were not meaningless and had a lot of depth, but they are concluded and doing it again with different gods would have been safe and repetitive. To continue the old style of God of War could have possibly put Kratos in a position of iconicism trying to get a cash grab, where he then would have faded like other iconic characters. With this version of Kratos, we once again have a guy who completely disrupts a whole mythology, but we also have more depth because like how we get older and make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, so has Kratos. If a character at the start of a journey is still in the same position as the end, you have written a bad character. Even the stereotypical hero's journey has bumps and trials. Indiana Jones isn't bad because he wanted to have a new family when he's old. After years of adventures, he's bad because he was written poorly and not given a good direction with his sequels when he had a great conclusion with his third movie. That was about family, by the way. There's a lot of characters like Kratos who were in a position where they're loved or have legacy and didn't have that good legwork put in. Luke Skywalker, for example. But Luke Skywalker doesn't suck because he's old and hateful. He sucks because we didn't get to see that character lose hope and become like that. We are instead just told. Stoics can have character and change as people over time if written with care and purpose. Logical people don't usually hate on something because it happens. That's a huge misconception. They usually hate when stuff happens with no real development making it feel shallow and disrespectful. Kratos is a great stoic and is cool and also deep. Like I said, not all stoics have to be Kratos, though. I'm okay with Link never saying a word because Jesus, would that get annoying after like two seconds? But for those who want to apply this Kratos mindset to other characters, I see it as only a win because Kratos above everything is a greatly written character that still feels fresh because it took a risk and didn't stay the same. You can have characters go through some deep shit and still be pretty cool. I always regret that with Master Chief because I love the Master Chief and I saw the vision with four. But with that, what's your favorite stoic? Do you like God of War? Subscribe for more videos. I also have a Patreon where you can get videos early or see how this video is edited. Goodbye.