Just yesterday I turned  on the TV to watch a spot of Comedy Central when this commercial comes on.  You know which one I’m talking about.

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As a high school English teacher who teaches Mythology, when the students ask if Kratos is an epic hero or an antihero, my retort is not what they want to hear: What do you think?  Most of the time they say he is an antihero, someone who we like for no other reason than he is particularly badass at what he does.  Normally, that thing involves wholesale killings and unquenchable revenge.

I can’t argue that point.  Kratos sure does love himself some decapitation.  But it just does not fit for some reason.  Sure, we love to watch him wail away at Hercules’ facial structure.  What is incongruous is that if Kratos is an antihero, than the entire God of War series would better pair along with Homer’s Iliad rather than Homer’s Odyssey.

However, God of War resembles The Odyssey (or even Virgil’s Aeneid) inherently more than it does The Iliad.  The Iliad is about the wrath of Achilles and how Achilles’ inhumanity ravaged the entire Trojan War.  Achilles is featured, but his bloodletting does not even factor in essentially until about the 18th book.  Diomedes essentially sends more shades to Hades than Achilles does.  God of War concerns itself with Kratos’ journey from pissed off white guy to a really, really pissed off really, really white guy.  More the man than the emotion.

Homer’s Odyssey, more of a romance than an epic, features Odysseus’ trials trying to get back home.  I mean, he blinds a fucking giant, but he does not strip an immortal god’s life away.  And he only blinds Polyphemus the giant to get the hell out of there in one piece.

So, Kratos aligns with Achilles savagery more so than Odysseus’ cunning.  But his story is told more like a romance than an Homeric epic.  Thus, Kratos would better be described as an epic hero rather than an antihero. He’s definitely not a fucking tragic hero.  He’s not a virtuous man whose best intentions happened to bring him down to a mortal status.  Two reasons: one, he is not a virtuous man, and two, he’s killing gods, so I’d say he’s not really a failing mortal…at all.

If Kratos is an epic hero, than he would have undergone a change in character.  He definitely felt the heartbreak of murdering his wife and child, but this does not lead him to relenting his aggression.  He actually uses it to fuel the fire to melt more faces.  Also, Kratos only fights for himself.  An epic hero fights for a cause, a people, or a land.  Kratos just really hates everybody.  And he tries to kill everybody.

If Kratos is an antihero, then he would possess more of the traits that his genre typically villifies.  For the God of War series, Kratos would have been a weaker, less-efficient killing machine.  Picture him with 30 pounds less muscle, twenty pounds more fat, and the Chains of Chaos would really have been badminton rackets.  More Butch than Jules.

A college professor once said, “Sometimes men chose to be heroes because they could not choose to be a god.”  Well, Kratos flicks this theory off his shoulder like Ray Lewis flicks turf off of his shoulder pads.  Is he an epic hero?  Or is he an antihero?

Either way you decide to answer that question, we all must agree on one thing: Kratos is one bad motherfucker.  For me, I don’t really think he’s a hero at all.  He murdered the sun god.  He was so mad he actually killed the guy that gave sunlight.  If that symbolism doesn’t smack you across the head, then maybe Kratos himself will.

Belmont is back, this time doing his best Kratos impression in what is shaping up to be the biggest, and arguably best Castlevania title since the Cold War era.  Konami even snagged two impressive actors for voiceovering: Jason Isaacs as Dracula – you’ll remember him as the English colonel who foolishly killed Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot, and Patrick Stewart as Zobek – I never liked Star Trek, but X-Men was pretty cool.  Mmm, Halle Barry.  What were we talking about again?  Oh yeah, Halle Berry is hot – I mean, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.  Stay tuned to Glitchoris for a full preview of this sure to be epic piece of gamery, as well as a fully transparent review no later than 8 October.