Gender & Video Games: God of War (2005)
The 2005 God of War menu screen.
Gender representation has had a fairly sketchy history in video games and that remains to be the case to some (but fortunately lesser) extent. I did a research paper in 2022 about the different examples of gender in various video games, and I want to do a little mini-series with that material. I covered this a tad bit as well when I talked about Representation in the Ahsoka Series, so I thought a bit of context would be beneficial. I am going to start with the earliest game I analyzed, which was the original God of War (2005).
Of note, some of the themes and discussions in the following game are highly sexualized and potentially triggering. Also of note, some of the images are of lower quality, due to the quality of the game as recorded by myself.
I want to state first that I did not play the entire game and generally did not feel the desire to. I did do research to see if anything changed after the point I stopped playing and the answer seemed to be a definitive “no.” And, for the purposes of a single blog post, I don’t want to overburden anyone with information either. The God of War series as a whole has very much evolved over time, which made it even more interesting for me to see what the beginning of the series was like compared to what it is now. So how are women portrayed? Well… Poorly, is the most succinct answer.
At the very least, the game does have a female narrator, which after a little research proved to be “Gaia,” one of the Titans that Kratos does eventually kill and that presents her as a femme fatale, a woman or female-presented character that is too dangerous to men, or specifically Kratos in this series. However, that does not happen in the first game, she is merely there to narrate the events of what happened.
Kratos hearing the women behind the locked door.
The first time Kratos encounters women in the game is a bunch of voices trapped behind a locked door in the early tutorial-like missions of the game as he seeks to kill the Hydra. This is a trope that is extremely common early in video game history and remains to be the case, and these women are helpless and vulnerable and completely dependent on Kratos to rescue them (Dietz 433-435).
When Kratos returns with the key to free them, he arrives in time to see them all wholesale slaughtered anyway, which brings out his anger and makes him literally rip their attackers in half. The next scene is a cutscene in which the player also sees a glimpse of Kratos’ wife and children, who are all also seen being killed quite gruesomely. All of this killing of innocent women and children is simply a plot device to give Kratos a quest and provide motivation for his violent actions (Beavers 79-80).
Two women with censored nakedness in Kratos’ bed in an unskippable cutscene in God of War (2005).
Almost immediately after that, we are told by the narrator that Kratos distracts himself with wine and women, and the next women we see are completely drunk, passed out on a bed, very naked, and with very exposed breasts. Kratos, meanwhile, is as dressed as he’s ever been and sitting up. Before the player can change the camera angle, it pans across the bed again, and this time the women are sitting up, still extremely naked, and staring into oblivion. They exist only for the male gaze and sexual gratification (Beavers 84).
Medusa, also censored, in God of War (2005).
Likewise, the only other non-goddess character I am going to cover here is Medusa, whom the goddess Artemis tells Kratos to kill with no motivation. Medusa likewise has no characterization. She is overtly sexualized, also naked, and half-snake. She is an obstacle to overcome for Kratos to subject and is merely present to be observed. The message of how women were represented was the same.
Athena (left) and Aphrodite (right) in God of War (2005).
Athena and Aphrodite are both present early in the game as well, but they are both extremely distant and serve mostly to give Kratos quest lines. There’s not much to say about them, beyond that they too are displayed much the same way. While there is clearly a little more respect for the goddesses, they do not do much and are often presented in the form of light or as a statue, rather than us seeing their actual figure.
It’s a fairly brutal entry into the world of gender and video games. However, you can see the same narrative in many advertisements, particularly for mobile app games. There is still an idea of playing to the male gaze, and I think if I had started playing games as a woman and this was my first experience I might not have played another one. Needless to say, I am glad things are changing and evolving, and I am glad I stuck around to see it.
That was a bit of a doozy but it does get better as time goes on and I’m excited to talk about the next parts of this mini-series. The next one will be next week, as I have another Archaeology 101 article up next!
