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God of War: Greek Pantheon Revisions

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Also choosing to ignore your personal accusations regarding my honesty.
 
I thought that the WoG statements contradicted the displayed scale of the game itself?
 
Likewise, I ignore comments you make about how "disappointed" you are in my arguments. Not sure why you feel the need to bring it up.
 
I have not accused you of being dishonest. I am just saying that everybody here, including me, have a natural tendency to be biased for things that they like, and as staff we have a responsibility to do our best to fight against that and try to evaluate things objectively.
 
Also, I will reply to Matthew in short order - I am being forced to answer him on Discord as well. I will fetch a drink of water and be right back.
 
There are no in-game God of War feats beyond High 6-A and all of the 3-A stuff comes from Outside Game sources. So yes, the WoG statements factually contradict the scale of the games.
 
Considering your load of non-answers in the "Headcanon is Atlas and the Pillar", "You're contradicting yourself and being a hypocrite, only for GoW you say this is valid' order, yep, I will ignore Discord.

Now I will answer your arguments above.
 
Can you stop trying to do all you can to discredit your opposition here? It's the same thing as the Norse Thread, you first ridicule the "opponents" in the debate, and then you respond to their arguments primarily with self-fulfilling affirmations.
 
> Actually, there are. All depictions of what the pillar does and statements of what is done in-game indicate something on a planetary scale

Persephone states it holds the world and never indicates that's all it extends to - and in fact states multiple times that everything that had ever come before would end, that everything itself would revert into Chaos. But you suddenly reject those statements as non-literal or something.

Absolutely nothing indicates ONLY planetary scale. The pillar being located beneath the Earth is irrelevant as I've proven its positioning is already magical regardless of whether you argue it's only planetary or not. Until you find a statement that proves it's only planetary, the multiple suggestions that it's higher take precedence.

> Just because no character turns to the camera and goes "And that's all it holds, please don't try to use statements from a facebook post to say it holds up the physical universe, okay?" followed by a wink, doesn't mean that's what it does. Context matters. Reasonable assumptions matter. And a direct, honest look at the game itself matters. All of which are thrown out of the window and into a bullet train railroad when you decide that just because no character says that the Pillar doesn't hold up the universe, that it suddenly can and does.

Present an actual scan instead of saying I'm throwing out the context and reasonable assumptions. You have yet to do it. Just going out to say it's not reasonable and that it's not an honest outlook at the game itself is completely irrelevant and adds nothing to the debate itself. Multiple statements suggest the higher-end - nothing conclusive suggests the lower-end.

> Great fallacious argument here, wonderful. This is not the same thing. A character saying their power can destroy a planet or a city or whatever is a statement of what they can do. If there are better feats or scaling they can get higher. The pillar doesn't, all we have at stake is the plot of Chains of Olympus, which is that if the pillar is destroyed, the world will crash unto the underworld destroying both. Literally, physical crash with gravity here we're talking.

Except it's the exact same thing. There is no difference here. You take a random statement from Persephone where she states that Atlas is attacking the pillar "holding the world", or a statement by Gaia about Kratos saving manking and the world, and jump into it and then tell me that's some sort of proof the pillar solely holds the world. Or maybe you could look at the context behind these statements and notice they're not definite statements of any sort, they're general statements made by characters who are focusing on enemies inside Earth, with other statements suggesting higher scales.

And no, it's not a physical crash. Technically it is but not on that sense, really. The world would logically crash on the Underworld, sure. But the fact that the world is said to revert into Chaos once this happens suggests it's even more than just a linear fall.

> The Edge of the World is frankly debatable because we see rock on all sides of the pillar, we literally do. You speak as if it is located on a literal edge and ready to make it crash. That's not what we see here

Except that in God of War 2 we literally see the Pillar is beneath the Island of Creation, an island stated an infinite amount of times to be located on the edge of the world. In Chains of Olympus itself you see the edge of the world with the pillar right below it when you fall on the Underworld, and the concept art of the World Disk shows the pillar below the Edge of the World.

No, there are no rocks helping the pillar hold the world. Those rocks are supposed to be the rocks that exist on the base floor of Tartarus.

> The pillar being 'magical' doesn't mean it can hold up the universe, that's a complete non-sequitur.

And this is a complete strawman. Nobody said that. I'm saying that the pillar isn't just "a pillar that is sturdy and a few kilometers tall" with nothing else to it. It clearly magically binds the world above it for it not to topple out of the Pillar and fall down into the Underworld due to the effects of gravity. There is something mystical and magical in nature at work here, which debunks the arguments that the pillar can't "possibly" hold up the universe because of Physics or something, or positioning.

> The guidebook is irrelevant, and why does it matter that the guidebook has an entry on Kratos? Seriously, why? It's just a secondary source contradicted by the actual games where we know Atlas holds up the Earth alone as stated by every single source.

Nothing ever states Atlas only holds up the Earth. This is a false statement backed up by nothing. Again, being stated to hold the Earth isn't a statement of limits. If we had nothing to suggest anything higher, we would say Atlas only holds up the Earth, sure - but since we do have higher statements, these statements are treated as general statements. It'd only be invalid if the games went out of their way to clarify he only holds up the Earth and nothing else, which they don't.

> Oh, so the artist was wrong! Because the Underworld has gravity, indicated by the fact that you can jump in game and still fall at an observable gravity. Magical floating rocks don't show that there is no evidence, and a background with no discernible end doesn't mean something is infinite, you would think that would be well accepted by now. WoG on Twitter is irrelevant.

The context behind his statement was that the gravity in the Underworld was messed up because there were magical floating things, not that there was literally zero gravity. The scan is present on the links in the OP.

Wog on Twitter is relevant.

> It's not an empty space, the space is literally red mist, and we have no indication that the Underworld has an outer space since it is literally beneath the Earth. If anything those stars - if they are stars - would be outside the underworld. All you're effectively arguing here is saying that it is "cherrypicking!" without making a case for yourself.

No, it's not. It is literally empty, black space. The Underworld is below the flat disk - yeah. The flat disk is small compared to it. It can contain whatever it wants without any contradictions on the lore.
 
I really can't stress how much I agree with Kep and Acheron here.

All the counter arguments in the other side are extremely non-responsive and are just personal disbelief at the scale of the actual feats, as well as circular "X states the Pillar holds up the world" which is non-contradictory to anything.
 
This is absolutely no different than you finding a lore scripture of a God in a random verse, with said God being stated by the star-struck, impressionable mortals who only care about their own universe to do the following:

"In the beginning, this God appeared, and he conjured the universe."

That is 3-A. But then you play the game on Hard Mode and unlock a Bonus Lore for the game, and said Bonus Lore goes on to state the following things:

"In the beginning, the God appeared, and he conjured the universe and countless parallel worlds and dimensions from his Powers."

Is the former contradictory to the latter? No, it's not, because:

  • 1. The universal statement is made by mortals who don't really care about anything else other than their own Universe, and don't want to talk about parallel worlds
  • 2. The universal statement is a General Statement, and doesn't explicitly state that he "only conjured the universe", thus it can fit in neatly with the lore without contradictions.
This is simple, straightforward and honestly has a lot more evidence than a few other verses we rate on this wiki, in my view.
 
That's not quite was going on here, the counter-arguments are centered on analyzing what is depicted on the actual games, without the begged assistance of WoG and such, and seeing how vastly discrepant the difference between them is. It is not even a case of an author confirming what happened in a scene, it is a case of certain devs replying to suggestions and interpretations that fans give them.

When the games themselves show the World Pillar holding the planet and nothing else, and everything which is presented as being as stake is the Earth, the Underworld, and Olympus, the assertion that it is a metaphysical axle that holds reality itself becomes very questionable.

Likewise, with Atlas we see what he does. He holds up the Earth in place of the pillar. He isn't holding up the universe as it is being sugggested, that much is a very non-literal expression brought by confusion with Greek Mythology, which is also repeated in the Novel. The primary canon of the game shows Ares holding up a planet, not a universe.
 
> That's not quite was going on here, the counter-arguments are centered on analyzing what is depicted on the actual games, without the begged assistance of WoG and such, and seeing how vastly discrepant the difference between them is.

There is no contradiction nor discrepancy. The games don't need to show the universe being affected. There are implications in multiple sources, including the games, and confirmations of those implications in Official Material like Official Recapitulations of what happened, and Word of God. There are no discrepancies nor contradictions.

> It is not even a case of an author confirming what happened in a scene, it is a case of certain devs replying to suggestions and interpretations that fans give them.

Paraphrased

  • X: Is this statue of Nyx? Is the moon in the background real?
  • Dev Answer: It is a literal statue of Nyx with a portal in the background. There was some sweet concept of what we intended her to be.
  • X: What world or dimension does this teleport to?
  • Dev Answer: In our view it was intended to be a dimension of perpetual night guarded by the statue, with a real moon.
The devs explicitly answer their own view and not what the fans try to goad them into believing.

> When the games themselves show the World Pillar holding the planet and nothing else

The games never show this. It states and shows the World Pillar is positioned below the Earth - absolutely nothing states that it holds the earth and "nothing else", nor is this implied by literally anything in any game or any guide or any source.

> and everything which is presented as being as stake is the Earth, the Underworld, and Olympus

The Earth, the Underworld (which, if you include Tartarus is infinitE), and Olympus are among the things that are stated to be threatened. Other things, such as Persephone's statements of "all that ever came before", "all creation" and the world's reversion into Chaos, as well as the literal statement in the Manual that states Atlas's burden in the series includes the series' version of the heavens/cosmos all portray this.

> Likewise, with Atlas we see what he does. He holds up the Earth in place of the pillar. He isn't holding up the universe as it is being sugggested

Atlas is positioned below the Earth just like the pilar was, and among other things, is stated to hold up the Earth. Never, ever stated to only hold up the world and nothing else, but the contrary is stated in the Manual and implied multiple times by different sources.
 
Also, Mimir states that the Norse Pantheon was about as powerful and strong as any other Pantheon he'd ever heard of, suggesting all the pantheons are roughly comparable to each other in raw power, and he knew about the Greek Pantheon.
 
Also JS i'm assuming you disagree since you kudos'd Matt's post, unless you're neutral or something.
 
One argument that I'm seeing coming back a lot is the claim that "Chaos" in the God of War universe only refers to the world's surface being ruined.

I have to stress that this is based off of a completely non-canon commercial where Kratos interrupts a speech Zeus is making regarding saving Olympus and states "in the end, there will be only chaos", which is pretty much just him saying he will screw the Gods up and has no context unlike what Persephone said.

In actual God of War 3, the word "Chaos" is quite clearly used on its cosmic sense, considering Zeus in the beginning of the game makes a speech where he tells the audience that Mount Olympus was rooted on Tartarus, the infinite plane that is the base level of God of War's cosmology (beneath it there is literally nothing), and that it emerged out of Chaos itself and kept growing. If anything, citing GOW3 is self-debunking.

If you want to go by commercials then I link a commercial from Chains of Olympus itself which has Gaia narrate it. The commercial begins with Gaia literally stating that, in the beginning, there was nothing but pure darkness, and the God of War novel clarifies that the primordial darkness/void was Chaos, the void which preceded both Time and Space and was conquered and brought to order by Uranus when he survived the war. This interpretation is consistent throughout every medium of the series.

But I don't go by commercials, only by canon.
 
God of War's cosmology in that sense is extremely similar to this diagram of Percy Jackson's Ancient cosmology by Rick Riordan:

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Sky and cosmos above, with the universe being a real universe with the planets, galaxies and stars all existing and being legitimate in size and scale, the Earth being flat, and Tartarus and the Underworld many kilometers beneath all of that, with below that area being the literal abyss of Chaos.
 
Ive doubted this stuff for a while (I literally wanted to go through massive efforts to write a debunk) and honestly at this point I cannot disagree

not sure how much my word matters here but yeah

regardless of this being discussed ad nauseam, that hardly matters. validity >> how many times this has been discussed. that being said, while the intent behind something like, say, a discussion rule, is good, it is kind of risky and bold to completely ban something from being talked about. GoW has no discussion rule on it, but that just makes the point stronger: shouldn't matter how many times this GoW stuff has been discussed. The points are inherently different because they have been recontextualized. Whether Matt intended it or not, its an ad hominem attack to say that this is the result of bias or anything besides debating. Other users have been punished for less.
 
> It isn't. A statue of Nyx isn't the Goddess Nyx herself. Just like the statue of Athena Kratos talks to isn't Athena herself, merely a vessel for her to communicate through.

1. Which is irrelevant, since the point is that Ascension shows to us that Nyx exists in the Olympian era and there are statues of her likeness showing her to be a physical primordial.

2. The three concept arts which depict GoW Nyx herself in her Physical Avatar are certainly... Nyx herself, and not merely statues of her.

> Objectively false. Nothing in the actual game suggests this magical interpretation of "Nyx's personal dimension", and a twitter statement from a writer certainly isn't qualified evidence for it to be accepted. No matter how much you try to act like it is depicted in-game, the fact is that it isn't, rendering the point moot. And the facts don't care about your feelings.

It is certainly heavily implied in-game since it's a portal with the nightsky in the background that is guarded by a statue of Nyx, and said Twitter WoG merely confirms it. Also, the Lantern of Delos, where this portal is located at, is stated by Aletheia to be on the border of the Aegean Sea (don't quote me on this - I'm still looking for the exact statement, although it's irrelevant and tertiary at best) and coincidentally the narrator states that Helios and Nyx are fighting on the border of the Aegean as well.

> Geez, what is the English Language. What is literary interpretation and what is metaphor. I guess the only possible interpretation is the utterly ludicrous idea that Helios has to beat up the night sky to bring the day...

The actual statement doesn't suggest anything like this.

  • "On the edge of the Aegean, where the Great God, Helios, banishes Nyx from the nightsky..."
This is what the narrator tells us. Helios forces Nyx to retreat from the nightsky. He doesn't beat up the night sky literally - that's just a massive strawman without precedents of the actual argument.

What happened to Occam's Razor? It ceased to exist, supposedly.
 
If there is a counter-argument I'd say I would never, ever, ever be willing to personally entertain that would be the ridiculous "Helios beating up Nyx is a metaphor" argument, if I am to be honest with everyone.

Nyx's name is constantly mentioned in the background lore of the series. Every single time of the few handful it was mentioned, it was always referring to Nyx herself.

In Ascension Nyx has a considerable amount of presence, considering there are multiple multiplayer props referring to her, including one where it's stated she personally oversaw the forging of one of Hades' Armors, and then we have a statue of her, several concept arts for her showing she exists in this time period.

Finally, we have the only time in the series' history where Nyx's name is ever uttered by any character or narrator - saying she is being forced to retreat from the nightsky because of Helios. Let's just note that the mere way the sentence is delivered would already debunk the ridiculous metaphor thesis, since it states Nyx is banished from the nightsky.

Every single other mention of Nyx in the series and especially Ascension is literally Nyx herself being talked about - but then the only moment in the series where Nyx's name is actually uttered to the audience, is not Nyx, but just some random unsubstiated speculative metaphor about the night and the Sun.

Where is the punchline of the joke here?

God of War never throws a God's name like that in any situation. Not once has the series ever used this kind of metaphor.

  • Helios, a god who is very poetical and important to the verse and the narrators, is never, ever replaced with the actual Sun. It is always stated that Helios is the God of the Sun, that he brings light to mankind (which is not a metaphor since it does happen, his light takes precedence over the Sun and the real Sun itself is blocked off once he dies), etc. But his name is never replaced with the Sun's name.
  • Zeus, who much like Nyx is a Sky God, is never referred to as the sky
  • Gaia, a very poetical Titaness, once again, is always stated to be the embodment of the earth and its formless mother in canon material, but the name "Gaia" is never used to refer to the actual name of the Greek Earth.
  • Poseidon's name isn't used to refer to any body of sea, ocean, or the world's oceans.
  • Hades, the only God whose name is ever used that way in the series, is an example that is derived from Mythology itself, and it's a deeply debated topic in the Greek cosmologists whether Hades received the name of the place to begin with as opposed to the place being identified with him. The term is so commonly used to refer to hellish and Underworld places that the Bible (yes, the Bible) uses it to talk about the Afterlife multiple times.
Should I continue or progress with the point here or have I made it clear how it is an unfounded counter-argument that has no backing on the series as a whole and is contradicted by literally everything?

  • Precedence in Nyx's appearance
  • The grammatical structure of the sentence
  • Ascension itself
  • The nature of the series itself
Sorry if it sounds like I'm ranting - but this argument, to me personally, embodies and symbolizes the peak of the outright misinformation we spread. It is really the only argument I see as worthless in this thread.
 
See the explanation on the Norse Kratos' profile. The feats are so discrepantly different in scale between Greek and Norse that there is no point in cross-scaling between the two. Even then, the official canon novel says that Baldur is the strongest opponent Kratos ever faced.

The context behind the bolded statement is more that Baldur is the strongest mortal foe Kratos had faced, considering Kratos was under the impression Baldur was a random demigod or hero and not a God, up until the reveal that he is a God.

Considering it takes place on the first fight Baldur has with Kratos, and this statement is made on the "going somewhere?" scene where Baldur busts the totem (which means it was made like one third-way into their fight), it is an inconsistent powerscaling statement in general. I discard it the same way I'd discard a "Hades is stronger than Zeus" statement from the games if anyone ever said it.
 
Matthew just told me on Discord he will decide to drop and unfollow this thread and doesn't want to involve himself with the subject.
 
Regarding the Underworld's portion in which you can see stars in the background, there is a good point to make here.

This is one of the screenshots of the level. With the stars being located in the background, as visible. This is a GoW1 image. This part of the challenger video makes for the clearest and most good-quality shot.

In God of War 1, this is the fight between Ares and Kratos. Now ignore the fight and look at the background and at the nightsky.

They literally used the exact same Nightsky texture they did on the fight between Ares and Kratos, and pasted it on the Underworld background.

This should shine some light into the fact that yes, these are 100% actual stars there.
 
@Zeckels none of that, it's his opinion to disagree and there's naught wrong with that.

As for the discussion while I do disagree with the Infinite Underworld thing (Matt made good points there) I'm surprisingly supportive of the AP being upgraded to the new levels (I'd also point out Balfour being Kratos' greatest enemy makes no sense on any level but hey)


All up I used to hate this idea but I'm starting to support it
 
AguilaR101 said:
Is the underworld supposed to be a completely different dimension?
No, but it's supposed to be an area that is located well, well below the Flat Earth the series has, and the area itself is supposed to be infinite in size, so it could probably whatever it wants contained inside its boundaries without any contradiction.
 
Okay this is a lot and I'm going to go through this 1 thing at a time

1. Atles holding up the Cosmos.

Is this shown or just a statement.
 
Kratos is a true proletarian hero
 
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