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Introductio
From time to time, people on this wiki have brought up revisions to the God of War franchise that'd lead to massive upgrades to the series, and it has often been rejected based on kneejerk reactions or lack of knowledge on the issue from both sides.
I'd like to request that people cast personal pretentions or beliefs on how powerful the God of War franchise based on "world settings" or personal feelings when playing it aside, to focus on the feats and the background lore of the series. The truth is, God of War is far stronger than most people realize - far more. Most of it is based on hard-to-access, canon lore, hence the difficulty in finding it, but I will explain the case thoroughly here.
I have already spoken with an administrator I'm friends with on Discord about this, and, despite his personal reservations with some of my arguments, he gave me the green pass for this post and wanted to see the debate.
I will start out by displaying the feats involved. Near the end of the thread, I will also counter many reservations that can be found in the old thread where the upgrades were rejected, that I feel are utterly unjustified and based on lack of lore knowledge, and also partially because the blog that was linked by the OP didn't explain things well enough.
If you see something you disagree with, check the section where I counter doubts and reservations before commenting. Your doubt will likely be answered there.
Be prepared to meet a gigantic wall of text, a post so huge it dwarves most if not all other revision threads in this wiki. With all of this said, let's start.
Attack Potency
Primordials and Titans: Cronos and Uranus
It all begins, of course, with the Primordials. The beings who forged the universe itself, as shown in the God of War: Ascension introduction.
In the intro we are shown 4 primordials. Here is a screenshot of The Art of God of War: Ascension, the official artbook of the game, that names them. Uranus, Ceto, Ourea, and Chaos. Respectively, the heavens, the oceans, the mountains and life itself.
If not obvious in the intro itself that the Primordials created the universe, multiple Word of Gods, like the senior SSM lead artist and the senior writer of the series, from 2 to Ascension, both confirm that they created the universe. Ariel Lawrence, the writer, 's conversation is even more telling, since she says they spawned the galaxies. This should also be fairly obvious from the intro itself, since Uranus, the starry one, is shown creating all the nebulae and stars in the universe, etc. when he falls down.
Likewise, I will provide more proof later aside from just Word of God that the God of War universe is a proper universe, with real sized galaxies, real sized stars, proper celestial bodies and etc, from the games and the lore.
You might ask why I'm talking about the Primordials if their rating already reflects their feats (not quite, but more on that later). I will elaborate on that.
The most important and relevant Primordial on God of War is Uranus, the creator of the cosmos and the universe itself. The primary canon God of War comics, by Marv Wolfman, have further confirmation on Uranus's status as the creator of the cosmos. Gyges, Uranus's first son and one of the three hecantochires, states multiple times that Uranus gave life to the universe, that Uranus, as the son of Chaos, is the father of the universe, and that those who were born to Uranus have the right to rule all that he created.
Uranus's status as the father and creator of the universe is extremely relevant to the scaling in the God of War universe, because Uranus ended up being defeated and overthrown by none other than Cronos himself, identical to myth. That's right, there are multiple sources and statements in the series that Cronos defeated and slayed his father Uranus and took control of the universe from him.
First of all, when God of War: Ascension was being promoted, Sony: Santa Monica created multiple timelines to recapitulate what happened in the series in order to tie everything back to Ascension. Two of these timelines outright state that Cronos overthrew Uranus. These timeline statements came from the same game that introduced Uranus, and showed him creating the cosmos while fighting fellow primordial Ceto. And that's far from everything.
As far as back as God of War 2, Cory Barlog made a documentary where they established that Cronos fought Uranus, and overthrew him in battle.
When asked about the timeline, the writer of God of War Ascension confirmed that Cronos did indeed beat Uranus. The senior director of animation, when asked about it, said that the battle between Cronos and Uranus would be cosmic in scale, a mix of the Primordial War and the Titan War. And when asked about it again, several months later, he further reinforced that Cronos and Uranus had a cosmic fight that Cronos won.
And it's still not all the evidence of Cronos beating Uranus and seizing reality from him. Stig Asmussen, the director of God of War 3, confirmed that the cycle of the son overthrowing their father was a direct result of fear and hatred, and that it began with Cronos killing his father.
To put an end to the subject, Ascension, the exact same game that introduced Uranus, refers to Uranus being defeated by his son in the multiplayer. Cronos' Blade's movelist includes a move that is titled "Betrayal of Uranus". Clear reference to Cronos fighting and betraying his father. And I'll prove later that multiplayer-given lore is canon to the series.
Primordials and Titans 2: Hyperion and his spear
Now that we have established that Cronos did indeed beat his father Uranus, who created the universe in a fight, which we will further establish once I get to the section where I will debunk all counter arguments against my position, we will be moving onto the other universal like feats the series has.
Hyperion, Cronos's brother and one of the top ranking Titans in the series, is stated in the multiplayer to have forged a spear in the Sun's core that possesses the strength to bear the weight of the cosmos. For those who are still questioning it, the God of War artbook confirms that multiplayer weapons, armors and etc. are canon to the God of War lore, so the description is on purpose. The epic, over the top scale of the weapons is stated to be intentional from the developers's part.
The description is not mere hyperbole either. One of the spear's moves is named "Scars of Uranus". Referring to the literal embodiment of the cosmos in the spear's move list adds even more weight to its described ability, but, aside from an admittedly secondary move name, there is direct confirmation from Word of God that the description is literal, and further confirmatio that it was Hyperion who forged the spear and not someone else.
So the spear is extremely powerful but, in comparison to the Blade of Olympus it's shit. We know this because Hyperion was yet another one of the Titans that Zeus sent to Tartarus with it, you see him in Tartarus when Kratos visits it. So, this spear, despite its force, is nothing compared to the upper tiers of the verse. It wasn't enough to turn the war on the Titans's favor. The war was about equal before the Blade of Olympus was forged.
Besides, Pandora's Box is still described as the most powerful weapon on the God of War universe, so it scales to everything else.
So, in short, Hyperion forged a spear that could bear the weight of the universe itself.
Primordials and Titans 3: Cronos, Father of Time
Going back to the subject of Cronos, this feat is going to be extremely controversial but I'm still going to argue in favor of it.
In a conversation with Ariel Lawrence, the writer of God of War 2, she stated that Cronos's birth led to the very birth of time. And there are more indications of this than just her word, although they most definitely cement it.
The same WoG mentions, first of all, that time didn't exist when the Primordials fought each other - that is, eons and eons. Which indicates an indefinitely vast period of time, something that can't be ascribed. Which is supported first and foremost by the wording Gaia (who narrates the series) uses to describe it. She says it raged on for "an eternity". She could've said hundreds or thousands of years. The Titan War itself was officially stated to have lasted hundreds of years, which puts a quantifiable scale on it, but the Primordial War is stated by all valid sources to have lasted indefinitely long.
Why? Because, as WoG says, time didn't exist yet when it took place, so it by no means can be quantified.
The Steeds of Time, the horses in God of War 2 that are tethered to the Island of Creation, were gifted to the Sisters of Fate by Cronos in an attempt to have him change his fate, as stated by Gaia in the game. They are said to be "of time" because of who they belong to, namely Cronos. So the idea that Cronos was a representation of time of sorts, subtly traces back to God of War 2.
Secondly, one of the most telling pieces of evidence actually comes from the new Norse game. In the Comic Con 2018 panel dedicated to God of War, they showed various concept arts of Kratos. One of them states that Kratos's bloodline is cursed by the cycle of patricide, a cycle of son killing their fathers that "traces back to the very beginning of time".
This is a huge indication of Cronos and the beginning of time being related. The cycle of patricide began with Cronos, Kratos's grandfather, killing his father, Uranus. The cycle traces down to the beginning of time, because Cronos began it, and his birth led to the appearance of time.
There's literally no other way to interpret this. Uranus is stated by Gyges to be the son of Chaos - who is a woman in the series, as seen here. So he didn't start the cycle, since the description specifies sons slaying their fathers.
Finally, the last piece of evidence that Cronos birthed time is that Gaia, his mother, and the Titans in general are stated to consider time meaningless. Remember that Cronos was the last Titan to be born, so it makes sense that his kin who are older than him wouldn't really be bound by something that is younger than they are.
I already know people are going to say the scan is talking about age in-context. It's actually not.
When Kratos defeats the Sisters of Fate and travels back through time to change his fate, teleporting all the Titans to the future and reversing thousands of years worth of events, they are completely unaffected by the changes. Despite the fact that Kratos reversed them being banned to Tartarus so that it never happened to begin with, the past isn't retconned from their memories and the events of time. Helios, in fact, mentions the events of Chains of Olympus (more on that later), which were only possible because Zeus and the Gods won the war and banished the Titans to Tartarus.
In fact, Gaia from the past not only recognizes future Kratos, she knows everything about their deal, such as the fact that she saved Kratos several thousand years later from dying at Zeus's hands in order to serve the Titans.
I already expect people to say "if the Titans weren't restrained by time and knew all the future events, how did they lose the war?"
The answer is easy enough, and answered by God of War 2. The Sisters of Fate, who, as the description should reveal, control the fates of everyone (and everything, including the landscape like rivers and volcanoes), were the ones to deem that the Titans lost the war. In fact, they lost because the Sisters manipulated their threads to their liking, as Lahkesis states herself in the novels. So no, it's not a contradiction.
To summarize, Cronos was stated by WoG to have birthed time with his appearance, the new game's concept arts describe the cycle of patricide, which was started by Cronos when he killed Uranus, as something that traced back to the literal beginning of time, the Primordial War is suggested to have taken place before time itself, the Titans are implied not to be restricted by time, and finally Gaia herself knows everything that's ever happened, future or past, time paradoxes or no paradoxes.
The Olympians 1: Helios and Nyx
Okay, so we have talked about the Titans and the Primordials and their feats. Up until now, it was possible, although stupid and easily debunkable to argue that the Titans beating Primordial characters was an outlier. It all comes crashing down with the Olympians, however.
Olympians in the series also have feats of fighting and overpowering primordial deities. Helios, the god (technically Titan, but he is a god too) of the Sun, is stated to banish Nyx, the primordial of the stars and the night, from the nightsky and make her retreat everyday.
As the narrator of the level states, "on the edge of the Aegean, where the Great God, Helios, banishes Nyx from the nightsky". And, as I've proven and linked before, multiplayer-given lore was meant to be literal lore, given to the God of War universe.
This means that Helios is able to forcibly make Nyx retreat. I'll later dedicate a section to completely refute any allegations about "Nyx" being a metaphor to refer to Helios bringing the day like the last thread argued, but for now it should be enough.
Nyx in the God of War universe by herself already has a feat that is arguably cosmic in scale. Kratos temporarily comes across a portal to an alternate dimension guarded by a statue of Nyx on Ascensio, and said dimension, according to WoG, is a dimension that Nyx inhabits that has eternal night and is a mirror world of our ow, containing a real moon in the sky and even stars (which makes sense, since Nyx in God of War is the same primordial of stars and the night sky seen in myth). This both shows that, if Nyx could help it, it'd be night forever, meaning Helios is forcing her to leave, and that she is able to warp/control a dimension that is a mirror of our own.
She doesn't only have this feat. There is also the statement that all the primordials are roughly equal in strength and that none of them were explicitly ahead of each other. This is why they never managed to cooperate all that well and didn't have a hierarchy, unlike with the Titans and the Gods, who ultimately ruled the universe with their own hierarchy of power. Atlas was the strongest Titan physically, and Cronos the strongest magically, while Hyperion was a right hand of sorts to Cronos, alongside Atlas. The Olympians had Zeus as the top god, with his brothers Hades and Poseidon being the next best and the rulers of their respective realms. Together the three ruled all the other Olympians.
And what makes even more sense is that said dimensional portal is inside the Lantern of Delos, a structure that is stated by the oracle, Aletheia, to be located at the edge of the Aegean Sea - the same place that Helios is stated to banish Nyx in.
In short, Helios can force a primordial being to retreat.
The Olympians 2: Zeus and Olympus
Of course, the Titans were ultimately overthrown and cast aside by their children, the Gods, especially Zeus,who grew mighty and forced his father to vomit the children he had eaten. Zeus forcibly took control of the universe from the Titans and banished them to Tartarus. So, of course, Zeus scales beyond everyone else in the verse. The only one who is stronger than Zeus by the end of the series is Kratos, who is stated by WoG to be at the top of the verse's Greek Pantheo, which, of course, is supported by a mountain of feats and statements.
WoG reaffirms that the Titans and the Olympians are generally equal to the Primordials, which makes crystal clear sense with what we have established so far in this post. Helios, the sixth or fifth greatest god, forces Nyx to retreat every night. Cronos slayed his father Uranus, the father of the universe, and was in turn overthrown by his son, Zeus, in battle. So they replaced each other. Zeus is the strongest, o' course, since he beat a prime Cronos. And Kratos, especially with the Power of Hope, is stronger than Zeus and at the very top of the Greek World, and perhaps all of the God of War multiverse and pantheons.
Hades, Zeus's older brother, could roughly compete with Cronos in raw strength. The same Hades confirmed that he gets stronger with soul consumptio and he absorbed the soul of the strongest of the Titans, Atlas, and thousands, if not millions of normal souls after that. So he's much stronger than he was back then, and Kratos went toe to toe with him. The same Kratos absorbed Hades's soul and got several amps throughout 3, before tanking and overpowering daddy-o Cronos himself, and easily at that, before ultimately killing him with the Blade of Olympus, the same blade that, despite one shotting Cronos, failed to one shot Zeus, even when used against him several times at once. He was just temporarily weakened. Even in GoW3, after being stabbed by it again and pinned to Gaia's heart before it explodes, he still survives. In the end, Kratos has to reobtain hope and get over his guilt at slaying his family to beat the life out of Zeus, ending the reign of the Olympians once and for all.
The Olympians 3: World Pillar, Crisis on Infinite Underearths
You'll pardon me for the horrible pun-reference in the section title, but I couldn't contain myself.
This will be the last section concerning the attack potency feats of the Greek Universe of God of War before we move onto speed feats, and will focus on the plot of Chains of Olympus, namely Persephone conspiring with Atlas to destroy the pillar that holds everything, taking down Olympus.
The World Pillar on God of War does not merely hold up the world disk like argued in the old thread. There are several statements sugesting the World Pillar is the landmark that literally holds up everything in the God of War universe together. It was stated in the official Ascension promotional timeline that, were the pillar destroyed, all of creation would be taken out alongside it. And this was reiterated in another timeline that followed this one.
And it's not just these timelines. As Persephone herself said, all that came before would end. And, the cake part, Persephone states that the world would revert into Chaos.
What she means by that requires us to consult other sources in the matter. As stated by Athena, Chaos is actually the primordial realm, the void that preceded the universe and time itself. The exact same void that spawned the primordials and ended up being connquered and brought to order by Uranus. Which means Persephone is basically stating that, were the World Pillar destroyed, the universe would revert to the same void it indirectly came from. Poetic, right? Also major confirmation.
To put an end to the subject, the God of War II instruction manual states that Atlas in GoW is holding up the heavens above his shoulders (Atlas is standing on top of the destabilized World Pillar doing its job, for those not aware. Also, for the love of god, please check the section where I counter arguments made against my case before pointing out the mistake I know you're about to point out).
Heavens, as in the original mythology, is a term that in God of War is exchanged with cosmos and universe. There is a number of examples of this:
The Pillar (and subsequently Atlas) sustaining the universe makes sense. It means that the Pillar has magical properties that are connected to the cosmos - which in God of War literally exist above and around the living world, the Underworld and Zeus's sky.
The World Pillar's universal scale is also further reinforced when the timeline mentions it taking out the Underworld. Speaking of which, the World Pillar is definitely not the only cosmic feat in Chains of Olympus.
God of War's Underworld is stated, by multiple sources, to be infinite in size and it's never contradicted in this regard. First by the concept artist who drew it (and the director of God of War 3 stated that concept artists's words about the levels they draw hold a lot of weight), both verbally and through text, then it is stated in the God of War 1 lore to be a chasm of immeasurable magnitude ("immeasurable", of course, literally means it is indefinitely long, ie. infinite). Then Tartarus, a plane that surrounds the main realm of Hades, is further stated in-game to stretch out as far as the eye can see.
Cory Barlog, the director of the Norse games, writer of Ghost of Sparta, and the senior creative artist in 1 and 2, further reinforced that Cecil Kim's words were true, and that the Underworld was infinite, giving his own reasoning for it
To put a dot on how vast the Underworld is, literally shown to contain stars inside it in GoW1, the same game that first called it immeasurable.
Also, to add even more weight and consistency, they used the exact same concept art that Cecil Kim said was meant to represent an infinite distance to illustrate the text box where it is called immeasurable. Committed, to say the least.
Aside from just further augmenting how impressive the World Pillar feat is, the Underworld's infinite magnitude serves to give us another supporting feat, considering Helios's Power of the Sun was stated to have illuminated all of the Underworld. Going by my lurking experience, we take lighting feats as direct energy feats and this is another one of them. Helios lighting up an infinite plane while having most of his energy siphoned by Atlas is basically a passive High 3-A feat. And similarly serves as a speed feat.
Speaking of them...
Speed
As you have probably noticed by now, all of the above was merely the section where I dealt with the series's upgrade-worthy attack potency feats. I'll now deal with the upgrade-worthy speed feats. I'll try to go straight to the point because I've been writing this for a really long time and I absolutely want to get it done with. Not to mention that so far I have only covered the greek feats, when the Norse series absolutely has new strength feats that'd help in the universal scaling (that will be a conjoined effort with someone else, for the near future)
1: Establishing the Scaling
First of all, we'll start with a speed feat in the lower tiers.
The Multiplayer' Warriors, more specifically the Warriors of Zeus, have a short burst dash movement that is stated to allow them to temporarily advance at enemies with the speed of light. What reinforces this as not being hyperbole is, aside from the fact that the developers officially said the characters's over the top abilities are meant to be literal in scale in the artbook as I linked way before, the reference to the power of a Hyperion Gate in the move description.
Hyperion in God of War is, not unlike Helios, the previous embodiment of the sun itself with sunlight powers, as stated in the lore of the series, so this move channeling his power adds major weight to it being lightspeed.
One may ask why we should scale this to anyone. The reason is that this move is WoG stated to be a stripped down version of Zeus's own dash, and that Zeus's version of it is basically godly in comparison to what he gives his warriors. Here is a clip of Zeus's version as portrayed in 2, for completion/curiosity's sake.
This sets the supporters for the major and decisive speed feats I'll show now.
2: Hermes, the Speed Beast
Hermes in God of War, much like his counterpart in myth, is the Messenger of the Gods. And he has some insane speed feats listed in the God of War 2 manual, such as bringing all the dreams to the mortals when they are asleep and guiding the souls of those who have died down to the Underworld all in real time. Some of his feats outside the manuals are also impressive, such as him running from a mountain range in the horizon all the way to the screen and filling cups of wine before Poseidon is able to even finish a sentence, and, most importantly, dodging the Head of Helios's solar flare and sun beam, a feat confirmed by Word of God as being put in there to show how fast he was. That same head, as I reinforced above, was able to illuminate the entirety of an infinite plane in finite time.
The senior director of animation confirms that Hermes is indeed able to do what the manual says in regards to guiding the souls of the dead to the Underworld, and one of the senior artists of 2 likewise confirmed that he brought the dreams created by Morpheus, similar to how Santa Claus brought the gifts in Christmas, and consulted his higher ups for confirmation before confirming it himself. Both of those feats are insane, considering the sheer amount of people that die in God of War all around the world and the fact that an even higher amount of people dream at night, and Hermes delivers their dreams as soon as they fall asleep.
When Ares was spreading chaos in Athens hundreds of people were dying each second as stated here. In God of War 3 the vast majority of the world's population died when Kratos slayed Poseidon (as shown in the concept art and deduced by basic logic, considering it was a worldwide flood with a water thickness of hundreds of kilometers, at least), and Hermes led them all to the Underworld right away. Both of these feats are insane multi tasking and reflex feats for Hermes, easily casual feats in the FTL range and Zeus and Kratos both somewhat scale to Hermes, Kratos moreso.
Hermes's best feat by far, however, is dodging the Head of Helios's sunburst at close range, while somewhat tired as I already said. Said feat got confirmed by WoG as intentional to his speed, so those who want to yell "gameplay mechanics" can sit down already. Besides, the feat itself is already accepted as legit here, it'd just get boosted massively.
3: Primordial Feats
As I've already established, the Primordials such as Uranus and Ceto battled each other on a cosmic void that preceded the existence of time itself, and as such scale to Infinite speed from it. This is the second and last of the two infinite speed feats that exist on God of War.
The most impressive non infinite speed feat in the series, however, is certainly the Sisters of Fate's absolutely insane multi tasking speed feat where they monitor and manage the threads of fate at once, in real time. For those who are not aware, the Sisters of Fate are the three deities who determine the fates of everyone in the verse, and they do so through threads that are spread out through their temple. They have so many threads that they connect to every single point in the world. They are stated to control the fates of all life on Earth, be it animals in the wild, fish in the forest. Anything that is alive is controlled by them.
In fact, they don't control just live things. They also have specific threads for volcanoes, as I linked above, and the fate of rivers such as the Nile. and the landscape in general. Everything that lies in the world's surface is controlled by them, and they do so meticulously and carefully, requiring precise measurements, making the feat even more insane. And Clotho, the largest of the sisters, spins all the countless threads of life at once by herself. This isn't stated in the novels only. The games also reinforce it. Clotho states herself that it is through her threads that all forms of life are born.
This is an insane multi tasking speed feat, one that even if you use the most lowballed assumptions comes out as massively FTL in all ways possible. These same sisters, despite having such insane reflexes and reaction bursts, are fooled, timed and outpaced by Kratos several times throughout their fight.
Counter-Arguments
This is the section where I will debunk some of the "arguments" (so to speak) used on the old thread that I feel stem from lack of lore knowledge. Those who wish to ask me anything are free to do so, o' course.
AP Claims
To put a dot on this claim, Gyges, the son of Gaia and Uranus, actually met his father on person. Uranus was repulsed by him and banished him to Tartarus - this after the primordial war, because Gaia was born after/during that war, and Gyges is her son. So this claim is completely baseless and debunked by Gyges's statement.
Next.
Had he said "Nyx, the nightsky", that'd be a different situation, because it'd be treating Nyx and the nightsky as interchangeable terms. But no, the narrator states that Helios banishes Nyx, FROM the nightsky. As in, object X is being banned from object Y. Basic text interpretation and basic grammar, people.
They aren't talking about the sky whenever they mention Zeus's name. It literally always refers to Zeus, which is extra relevant to Nyx because she is also a sky goddess.
When they talk about Ares, they aren't talking about war. They're talking about...Ares.
When they talk about Poseidon, they are not talking about the ocean. They are talking about...Poseidon.
This by itself already destroys any allegations about metaphors, but let's keep going because, as I said, I like refuting this.
There are roughly six references to Nyx on the God of War franchise, let's revisit all of them:
Using Eos's statement about the Power of the Sun completely ignores the context behind it. Once again, she is saying what is actually pertinent to the audience and Kratos. It doesn't mean it's all its power extends to. She was telling Kratos what he needed to do to accomplish his task, namely stop Atlas, and that's as far as it went.
Marvel Comics' Apollo easily scales to cosmic feats. Yet he, just like GoW Helios, only states he can burn the world were his flames' true power unleashed. Should we treat that as a power limit or indication of anything...or is he just saying what actually matters to the audience, like Helios was?
By actual feats Helios's light illuminated an infinite plane and destroyed a pillar that held up the universe for unknown millenia, and whose destruction would result in the entire universe returning to the same void the Primordials came from. So no.
The long time lead writer of the series confirmed that the universe had galaxies in it that were all spawned by Uranus as we covered before.
The Antikythera mechanism, a real life old computer that calculated astronomical positions, exists in God of War and has the exact same function as we've covered before in this post. Meaning the God of War universe has a similar arrangement to the real universe.
Nyx's dimension is stated to be a mirror universe of our own universe, and it contains a real moo.
About the Sun Chariot of Helios, it's not the literal Sun. It's just Helios in his god form, personifying the Su. The actual Sun still exists in the God of War universe, it's just overriden by Helios, who takes precedence in the sky. Which is why it is blotted out after he dies. He is a personification of it, of sorts.
God of War: Ascension mentions the core of the sun being the forging source of Hyperion's Spear, as we've gone over before. Once again showing that the Sun is a literal star in the sky too. And likewise Ascension is the same game that proved a legit universe for the series beyond any doubt.
Now I'll go over my debunks for the reservations against some of the speed feats I listed in the speed section.
Hermes's feat is stated, confirmed by WoG, and uncontradicted. That's more than enough.
AP Feats
This essay took me approximately one week to write up, so I don't know what to say. All that I ask this forum is not to let personal bias cloud your judgements on the series, really. And I'm still willing to answer any questions that I'm asked about any of the arguments I have made so far, so...ask away!
Additionally, I'm planning to include the universal lore feats in the new game in another post. For now I'll only cover the Greek Series.
From time to time, people on this wiki have brought up revisions to the God of War franchise that'd lead to massive upgrades to the series, and it has often been rejected based on kneejerk reactions or lack of knowledge on the issue from both sides.
I'd like to request that people cast personal pretentions or beliefs on how powerful the God of War franchise based on "world settings" or personal feelings when playing it aside, to focus on the feats and the background lore of the series. The truth is, God of War is far stronger than most people realize - far more. Most of it is based on hard-to-access, canon lore, hence the difficulty in finding it, but I will explain the case thoroughly here.
I have already spoken with an administrator I'm friends with on Discord about this, and, despite his personal reservations with some of my arguments, he gave me the green pass for this post and wanted to see the debate.
I will start out by displaying the feats involved. Near the end of the thread, I will also counter many reservations that can be found in the old thread where the upgrades were rejected, that I feel are utterly unjustified and based on lack of lore knowledge, and also partially because the blog that was linked by the OP didn't explain things well enough.
If you see something you disagree with, check the section where I counter doubts and reservations before commenting. Your doubt will likely be answered there.
Be prepared to meet a gigantic wall of text, a post so huge it dwarves most if not all other revision threads in this wiki. With all of this said, let's start.
Attack Potency
Primordials and Titans: Cronos and Uranus
It all begins, of course, with the Primordials. The beings who forged the universe itself, as shown in the God of War: Ascension introduction.
In the intro we are shown 4 primordials. Here is a screenshot of The Art of God of War: Ascension, the official artbook of the game, that names them. Uranus, Ceto, Ourea, and Chaos. Respectively, the heavens, the oceans, the mountains and life itself.
If not obvious in the intro itself that the Primordials created the universe, multiple Word of Gods, like the senior SSM lead artist and the senior writer of the series, from 2 to Ascension, both confirm that they created the universe. Ariel Lawrence, the writer, 's conversation is even more telling, since she says they spawned the galaxies. This should also be fairly obvious from the intro itself, since Uranus, the starry one, is shown creating all the nebulae and stars in the universe, etc. when he falls down.
Likewise, I will provide more proof later aside from just Word of God that the God of War universe is a proper universe, with real sized galaxies, real sized stars, proper celestial bodies and etc, from the games and the lore.
You might ask why I'm talking about the Primordials if their rating already reflects their feats (not quite, but more on that later). I will elaborate on that.
The most important and relevant Primordial on God of War is Uranus, the creator of the cosmos and the universe itself. The primary canon God of War comics, by Marv Wolfman, have further confirmation on Uranus's status as the creator of the cosmos. Gyges, Uranus's first son and one of the three hecantochires, states multiple times that Uranus gave life to the universe, that Uranus, as the son of Chaos, is the father of the universe, and that those who were born to Uranus have the right to rule all that he created.
Uranus's status as the father and creator of the universe is extremely relevant to the scaling in the God of War universe, because Uranus ended up being defeated and overthrown by none other than Cronos himself, identical to myth. That's right, there are multiple sources and statements in the series that Cronos defeated and slayed his father Uranus and took control of the universe from him.
First of all, when God of War: Ascension was being promoted, Sony: Santa Monica created multiple timelines to recapitulate what happened in the series in order to tie everything back to Ascension. Two of these timelines outright state that Cronos overthrew Uranus. These timeline statements came from the same game that introduced Uranus, and showed him creating the cosmos while fighting fellow primordial Ceto. And that's far from everything.
As far as back as God of War 2, Cory Barlog made a documentary where they established that Cronos fought Uranus, and overthrew him in battle.
When asked about the timeline, the writer of God of War Ascension confirmed that Cronos did indeed beat Uranus. The senior director of animation, when asked about it, said that the battle between Cronos and Uranus would be cosmic in scale, a mix of the Primordial War and the Titan War. And when asked about it again, several months later, he further reinforced that Cronos and Uranus had a cosmic fight that Cronos won.
And it's still not all the evidence of Cronos beating Uranus and seizing reality from him. Stig Asmussen, the director of God of War 3, confirmed that the cycle of the son overthrowing their father was a direct result of fear and hatred, and that it began with Cronos killing his father.
To put an end to the subject, Ascension, the exact same game that introduced Uranus, refers to Uranus being defeated by his son in the multiplayer. Cronos' Blade's movelist includes a move that is titled "Betrayal of Uranus". Clear reference to Cronos fighting and betraying his father. And I'll prove later that multiplayer-given lore is canon to the series.
Primordials and Titans 2: Hyperion and his spear
Now that we have established that Cronos did indeed beat his father Uranus, who created the universe in a fight, which we will further establish once I get to the section where I will debunk all counter arguments against my position, we will be moving onto the other universal like feats the series has.
Hyperion, Cronos's brother and one of the top ranking Titans in the series, is stated in the multiplayer to have forged a spear in the Sun's core that possesses the strength to bear the weight of the cosmos. For those who are still questioning it, the God of War artbook confirms that multiplayer weapons, armors and etc. are canon to the God of War lore, so the description is on purpose. The epic, over the top scale of the weapons is stated to be intentional from the developers's part.
The description is not mere hyperbole either. One of the spear's moves is named "Scars of Uranus". Referring to the literal embodiment of the cosmos in the spear's move list adds even more weight to its described ability, but, aside from an admittedly secondary move name, there is direct confirmation from Word of God that the description is literal, and further confirmatio that it was Hyperion who forged the spear and not someone else.
So the spear is extremely powerful but, in comparison to the Blade of Olympus it's shit. We know this because Hyperion was yet another one of the Titans that Zeus sent to Tartarus with it, you see him in Tartarus when Kratos visits it. So, this spear, despite its force, is nothing compared to the upper tiers of the verse. It wasn't enough to turn the war on the Titans's favor. The war was about equal before the Blade of Olympus was forged.
Besides, Pandora's Box is still described as the most powerful weapon on the God of War universe, so it scales to everything else.
So, in short, Hyperion forged a spear that could bear the weight of the universe itself.
Primordials and Titans 3: Cronos, Father of Time
Going back to the subject of Cronos, this feat is going to be extremely controversial but I'm still going to argue in favor of it.
In a conversation with Ariel Lawrence, the writer of God of War 2, she stated that Cronos's birth led to the very birth of time. And there are more indications of this than just her word, although they most definitely cement it.
The same WoG mentions, first of all, that time didn't exist when the Primordials fought each other - that is, eons and eons. Which indicates an indefinitely vast period of time, something that can't be ascribed. Which is supported first and foremost by the wording Gaia (who narrates the series) uses to describe it. She says it raged on for "an eternity". She could've said hundreds or thousands of years. The Titan War itself was officially stated to have lasted hundreds of years, which puts a quantifiable scale on it, but the Primordial War is stated by all valid sources to have lasted indefinitely long.
Why? Because, as WoG says, time didn't exist yet when it took place, so it by no means can be quantified.
The Steeds of Time, the horses in God of War 2 that are tethered to the Island of Creation, were gifted to the Sisters of Fate by Cronos in an attempt to have him change his fate, as stated by Gaia in the game. They are said to be "of time" because of who they belong to, namely Cronos. So the idea that Cronos was a representation of time of sorts, subtly traces back to God of War 2.
Secondly, one of the most telling pieces of evidence actually comes from the new Norse game. In the Comic Con 2018 panel dedicated to God of War, they showed various concept arts of Kratos. One of them states that Kratos's bloodline is cursed by the cycle of patricide, a cycle of son killing their fathers that "traces back to the very beginning of time".
This is a huge indication of Cronos and the beginning of time being related. The cycle of patricide began with Cronos, Kratos's grandfather, killing his father, Uranus. The cycle traces down to the beginning of time, because Cronos began it, and his birth led to the appearance of time.
There's literally no other way to interpret this. Uranus is stated by Gyges to be the son of Chaos - who is a woman in the series, as seen here. So he didn't start the cycle, since the description specifies sons slaying their fathers.
Finally, the last piece of evidence that Cronos birthed time is that Gaia, his mother, and the Titans in general are stated to consider time meaningless. Remember that Cronos was the last Titan to be born, so it makes sense that his kin who are older than him wouldn't really be bound by something that is younger than they are.
I already know people are going to say the scan is talking about age in-context. It's actually not.
When Kratos defeats the Sisters of Fate and travels back through time to change his fate, teleporting all the Titans to the future and reversing thousands of years worth of events, they are completely unaffected by the changes. Despite the fact that Kratos reversed them being banned to Tartarus so that it never happened to begin with, the past isn't retconned from their memories and the events of time. Helios, in fact, mentions the events of Chains of Olympus (more on that later), which were only possible because Zeus and the Gods won the war and banished the Titans to Tartarus.
In fact, Gaia from the past not only recognizes future Kratos, she knows everything about their deal, such as the fact that she saved Kratos several thousand years later from dying at Zeus's hands in order to serve the Titans.
I already expect people to say "if the Titans weren't restrained by time and knew all the future events, how did they lose the war?"
The answer is easy enough, and answered by God of War 2. The Sisters of Fate, who, as the description should reveal, control the fates of everyone (and everything, including the landscape like rivers and volcanoes), were the ones to deem that the Titans lost the war. In fact, they lost because the Sisters manipulated their threads to their liking, as Lahkesis states herself in the novels. So no, it's not a contradiction.
To summarize, Cronos was stated by WoG to have birthed time with his appearance, the new game's concept arts describe the cycle of patricide, which was started by Cronos when he killed Uranus, as something that traced back to the literal beginning of time, the Primordial War is suggested to have taken place before time itself, the Titans are implied not to be restricted by time, and finally Gaia herself knows everything that's ever happened, future or past, time paradoxes or no paradoxes.
The Olympians 1: Helios and Nyx
Okay, so we have talked about the Titans and the Primordials and their feats. Up until now, it was possible, although stupid and easily debunkable to argue that the Titans beating Primordial characters was an outlier. It all comes crashing down with the Olympians, however.
Olympians in the series also have feats of fighting and overpowering primordial deities. Helios, the god (technically Titan, but he is a god too) of the Sun, is stated to banish Nyx, the primordial of the stars and the night, from the nightsky and make her retreat everyday.
As the narrator of the level states, "on the edge of the Aegean, where the Great God, Helios, banishes Nyx from the nightsky". And, as I've proven and linked before, multiplayer-given lore was meant to be literal lore, given to the God of War universe.
This means that Helios is able to forcibly make Nyx retreat. I'll later dedicate a section to completely refute any allegations about "Nyx" being a metaphor to refer to Helios bringing the day like the last thread argued, but for now it should be enough.
Nyx in the God of War universe by herself already has a feat that is arguably cosmic in scale. Kratos temporarily comes across a portal to an alternate dimension guarded by a statue of Nyx on Ascensio, and said dimension, according to WoG, is a dimension that Nyx inhabits that has eternal night and is a mirror world of our ow, containing a real moon in the sky and even stars (which makes sense, since Nyx in God of War is the same primordial of stars and the night sky seen in myth). This both shows that, if Nyx could help it, it'd be night forever, meaning Helios is forcing her to leave, and that she is able to warp/control a dimension that is a mirror of our own.
She doesn't only have this feat. There is also the statement that all the primordials are roughly equal in strength and that none of them were explicitly ahead of each other. This is why they never managed to cooperate all that well and didn't have a hierarchy, unlike with the Titans and the Gods, who ultimately ruled the universe with their own hierarchy of power. Atlas was the strongest Titan physically, and Cronos the strongest magically, while Hyperion was a right hand of sorts to Cronos, alongside Atlas. The Olympians had Zeus as the top god, with his brothers Hades and Poseidon being the next best and the rulers of their respective realms. Together the three ruled all the other Olympians.
And what makes even more sense is that said dimensional portal is inside the Lantern of Delos, a structure that is stated by the oracle, Aletheia, to be located at the edge of the Aegean Sea - the same place that Helios is stated to banish Nyx in.
In short, Helios can force a primordial being to retreat.
The Olympians 2: Zeus and Olympus
Of course, the Titans were ultimately overthrown and cast aside by their children, the Gods, especially Zeus,who grew mighty and forced his father to vomit the children he had eaten. Zeus forcibly took control of the universe from the Titans and banished them to Tartarus. So, of course, Zeus scales beyond everyone else in the verse. The only one who is stronger than Zeus by the end of the series is Kratos, who is stated by WoG to be at the top of the verse's Greek Pantheo, which, of course, is supported by a mountain of feats and statements.
WoG reaffirms that the Titans and the Olympians are generally equal to the Primordials, which makes crystal clear sense with what we have established so far in this post. Helios, the sixth or fifth greatest god, forces Nyx to retreat every night. Cronos slayed his father Uranus, the father of the universe, and was in turn overthrown by his son, Zeus, in battle. So they replaced each other. Zeus is the strongest, o' course, since he beat a prime Cronos. And Kratos, especially with the Power of Hope, is stronger than Zeus and at the very top of the Greek World, and perhaps all of the God of War multiverse and pantheons.
Hades, Zeus's older brother, could roughly compete with Cronos in raw strength. The same Hades confirmed that he gets stronger with soul consumptio and he absorbed the soul of the strongest of the Titans, Atlas, and thousands, if not millions of normal souls after that. So he's much stronger than he was back then, and Kratos went toe to toe with him. The same Kratos absorbed Hades's soul and got several amps throughout 3, before tanking and overpowering daddy-o Cronos himself, and easily at that, before ultimately killing him with the Blade of Olympus, the same blade that, despite one shotting Cronos, failed to one shot Zeus, even when used against him several times at once. He was just temporarily weakened. Even in GoW3, after being stabbed by it again and pinned to Gaia's heart before it explodes, he still survives. In the end, Kratos has to reobtain hope and get over his guilt at slaying his family to beat the life out of Zeus, ending the reign of the Olympians once and for all.
The Olympians 3: World Pillar, Crisis on Infinite Underearths
You'll pardon me for the horrible pun-reference in the section title, but I couldn't contain myself.
This will be the last section concerning the attack potency feats of the Greek Universe of God of War before we move onto speed feats, and will focus on the plot of Chains of Olympus, namely Persephone conspiring with Atlas to destroy the pillar that holds everything, taking down Olympus.
The World Pillar on God of War does not merely hold up the world disk like argued in the old thread. There are several statements sugesting the World Pillar is the landmark that literally holds up everything in the God of War universe together. It was stated in the official Ascension promotional timeline that, were the pillar destroyed, all of creation would be taken out alongside it. And this was reiterated in another timeline that followed this one.
And it's not just these timelines. As Persephone herself said, all that came before would end. And, the cake part, Persephone states that the world would revert into Chaos.
What she means by that requires us to consult other sources in the matter. As stated by Athena, Chaos is actually the primordial realm, the void that preceded the universe and time itself. The exact same void that spawned the primordials and ended up being connquered and brought to order by Uranus. Which means Persephone is basically stating that, were the World Pillar destroyed, the universe would revert to the same void it indirectly came from. Poetic, right? Also major confirmation.
To put an end to the subject, the God of War II instruction manual states that Atlas in GoW is holding up the heavens above his shoulders (Atlas is standing on top of the destabilized World Pillar doing its job, for those not aware. Also, for the love of god, please check the section where I counter arguments made against my case before pointing out the mistake I know you're about to point out).
Heavens, as in the original mythology, is a term that in God of War is exchanged with cosmos and universe. There is a number of examples of this:
- In God of War: Ascension, you can come across a gear device called the Antikythera Mechanism that is stated to be able to track the heavens. This device is a reference to a real world ancient Greek machine bearing the same name, that was used to calculate astronomical positions. So, by "track the heavens", it is literally talking about tracking the universe/cosmos.
- Most blatant example, the God of War artbook lists Uranus as the embodiment of the heavens; the same guy who spawned the entire universe from his body while fighting Ceto as we've gone over.
- Finally, even in real mythology where Atlas also held up the heavens, it was similarly talking about the upper universe as the Greeks viewed it at the time. The only difference between both storylines is that the GoW universe is a proper one, with real galaxies and real stars.
The Pillar (and subsequently Atlas) sustaining the universe makes sense. It means that the Pillar has magical properties that are connected to the cosmos - which in God of War literally exist above and around the living world, the Underworld and Zeus's sky.
The World Pillar's universal scale is also further reinforced when the timeline mentions it taking out the Underworld. Speaking of which, the World Pillar is definitely not the only cosmic feat in Chains of Olympus.
God of War's Underworld is stated, by multiple sources, to be infinite in size and it's never contradicted in this regard. First by the concept artist who drew it (and the director of God of War 3 stated that concept artists's words about the levels they draw hold a lot of weight), both verbally and through text, then it is stated in the God of War 1 lore to be a chasm of immeasurable magnitude ("immeasurable", of course, literally means it is indefinitely long, ie. infinite). Then Tartarus, a plane that surrounds the main realm of Hades, is further stated in-game to stretch out as far as the eye can see.
Cory Barlog, the director of the Norse games, writer of Ghost of Sparta, and the senior creative artist in 1 and 2, further reinforced that Cecil Kim's words were true, and that the Underworld was infinite, giving his own reasoning for it
To put a dot on how vast the Underworld is, literally shown to contain stars inside it in GoW1, the same game that first called it immeasurable.
Also, to add even more weight and consistency, they used the exact same concept art that Cecil Kim said was meant to represent an infinite distance to illustrate the text box where it is called immeasurable. Committed, to say the least.
Aside from just further augmenting how impressive the World Pillar feat is, the Underworld's infinite magnitude serves to give us another supporting feat, considering Helios's Power of the Sun was stated to have illuminated all of the Underworld. Going by my lurking experience, we take lighting feats as direct energy feats and this is another one of them. Helios lighting up an infinite plane while having most of his energy siphoned by Atlas is basically a passive High 3-A feat. And similarly serves as a speed feat.
Speaking of them...
Speed
As you have probably noticed by now, all of the above was merely the section where I dealt with the series's upgrade-worthy attack potency feats. I'll now deal with the upgrade-worthy speed feats. I'll try to go straight to the point because I've been writing this for a really long time and I absolutely want to get it done with. Not to mention that so far I have only covered the greek feats, when the Norse series absolutely has new strength feats that'd help in the universal scaling (that will be a conjoined effort with someone else, for the near future)
1: Establishing the Scaling
First of all, we'll start with a speed feat in the lower tiers.
The Multiplayer' Warriors, more specifically the Warriors of Zeus, have a short burst dash movement that is stated to allow them to temporarily advance at enemies with the speed of light. What reinforces this as not being hyperbole is, aside from the fact that the developers officially said the characters's over the top abilities are meant to be literal in scale in the artbook as I linked way before, the reference to the power of a Hyperion Gate in the move description.
Hyperion in God of War is, not unlike Helios, the previous embodiment of the sun itself with sunlight powers, as stated in the lore of the series, so this move channeling his power adds major weight to it being lightspeed.
One may ask why we should scale this to anyone. The reason is that this move is WoG stated to be a stripped down version of Zeus's own dash, and that Zeus's version of it is basically godly in comparison to what he gives his warriors. Here is a clip of Zeus's version as portrayed in 2, for completion/curiosity's sake.
This sets the supporters for the major and decisive speed feats I'll show now.
2: Hermes, the Speed Beast
Hermes in God of War, much like his counterpart in myth, is the Messenger of the Gods. And he has some insane speed feats listed in the God of War 2 manual, such as bringing all the dreams to the mortals when they are asleep and guiding the souls of those who have died down to the Underworld all in real time. Some of his feats outside the manuals are also impressive, such as him running from a mountain range in the horizon all the way to the screen and filling cups of wine before Poseidon is able to even finish a sentence, and, most importantly, dodging the Head of Helios's solar flare and sun beam, a feat confirmed by Word of God as being put in there to show how fast he was. That same head, as I reinforced above, was able to illuminate the entirety of an infinite plane in finite time.
The senior director of animation confirms that Hermes is indeed able to do what the manual says in regards to guiding the souls of the dead to the Underworld, and one of the senior artists of 2 likewise confirmed that he brought the dreams created by Morpheus, similar to how Santa Claus brought the gifts in Christmas, and consulted his higher ups for confirmation before confirming it himself. Both of those feats are insane, considering the sheer amount of people that die in God of War all around the world and the fact that an even higher amount of people dream at night, and Hermes delivers their dreams as soon as they fall asleep.
When Ares was spreading chaos in Athens hundreds of people were dying each second as stated here. In God of War 3 the vast majority of the world's population died when Kratos slayed Poseidon (as shown in the concept art and deduced by basic logic, considering it was a worldwide flood with a water thickness of hundreds of kilometers, at least), and Hermes led them all to the Underworld right away. Both of these feats are insane multi tasking and reflex feats for Hermes, easily casual feats in the FTL range and Zeus and Kratos both somewhat scale to Hermes, Kratos moreso.
Hermes's best feat by far, however, is dodging the Head of Helios's sunburst at close range, while somewhat tired as I already said. Said feat got confirmed by WoG as intentional to his speed, so those who want to yell "gameplay mechanics" can sit down already. Besides, the feat itself is already accepted as legit here, it'd just get boosted massively.
3: Primordial Feats
As I've already established, the Primordials such as Uranus and Ceto battled each other on a cosmic void that preceded the existence of time itself, and as such scale to Infinite speed from it. This is the second and last of the two infinite speed feats that exist on God of War.
The most impressive non infinite speed feat in the series, however, is certainly the Sisters of Fate's absolutely insane multi tasking speed feat where they monitor and manage the threads of fate at once, in real time. For those who are not aware, the Sisters of Fate are the three deities who determine the fates of everyone in the verse, and they do so through threads that are spread out through their temple. They have so many threads that they connect to every single point in the world. They are stated to control the fates of all life on Earth, be it animals in the wild, fish in the forest. Anything that is alive is controlled by them.
In fact, they don't control just live things. They also have specific threads for volcanoes, as I linked above, and the fate of rivers such as the Nile. and the landscape in general. Everything that lies in the world's surface is controlled by them, and they do so meticulously and carefully, requiring precise measurements, making the feat even more insane. And Clotho, the largest of the sisters, spins all the countless threads of life at once by herself. This isn't stated in the novels only. The games also reinforce it. Clotho states herself that it is through her threads that all forms of life are born.
This is an insane multi tasking speed feat, one that even if you use the most lowballed assumptions comes out as massively FTL in all ways possible. These same sisters, despite having such insane reflexes and reaction bursts, are fooled, timed and outpaced by Kratos several times throughout their fight.
Counter-Arguments
This is the section where I will debunk some of the "arguments" (so to speak) used on the old thread that I feel stem from lack of lore knowledge. Those who wish to ask me anything are free to do so, o' course.
AP Claims
- Claim 1: "Cronos never defeated Uranus, Uranus was killed by Ceto, the Ocean Primordial, as seen in the Ascension intro."
- Reply: This is a common argument, and it's as bull as it's common. No, Ceto never killed Uranus. She merely knocked him back with an uppercut. She didn't hit his head off his body either, as can be seen in the slowed down screenshot. Absolutely nothing suggests that Uranus was killed on that scene. Unlike what's shown with Ceto, who dissipates into the oceans when she is killed, and Ourea, who loses a limb, all we're shown is Uranus being temporarily knocked back.
To put a dot on this claim, Gyges, the son of Gaia and Uranus, actually met his father on person. Uranus was repulsed by him and banished him to Tartarus - this after the primordial war, because Gaia was born after/during that war, and Gyges is her son. So this claim is completely baseless and debunked by Gyges's statement.
Next.
- Claim 2: "Uranus was weakened after the Primordial War. Cronos defeated a weakened form of him".
- Reply: This is completely baseless and is not supported by anything that's said on the lore of the series, the games, the novels or the comics, and it's debunked by WoG saying, twice at that, Cronos beat Uranus in a cosmic level fight.
- Claim 3: "Helios doesn't actually banish Nyx, it's a metaphor for him bringing the day".
- Reply: This is a claim I've always loved debunking in other battleboards, because of how inconsequential it is.
Had he said "Nyx, the nightsky", that'd be a different situation, because it'd be treating Nyx and the nightsky as interchangeable terms. But no, the narrator states that Helios banishes Nyx, FROM the nightsky. As in, object X is being banned from object Y. Basic text interpretation and basic grammar, people.
They aren't talking about the sky whenever they mention Zeus's name. It literally always refers to Zeus, which is extra relevant to Nyx because she is also a sky goddess.
When they talk about Ares, they aren't talking about war. They're talking about...Ares.
When they talk about Poseidon, they are not talking about the ocean. They are talking about...Poseidon.
This by itself already destroys any allegations about metaphors, but let's keep going because, as I said, I like refuting this.
There are roughly six references to Nyx on the God of War franchise, let's revisit all of them:
- A statement on the official God of War 2 promotional website, saying Nyx and Chaos created the universe (which got ultimately retconned)
- Two concept arts of Nyx made by the lead Ascension artist (the same game that says she is banished by Helios), both of them showing that Nyx, the literal goddess, is still alive when the Olympians are ruling.
- The description of the Armor of Hades, an armor set forged for the Warriors of Hades, that states the armor was forged under Nyx and Erebus's watchful eyes. Yet again an Ascension reference showing Nyx still alive on the Olympian era.
- A statue of Nyx guarding a universe controlled by her, as confirmed by WoG. Again, literally Nyx.
- And finally and most importantly: the narrator of the Troy level saying Helios is banishing Nyx from the nightsky. This is the first (and last) time Nyx's name is ever uttered in the history of the God of War franchise.
- Claim 4: "You are using Word of God to support your claims. We reject that here"
- Reply: Just to make sure this doesn't get brought up.
- "Regarding direct information from the author/creator of a character: We do not use statements from them that are phrased in an uncertain, uncaring, and/or unspecific manner, such as "Could be", "Maybe", "Probably", "Possibly" etcetera. Brief or vague answers to fan-questions via social media are also generally disregarded, whereas more elaborate explanations in serious interviews are usually considered more reliable."
- "When a statement from a character, guidebook, or even word of god contradicts what occurs in the series, they won't be used. For example, if an author says that a character from his work is incapable of shattering planets, even though it has destroyed galaxies on-screen, we will always go with the latter, rather than the former. The statement need to be consistent with what has been revealed within the fictional franchise itself. Otherwise, it will be considered invalid."
- "Author statements will only be accepted when they clarify what has been shown or implied in the series itself, and will be rejected when they contradict what has been shown to the audience. Statements that technically do not contradict anything shown in the series will still be rejected if there is no evidence that they are accurate.."
- '"Claim 5: The World Pillar only holds up the world. It's even in its name. There is no evidence it is holding up all the cosmos. Helios's Power of the Sun can only destroy the world, but it also destroys the World Pillar, so the pillar is only planetary in scale'"
- Reply: I have provided plenty of evidence of the World Pillar's stature. Those who want to say it only holds the world "in context" have to go ahead and prove it beyond any doubt. It being said to "hold up the world" does not prevent it from holding up more than that in the lore, as I proved above. It just means the characters and the narrator are saying what is actually pertinent to them and what they want to destroy, like every single franchise out there with universal characters who want to rule a small, dot-sized planet.
Using Eos's statement about the Power of the Sun completely ignores the context behind it. Once again, she is saying what is actually pertinent to the audience and Kratos. It doesn't mean it's all its power extends to. She was telling Kratos what he needed to do to accomplish his task, namely stop Atlas, and that's as far as it went.
Marvel Comics' Apollo easily scales to cosmic feats. Yet he, just like GoW Helios, only states he can burn the world were his flames' true power unleashed. Should we treat that as a power limit or indication of anything...or is he just saying what actually matters to the audience, like Helios was?
By actual feats Helios's light illuminated an infinite plane and destroyed a pillar that held up the universe for unknown millenia, and whose destruction would result in the entire universe returning to the same void the Primordials came from. So no.
- Claim 6: "The scan where Atlas is stated to hold up the heavens also says Zeus was the one to banish him to this task, but it was actually Kratos who did it a thousand years after the war, so it's an invalid/retconned scan"
- 'Reply: Chains of Olympus, the game where it's revealed that Kratos was the one to chain Atlas to his burden, came out one year after the manual statement. It was already completed when GoW2 was released. The developers would obviously not go and spoil the plot of the next game in the manual of the current one.
- Claim 7: "The God of War universe has small stars and is not a proper universe, the Sun is just a chariot carried into the sky by Helios."
- Reply: False. The God of War world always had a proper universe.
The long time lead writer of the series confirmed that the universe had galaxies in it that were all spawned by Uranus as we covered before.
The Antikythera mechanism, a real life old computer that calculated astronomical positions, exists in God of War and has the exact same function as we've covered before in this post. Meaning the God of War universe has a similar arrangement to the real universe.
Nyx's dimension is stated to be a mirror universe of our own universe, and it contains a real moo.
About the Sun Chariot of Helios, it's not the literal Sun. It's just Helios in his god form, personifying the Su. The actual Sun still exists in the God of War universe, it's just overriden by Helios, who takes precedence in the sky. Which is why it is blotted out after he dies. He is a personification of it, of sorts.
God of War: Ascension mentions the core of the sun being the forging source of Hyperion's Spear, as we've gone over before. Once again showing that the Sun is a literal star in the sky too. And likewise Ascension is the same game that proved a legit universe for the series beyond any doubt.
- Claim 8: "The concept artist statement where the Underworld is stated to be infinite is hyperbole."
- Reply: Nope. The concept artist is literally talking about physical aspects of the Underworld before he says the concept art represents an infinite distance in the background. He mentions wonky gravity, which is legit because there are floating lands and bones all around, and he mentions the presence of corpses flying, floating and exploding.
- Claim 9: "Gaia states Kratos fell next to the very edge of Hades, proving it has an edge and is not infinite. It's false."
- Reply: What Gaia is talking about there is the upper Underworld. The very next scene shows that Kratos is on the edge of Hades, which contains a waterfall of blood that leads directly to Tartarus, the infinite plane that directly surrounds and exists beneath Hades, the upper underworld, as seen in the next cutscene in the linked video.
Now I'll go over my debunks for the reservations against some of the speed feats I listed in the speed section.
- Claim 1: "The Essence of the Hyperion is not a normal attack, it's teleportation-based as stated in the description - it opens a Hyperion Portal. So it doesn't scale to combat speed."
- Reply: This is a common misconception, the Essence of Hyperion is not a teleportation-based attack. When it says that they open a Hyperion Portal, it means that they channel the powers of one in order to dash. Here is a gif of it being used, you can see the speed line and the luminous aura of the dash. And Zeus's own massively amped version of it is also just a dash and not a teleport attack either.
- Claim 2: "Hermes is never shown bringing the souls to the Underworld in cutscenes, so he doesn't do that. If he did we wouldn't even see him in-game, but we do several times"
- Reply: Aside from the fact that this would be a practically impossible thing for them to implement in the game given the scales, Hermes is seen for a total of ten seconds in the beginning of God of War 3 and end of God of War 2, and then you fight him halfway through the game, where he obviously wouldn't be focused on doing anything but taking on Kratos. The vast majority of the world also died right on the begining of 3 when Kratos slayed Poseidon, so it'd be easy for him to take care of all of these right away, leaving him only with occasional deaths.
Hermes's feat is stated, confirmed by WoG, and uncontradicted. That's more than enough.
- Claim 3: Hermes doesn't bring the dreams, Morpheus does, and Morpheus wants to take over the world so he wouldn't cooperate with the Olympians
- Reply: This is false. Morpheus does want to take over the world, but he is normally forced to cooperate with the Olympians and is held at bay by Helios. The God of War 2 novel reveals that Persephone enlisted Morpheus's help in order to go on with her World Pilllar plan. As WoG [confirms, Morpheus creates the dreams and Hermes brings them to the mortals. Chains of Olympus was an exception, Morpheus was enlisted and purposedfully messed with the normal hierarchy of events.
- Claim 4: "God of War 2 reveals that the Arms of Hades are the ones to bring the souls of the dead down to the underworld, not Hermes, so his feat is false."
- Reply: The God of War 2 novels revealed that Hades personally sent out the Arms in order to collect Kratos. He even got mad at Zeus because he thought the King of the Gods had personally saved Kratos again. In other words, that was an exception to the normal events, and not the norm. This is further suggested in the comics, when Hades sends the arms to bring Kratos's Spartan Army to hell personally, and in the scene where Gaia speaks to Kratos after Zeus destroys Sparta.
AP Feats
- Uranus creating the universe
- Hyperion having a spear that can bear the weight of the universe
- Atlas holding up all the heavens
- The World Pillar's destruction threatening all of creation and being stated by Persephone to be able to reduce everything to a primordial void
- Cronos's birth creating time
- Nyx creating and warping a dimension that contains stars and celestial bodies passively, with said dimension being a mirror of our own.
- Helios's light illuminating all of the Underworld, an infinite plane
- Helios's power damaging the World Pillar
- Hermes guiding the souls all the way down to the Underworld (Likely FTL)
- Hermes bringing the dreams (Likely FTL)
- The light of Helios illuminating an infinite plane (Infinite)
- The Primordials fighting in a void that precedes time (Infinite)
- The Sisters of Fate managing all the threads of fate in real time (Highly MFTL)
- The Essence of Hyperion, a lightspeed short burst dash (Lightspeed)
- Zeus's own dash being a massively amplified version of said dash (FTL+)
This essay took me approximately one week to write up, so I don't know what to say. All that I ask this forum is not to let personal bias cloud your judgements on the series, really. And I'm still willing to answer any questions that I'm asked about any of the arguments I have made so far, so...ask away!
Additionally, I'm planning to include the universal lore feats in the new game in another post. For now I'll only cover the Greek Series.
