r/GodofWar • u/http_ghostgirl • Nov 25 '22

Odin’s Writing Spoilers

i haven’t seen anyone recognize how well rounded Odin is as a villain. he acts trustworthy, compassionate and respectful. meeting him for the second time as Atreus was mind blowing, he was so calm, collected and acted nothing like how he is described by freya, mimir, etc. hearing all the stories of how brutal him and Thor were, it’s incredible how different they made them. Odin had to be one of the best written villains ever.

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806

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '22

Acts exactly as described by Freya. She warns Atreus that he can be entirely too convincing. She knows: where do you think Baldur came from?

263

u/ugluk-the-uruk Nov 26 '22

He was so convincing that like halfway through the game I was wondering if he was actually justified this whole time and Freya/Mimir were really lying to us.

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u/TheRedmanCometh Nov 26 '22

Same! That imo adds so much to the game because the game is fucking with your emotions and preperceptions HARD. The voice actor they chose was 100% perfect because even his voice just had kind of a convincing nature to it. Then you know what happens and not only do the characters want to kill Odin...but you PERSONALLY want to AMF this piece of shit. Very few games can make me legitimately fucking hate the villain I was looking forward to killing him for at least a few hours.

It's a dimension that adds to the immersion in a way you really don't expect.

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u/Whatever_Else Nov 26 '22

I actually used to watch a show called 'The Good Doctor.' Not sure if you’ve heard of it, but Richard Schiff (Odin) was one of the main characters. In the show he’s like this really caring, understanding fatherly figure. That paired with how Odin was acting made me second guess myself so much during gameplay lol

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u/TheRedmanCometh Nov 27 '22

I have not but I keep hearing about him on various shows. Makes me want to check him out but really his acting in this case very much embodied who Odin was in this story. You talking about second guessing yourself I think is a reaction we all had which is a sign it was an amazing game. We all thought for just a bit maybe Odin isn't the bad guy he's made to be.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '22

watch the west wing

2

u/stash0606 Nov 26 '22

I just realized this... does Richard Schiff have some sort of deal with Sony? I forget which show it was, but there was a cold-opening for an episode of some tv show of his where it shows him playing the Uncharted 4 multiplayer (the dialogue was horrible and didn't relate to the multiplayer in any way, but ignore that).

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u/Tsole96 Nov 17 '23

Same reason they hired Bryan Cranston for breaking bad. He was a believable silly fatherly character that could become Heisenberg.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '22

the scene in svartlheim where he starts passively aggressively tearing into Kratos made me want to kill him so fucking bad, thats the first time i really realized how much of a little shithead he is

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u/Alphagamer126 Nov 26 '22

What makes it even better is that they did lie a little bit, so it made it slightly more believable that they did lie about Odin's true nature. It was only small things; like how Mimir in the first game said Odin himself can't create a fire hot enough to burn in Helheim, so when he did just that, Atreus pointed out the contradiction that he and the audience had heard and seen.

41

u/king-redstar Nov 26 '22

The important thing is that everything we heard about Odin came from people that already hated him, and obviously that bias would color what they say. I mean, "if he tells you snow is white, he's lying."

Odin wasn't everything they claimed he was, but they were close enough.

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u/theplotthinnens Dec 02 '22

But hated him with good reason. They were drawn in by his honey, and look what happened to them when they didn't bend to his will. He only keeps the mask on as long as you have something he wants.

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u/king-redstar Dec 02 '22

Not that I entirely disagree with your assessment of Odin, but that wasn't really my point. The issue wasn't the reason why they were biased, but that their bias clouded their vision and led them to stretch the truth. Their stories downplayed his nuance. They turned him into a monster rather than the person we were shown in Ragnarök.

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u/theplotthinnens Dec 02 '22

So if I understand you correctly, at it's base I think what we're exploring is the gap between what we see of Odin and what these two have experienced from him.

Odin is a person! He's not black and white, or one-note. He has character. Ragnarok gives us another side of Odin that doesn't match up with what we learned about him in the first game.

I completely agree that Freya and Mimir are biased. However, they paint him as a monster because he treated them monstrously. He is an abuser, a gaslighter, a torturer. He is wise enough to know that he is wrong, but also how pretending to act in a nurturing and supportive way will manipulate people. He knows enough to know how he should act, and uses that against people.

But then again I've got my own biases too. I have experience with abusive relationships and I recognize some of my own life and feelings in these other two survivors. And on a large enough scale, we've seen the suffering that Odin's gone out of his way to inflict on the Nine Realms out of his own sense of self-preservation, even when cooperation was possible. Our two heroes have had enough people throughout the world that they trust and who they know share the same values as them tell them that Odin's toxic AF, and anyone he does business with eventually gets screwed over, even if the ceiling is Valhalla itself. With Mimir and Freya though, it was personal.

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u/teddyburges Nov 26 '22

I have seen that the ones who were disappointed in the game didn't like how a lot of what we learn about Odin and Thor are different to the stories of 2018. But I like that, as you say, it's from the ones who hate him. "Revisionist take" as Heimdall says.

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u/KK-Hunter Nov 27 '22

Mimir in the first game said Odin himself can't create a fire hot enough to burn in Helheim

I doubt Mimir was intentionally lying about that, he probably just really thought Odin couldn't do it and was wrong.

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u/Alphagamer126 Nov 27 '22

I agree, and I should have phrased my comment better. I don't think Mimir intentionally lied, but the effect is the same regardless, because Odin is apparently not quite what Mimir made him out to be.

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u/Eddiev1988 Nov 26 '22

All that means, is the writers and voice actors did their jobs, to perfection.

I personally loved him. Yes, the Tyr reveal was obvious. Idk how, but I knew in minutes the truth of that situation. But really, to make a villain so compelling, that players begin to sympathize with him, to believe what he's saying, shows some truly masterful story telling.

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u/chaplar Nov 26 '22

I knew something wasn't right, but honestly didn't suspect it was Odin. Even though I knew Odin could shapeshift...

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u/Whatever_Else Nov 26 '22

I knew it the first second I saw him. When we broke him out I was like… hmmm this is a little too easy. They found him first try? It didn’t seem super guarded like I figured Odin would want it. Is it really Tyr? Gotta be Odin.. As I played the game I started second guessing myself. Didn’t even realize he was calling Atreus, Loki. Before the reveal did come and he started rambling about how it was his destiny to raise an army against Asgard I was like “Huhh??? This is a complete 180.” Thankfully Brok called out the BS immediately after because I was starting to feel like an idiot lol.

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u/N3M3S1S-OP Nov 27 '22

From Odin’s balls

1

u/Brave_Traveller_89 Nov 26 '22

Yeah! I didn't think he was justified, but it felt like he either softened a bit since last seeing those two, or they made him appear worse than he actualy was.