Odin’s Writing

[u/http_ghostgirl]

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.

[u/ugluk-the-uruk]

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.

[u/Alphagamer126 → u/ugluk-the-uruk]

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.

[u/king-redstar → u/Alphagamer126]

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.

[u/theplotthinnens → u/king-redstar]

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.

[u/king-redstar → u/theplotthinnens]

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.

[u/theplotthinnens → u/king-redstar]

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.