Immortals Fenyx Rising may take some design queues from games like The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild, or Ubisoft’s other ancient Greek open world, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but the game with the most similarities in the narrative component of the setting might actually be God of War. While the God of War franchise moved to Nordic mythology in Kratos’s last outing, the first seven games released across PS2, PS3, PSP, and mobile devices in the iconic series were a sequence of bloody revenge tales set in Ancient Greece, with heroes of legend and the pantheon of Olympus proving as supporting casts and chief antagonists.

Immortals: Fenyx Rising also draws its friends and foes from Greek myth. The game sees its protagonist interact with the gods Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos, and Athena, as well as the corrupted heroes Achilles, Atalanta, Herakles, and Odysseus. In both games, the protagonist – Fenyx and Kratos, respectively – gains abilities and equipment from ancient myth, and gain powers associated with the gods. They both travel through different parts of mythological Greece associated with those gods. Yet their treatment of those gods is very different.

Both God of War and Immortals Fenyx Rising take the existing canon of Greek myths and adapt and edit to their own narrative ends. God of War is a grim adventure of vengeance and destruction, whereas Immortals Fenyx Rising is a witty adventure about the restoration of order. While Immortals Fenyx Rising and God of War both portray the Gods of Olympus as flawed characters dependent on humans for salvation, Immortals Fenyx Rising takes the Greek Gods in a humorous and redemptive direction, and God of War argues for their doom.

God of War is About Apathetic, Corrupt Rulers

The first God of War game is the only one set in Greek mythology where the human protagonist, Kratos, is really on the side of the gods. In it, Kratos – known as the Ghost of Sparta – is tasked by the goddess of wisdom, Athena, to secure Pandora’s Box in order to defeat her reckless brother, the god of war and Kratos’s former master, Ares. Kratos ends the game by taking Ares’s mantle, but God of War II sees him removed from his post by a conniving Zeus, fearful of Kratos’s growing power and influence.

Kratos builds alliances with Gaia and the Titans in God of War II and fully achieves vengeance in its sequel. God of War III opens with Kratos being discarded by the Titans who he had allied with along the course of God of War II, so he fights the Gods and Titans across the game, aided by Athena’s spirit. God of War‘s other releases Betrayal, Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, and Ascension are a combination of prequels and spin-offs set before God of War or between God of War and God of War II further detailing the many ways the gods have earned Kratos’s hate and distrust by their petty, manipulative, and uncaring behavior. Aside from Athena, they consistently use their power only for their own self-aggrandizement, not that Kratos’s ethos is much more noble.

Immortals Fenyx Rising, on the other hand, has a protagonist that needs to rescue the gods to save the world. The people have been turned to stone, and all the gods but Zeus have been robbed of their powers and godly essence by Typhon. Fenyx, whose gender and appearance can be customized in the game, becomes involved in the rescue of the gods after setting off to save their brother, Ligyron. Where Kratos brutally kills mythological heroes to get to his goals, Fenyx’s defeat of the corrupted heroes serves as their liberation from Typhon’s control. Where Kratos is motivated by hatred to destroy the gods of Olympus because of the way they have used and discarded him, Fenyx is motivated to help them to save her brother and humanity.

Immortals Fenyx Rising Offers Hope and Change

In the introductory cinematic for Immortals Fenyx Rising, Typhon names the Gods as petty, selfish, and manipulative. Zeus goes on to call the creation of humans his greatest mistake, while Prometheus – chained to a rock for having given humans the gift of fire, as in the ancient myths and God of War II – argues that humans will be their salvation. Prometheus narrates the game as a story he is telling Zeus about how a hero, Fenyx, will reunite the other gods with their essence and save the world. The gods are reduced to lesser versions of themselves – Aphrodite frozen into a tree without her passion, Ares a rooster without his pride, Hephaistos a sort of robot unable to feel suffering, Athena a child without her wisdom – and even when restored, resort to bickering.

Eventually it becomes clear that Prometheus has selectively altered the story in a plot to disarm Zeus. In the God of War games, Zeus and the other gods never learn to be better versions of themselves, eventually succumbing to Kratos’s violence. In Immortals Fenyx Rising, Zeus realizes he has failed as a friend, sibling, and father. Without giving away the twists, the story Prometheus tells and Fenyx lives out inspires Zeus to be better and to help humanity.

Kratos and Fenyx’s stories both begin on ships in the middle of storms, and both culminate in confrontations with Zeus and the Titans after fighting monsters and heroes of legend. But Kratos’s success comes at the expense of all else – his violent hatred is born more of selfishness than of a sense of justice and, while his actions allow Athena a chance to make a better world, he wants no part in shaping it, so he heads off to Midgard’s Scandinavia. Fenyx’s success leads to the gods doing better; it’s much of a happier-ever-after ending, even with the satire, wit, and knowing nods to myth and history thrown in.

In conclusion, the original God of Warseries took a cynical view of Greek mythology, while Immortals Fenyx Rising takes a playful one. In both series, the Gods of Olympus are taken as far from all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-wise. However, while Immortals plays this for laughs and makes them charming and endearing, God of War makes them irredeemable. Both games showcase how their flaws lead to destruction, but Immortals Fenyx Rising makes them better, while God of War destroys them. God of War‘s perspective that a corrupted order needs to be destroyed is not without its merit, but Immortals Fenyx Rising actively tries to replace that corruption.

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Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox, Jr. is a freelance writer. He holds degrees in history from Loyola University New Orleans and Villanova University. He loves videogames, film, comics, sports, and people. He tweets sometimes @kevinfoxjr.

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