7 Video Game Characters That Completely Changed After Fan Backlash

3. Kratos - God Of War

For a while, God of War was proof that video game stories didn't need to be that deep to still be fun. In this series, players were put in control of meathead Kratos, told that their OTT killing was justified as revenge for his dead family, and then encouraged to be a hulking rage monster/mad shagger.

For the first two games, that worked, but the third release broke the balance by essentially transforming Kratos into a caricature of himself. The devs at once tried to make the story more emotional and layered in the cutscenes, but in the gameplay let the God of War literally destroy an entire civilisation and use the deaths of innocents to solve puzzles. It was jarring, and felt like the kind of juvenile schlock onlookers had pitched the series as being previously.

After that game jumped into the sun, nobody at Sony had faith that Kratos could carry the series forward. Other first-party studios were focusing on crafting nuanced and compelling stories with relatable human characters at the forefront, and this Greek God was seen as a relic of a bygone era.

It took Cory Barlog to go out on a limb and convince the publisher that the anti-hero could be more than a cartoon character, and with 2018's sequel not only made Kratos complex and compelling, but even retroactively gave more weight to the brainless action of the third game. No small feat.