Analysing God of War: A Hero’s Journey

Abstract

This paper is the result of an attempt to carry out a close reading ofthe videogames series God of War (GOW). The purpose of thisstudy was to scrutinise the structure of the plot in such as way asto better understand how game developers use this medium todeliver stories. The tool used to undertake this task was JosephCampbell’s monomyth (Hero’s journey) as adapted by ChristopherVogler in his ‘Writer’s Journey’. The analysis was mostlyconcerned with the type of narrative components and structurespresent in the game/s. The researcher position in this study is thesame one used by Carr (2002); that is from the perspective of an‘academic fan’. Ultimately this work’s ontology was inductivelydeveloped from data collected from different sources; including fieldnotes of personal gaming sessions and documents associated withthe game such as game manuals, reviews, articles and otherrelated content.