Imagine that its 201X and God of War IV has come out for the Playstation 3.5. You gleefully pup it into the Hiper Definition RedRay drive on the PS 3.5 and then go to sleep. In the morning you do your usual routine and then check on the system, amazingly it's already at 35% installed. When it finishes you await patiently for the chorus to signal the beginning of Bloodsplatterfest 201X.
However, the chorus does not come. Instead a violin begins playing a tune of intrigue. In the first scene Kratos, wearing a toga and without his melon sized biceps, wakes up agitated in a shabby straw bed. He then proceeds to tell his uninterested wife about his dream where in he was the son of Zeus in a vicious quest for revenge. Afterwards he walks joyfully through the streets of Athens to his job as a Horse Theft Investigator, where he must quickly put together all the clues to save the stolen equestrians.
Naturally disappointed, nay furious, you continue to play the game only because it cost you $125 used and you didn't keep the receipt or the Digital Notarized Letter of Receipt Acceptance (or DNLoRA). However, once you begin playing through the game, you realize that it's actually really good. No it's beyond anything you have experienced before. You have never been so totally intellectually or emotionally engrossed with anything before.
The game changes you life. You begin to exercise and eat right. You call your mother just for the hell of it, every other day. And in between all the good you do, you take some time to continue replaying the game for the seven-hundredth time.
Now here is the question: Is this game worthy of the title, God of War? or to put it another way is this a good God of War game?
Well, no. It's a great game on its own, but it's not really a good GoW game. This is because a GoW game has certain elements that make up what its experience entails in the same way that soccer can never be mistaken for football. Sure they are both sports and a fan may experience similar excitement, but no one will tell you that an American football match was a great soccer game.
My point: re-imagining a series works best when you understand and keep the core of a game, whether that be a combat style, a particular experience, or a particularly interconnected story element. Otherwise don't keep anything and start a new franchise like Lucius: Athenian Horse Theft Investigator.
