God Of War: Chains Of Olympus Torrent
Telly Rugs
After restoring the Fire Steeds back to life, the horses lead Kratos into the Underworld before retreating. There, he meets Charon, on his ferry, upon the River Styx. The ferryman soon lists the similarities between himself and Kratos, saying they are both slaves to the Olympians. Charon then tells Kratos to go, saying it is not yet his time. Having denied Kratos passage, and Kratos refusing to leave, they engage in a fight, before Charon knocks Kratos unconscious and drops him into Tartarus. There, Kratos witnesses the breaking of the chains binding Atlas to the pits of Tartarus. After some time, the Spartan fights and climbs his way out of Tartarus, returning to defeat Charon. Seizing control of the ferry, he follows the Light of Helios, currently illuminating the underworld, down the River Styx, coming upon the Temple of Persephone. To his own surprise, he sees his daughter Calliope on the shorelines of the temple and follows her inside. Unable to locate her, instead he meets Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.
With his skills restored, Kratos pursues Persephone, catching her at the base of the Pillar. She tells him it is the end, then reveals her other form - a winged woman wearing black armor - before carrying Kratos to the top of the Pillar. Once they reach the summit, Kratos and Persephone engage in a bloody final battle; during the battle, Persephone tries to subdue and confuse Kratos, urging him to go back to Elysium and be with Calliope, and when he resists, she orders Atlas to destroy him. Kratos chains Atlas to the roof of the Underworld before returning to battle Persephone and eventually killing her with the Gauntlet of Zeus. Dying, but uncaring of her fate, the Goddess taunts Kratos, snarling that now his suffering shall never end as her body then explodes, severing the Pillar of the World in the shockwave with Atlas now the only thing holding the Greek World together. Though the Titan to gloats to him about the God's true plans for him, Kratos believes his path is clear, serving them regardless so they will keep their promises to free him from his nightmares as it is all he has left. Atlas ends by foretelling that they will meet again.
Break your chains here, then head toward the bottom of the screen to find a save point and a Phoenix Feather. Start making your way back to the north, killing the chained civilians on the walls to regain your health. (They're already dead; it's not like they can get any deader.) At the fork in the road, take the right passage to fight some enemies and eventually find a chest that will fill up your mana.
When you kill the enemies here, recharge your health and turn the crank in the floor to drop a platform in the distance a bit. Return down the cliff and cross the chains to reach another cliff. Save your game and drop down off the fall nearby. You'll be facing off against an armored cyclops here and more harpies. Kill the harpies first while avoiding the cyclops, then knock its armor off and go to town on it. It's probably best to switch back to the Blades of Chaos to finish it off, and it may even be easier to knock its armor off that way, as well.
You'll come to a crank-pulling game here; you have to turn the cranks so that you can reach the far end of the chain, but enemies will appear and attempt to attack you, which will cause the gear to start moving backwards. It moves backwards fairly slowly, so as long as you kill your enemies in short order, you should be fine. Try either throwing them off or using your charged square attack with the Gauntlet to knock them backwards off the ramp. With that done, you'll need to punch the little spike near the end of the chains to reach a cliff leading out of Tartarus.
Taking place ten years before the original God of War, Kratos curses the heavens after two months of servitude to the gods. To his surprise, the sun suddenly explodes and quickly plummets to the ground, sending him on a strange adventure to save the sun god Helios, as his absence is allowing the dream god Morpheus to put several other gods to sleep.Chains of Olympus contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: Persephone in mythology was once of the nicest goddesses of the pantheon, and her marriage to Hades is known as one of the more stable and happy ones. Here, Persephone is the Big Bad, and hates her Arranged Marriage to Hades.
- Always a Bigger Fish: One of the first things you do is try to open a door via Button Mashing tutorial... only for a Cyclops wielding a giant pillar to smash through immediately and teach you about Button Mashing and Press X to Not Die. As if that wasn't enough, then a Basilisk smashes in and devours the Cyclops whole.
- And I Must Scream: By the end of the game, Atlas is forced to carry the world on his shoulders for all eternity.
- Artifact Title: Ares is nowhere to be seen or heard. But seeing as this is a prequel, he's still around offscreen
- Bag of Spilling: At the end of the game, Helios and Athena strip Kratos of all of his weapons and equipment.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kratos has successfully defeated Persephone and saved the world... but because of his actions, is permanently banned from Elysium and thus will never be able to see Calliope again, even after he dies.
- Call-Forward/Futureshadowing:
- Upon his defeat, Atlas warns Kratos that they will meet again.
- Athena and Helios leave an unconscious Kratos at the very same cliffs where he will attempt suicide ten years later.
- Culture Chop Suey: The Persian King controls an Efreet, a demon from Arabian mythology. However, it's implied that the king captured the Efreet during an invasion of Arabia.
- Doomed by Canon: You know Kratos will win in the end, because its a Prequel to the first game
- Fog of Doom: Morpheus' fog.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Morpheus is the Big Bad, having kidnapped Helios, plunging the world into darkness forever unless he is stopped but Persephone plans on directly destroying the world with Atlas' help.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The initial encounter with Charon, who cannot be beaten without Zeus' Gauntlet, which you get from a statue of Zeus in the Tartarus (after Charon gleefully tosses your defeated ass down there).
- Locked in the Dungeon: The Jails of Tartarus is a prison (or rather, bondage) cell where all of the prisoners are bound in chains. Kratos gets tossed there after he lost to Charon in a Hopeless Boss Fight above.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Persephone had just gotten Kratos to cast aside his blades and renounce his powers as the Ghost of Sparta so that he can be with his daughter in the Elysian Fields. All she needs to do in order to win is leave him alone for a few hours so that her plan can be completed while he's playing with Calliope. Instead she makes a point of telling him that she's the villain of the game (Something he didn't have the slightest inkling of until she explained her plan), and that thanks to his actions the world will soon be destroyed, and that the Elysian Plains and all the spirits living there will be destroyed with it. This motivates Kratos to reclaim his powers and save the world.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Calliope uses this on Kratos, when he's forced to leave her forever in order to become the Ghost of Sparta again so he can defeat Persephone. The game even twists the knife by making his pushing her away into a button-mashing minigame!
- Power Fist: Kratos can obtain Zeus' Gauntlet. It is a gauntlet of a deity obviously, but Kratos had to wear it with his whole arm because it's just that large. It provides additional combat mechanics, and is instrumental in killing certain bosses.
- Sadistic Choice: Kratos is given the choice of staying by his daughter's side and let the world be destroyed or stop Persephone and Atlas and forsake his daughter. He chooses the latter, which causes him to hate the gods even more for taking his daughter away from him again.
- Self-Deprecation: In the remastered PS3 version on God of War: Origins Collection, the trophy obtained for finishing the game is called "It's Over Already?"
- Shout-Out: The second phase of Persephone's battle is a massive one to Ganondorf's Tennis Boss mechanics.
- Shoo the Dog: Actually made into a QTE, as Kratos pushes Calliope away from him so he can acually bring himself to leave her side again, in order to regain his powers and defeat Persephone.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Persephone is so disgusted and embittered by Zeus' betrayal and her Arranged Marriage with Hades that she decides to side with Atlas and destroy the world.
- Tennis Boss: Persephone.
- The Unseen / The Unfought: Morpheus. Until Persephone shows up at the very end, it is pretty much outright stated from the very beginning that he's the Big Bad, but he never appears onscreen, and if not for the narrator, we wouldn't even know of his involvement.
- Titanomachy, Round Two: Persephone, Hades's niece and wife, secretly releases the Titan Atlas from Tartarus so he can destroy the Axis Mundi (portrayed as a large pillar underneath the Earth that holds the entire world above).
- World Pillars: The world has held by a single pillar until it was destroyed by a Titan named Atlas.