I don't know what it is but God of War fans have proven to be bigger lowcows and autist then Sonic fans. The original God of War games were not that deep. It was just about some hulking, blood thirsty brute of a man getting revenge on the Greek gods in the most brutal ways possible and fucking scantly clad goddesses on the side. It was, more or less, a male power fantasy. When Sony rebooted the franchise to be more serious God of War fans now act like the series was always "deep" and "emotional" like if it was Lord of the Rings or Citizen Kane. Synthetic Man is at least self aware with this and even says that these games aren't art and shouldn't be. They should be about gameplay and made to be enjoyed. Mauler on the other hand, who has gone full MovieBob in this regard (ironic), desperately wants the games he jerked off to as a teenage boy to be seen as art. God of War, both its past and present iteration, are not art. In fact, I wish for more games to not be "art".
What I'm going to say is a bit off topic, but I think this is gamer insecurity. Although the medium is more accepted than it used to be a few years ago, it still has the stigma of being mindless children's entertainment. Being someone who spends all his free time watching movies or reading novels is more socially acceptable than spending it playing games (unless your social circle is made up of gamers). So they need to legitimize this practice by trying to pass games as a form of art. However, most of them are totally uncultured, and for them, art is just having good music or nice cutscenes. That is why you have games who are praised for having great story and stuff like, games like this GOW, or, ironically, TLOU 2. But those games tell very stale stories, their themes have been explored already a million times in other, better, media pieces, and their cutscenes only break the flow of gameplay.
We can argue about the status of games as a form of art or not. I believe that art is contemplative in nature, which is completely opposed to the nature of games (they're really elaborate toys), and when you try to add what you think would make it a form of art, like shitty cutscenes, you make these games worse as games; because you devaluate their playability value. On the other hand, here's a list of games exposed at the Museum of Modern Arts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_in_the_Museum_of_Modern_Art#Collection and I don't see a lot of games with a strong narrative here, you may guess why. What do you mean, the strong emotional walking simulator sections of the game doesn't make it better ? Either way, games don't need to be art to be enjoyed, to be entertaining, to be fun. But these people are manchildren who can't just accept that their tastes aren't highly valued by others.
And on the other hand, these guys are outted as having inconsistant standards, as GOW:R is basically TLOU 2 but in a different genre. The same shitty sections without gameplay, the same shitty cutscenes, the same shitty puzzles, the same shitty plot that try to talk about themes which are better explored everywhere else. Just replace shooter action with hack and slash. But for some reason, Mauler and his circus prefer the Stepfather of War over strong lesbo girlboss.
