Chapter 732: Kratos the Great Villain (Requesting Subscriptions, Monthly Passes)

Controlling Kratos as he wielded the Blades of Chaos to clear out the mobs on the ship's deck, Zhang Yi still felt a lingering sense of unfulfillment.

He pushed aside the partition on the deck, controlling Kratos as he entered the Ship's Cabin.

The next second, the ship began to shake violently, and with the surging waves, the entire ship rocked fiercely. Seawater poured in through the breaches.

What astonished Zhang Yi even more was the massive, sea serpent-like head that appeared before him inside the Ship's Cabin. This sea serpent's head was covered in layers of scales, and it had fins on its gills. It suddenly opened its enormous mouth, roaring as it lunged towards Kratos.

At the same time, the monster's name appeared on the screen: Hydra, along with a BOSS battle health bar.

"The BOSS battle is starting already? So fast? A BOSS right from the get-go?"

Zhang Yi was a little surprised.

As a game player, he had seen many large BOSSes. The massive BOSSes in Dark Souls, the Nergigante, Xeno'jiiva, Black Dragon Alatreon, and Zorah Magdaros in Monster Hunter: World, and the BOSSes in various dungeons in World of Warcraft were all quite enormous in size. So, while the Hydra's appearance was impressive, it didn't stun him.

What truly thrilled him was the visceral strikes of Kratos's Blades of Chaos cutting into the BOSS in God of War.

Coupled with the easy difficulty, although Kratos would lose health when attacked, it posed no fatal threat at all. It was extremely satisfying.

Soon, Zhang Yi had knocked off a third of the Hydra's health. At this point, the Hydra's head roared, attacking again.

However, something unexpected happened: the game screen entered a bullet time.

A prompt appeared before him.

"QTE gameplay!"

The so-called QTE was a relatively primitive combat mode where players had to quickly react to button prompts on the game screen and press the corresponding buttons for the character to execute a flashy finishing move.

In early action games, QTE was widely used.

Its biggest advantage was its ability to display special combat actions, making battles more intense, exciting, and visually impactful.

Of course, it was also a double-edged sword; for example, Asura's Wrath was a classic example of a QTE system going awry, leading players to call it "QTE's Wrath."

As games evolved and technology advanced, QTE gameplay gradually became outdated. Even the New God of War in his previous life made many changes.

Although QTE elements were still present, they were no longer central.

Despite its many mechanism flaws, QTE also had its merits, namely providing players with a more immersive experience, especially when combined with a VR platform.

Well-placed QTEs could make the game experience even more exciting.

Therefore, Chen Xu chose to retain the QTE mechanism in the Greek trilogy of God of War.

However, it wouldn't be presented in the same way as in his previous life, but rather with a more unique control mode.

Furthermore, regarding the game content, Chen Xu also made many changes, such as removing a large number of unnecessary mob battles and some superfluous Puzzle Solving.

God of War, as an ACT game, always had various puzzles, mainly because of insufficient content being padded with puzzles.

Even in the New God of War, which defeated Red Dead Redemption in his previous life, Puzzle Solving was a headache for many players, especially since most puzzles relied on keen eyesight, with a single bell-ringing puzzle tormenting many to the point of a headache.

For a satisfyingly violent game, tedious Puzzle Solving could actually break players' sense of immersion.

After all, God of War wasn't a treasure hunting adventure game like Uncharted.

At least in terms of sense of immersion, having Kratos solve puzzles was definitely not as thrilling as brutalizing various massive monsters and gods.

So, in the game, apart from some traps in grand-scale scenes and the gods' lairs, Chen Xu also chose to downplay puzzles like pushing boxes to clear a path.

Of course, the Red Soul Extraction mini-game, involving Circle, Cross, Square, Triangle buttons, served as a buffer and seasoning after the ultimate violence, and was somewhat necessary for the younger Kratos.

Following the QTE prompt that appeared, Zhang Yi quickly completed it.

In the game, Kratos's muscles began to tremble. Then, with a roar from Kratos, he actually used both hands to grip the Hydra's upper and lower jaws, then violently smashed it against the nearby ship's cabin wall.

Next, Kratos leaped up, thrusting one of his Blades of Chaos directly into the center of the Hydra's head.

Then, using the chain of the Blades of Chaos, Kratos swung around in the air, the other end of the Blades of Chaos piercing into the Hydra's eye.

Blood splattered from the wound on the Hydra's head like a rain of blood.

And a third of the BOSS's health bar in the game disappeared.

Suffering such a heavy blow, the Hydra let out a pained roar. One of its eyes had been burst by Kratos's Blades of Chaos, while its other eye stared fixedly at Kratos.

With an angry roar, the Hydra's head shook violently, and blood spurted again from the wound.

This heavy blow made the Hydra a little bewildered and also fearful, causing it to sharply retract.

But Kratos pursued relentlessly. Along the way, more demons and monsters appeared, but they all invariably turned to ash under Kratos's Blades of Chaos.

Watching the blood-splattering scene, Zhang Yi had only one thought: it was incredibly satisfying!

"It's just explosively satisfying!"

Chasing all the way to the rear deck of the ship, after a fierce battle and another QTE sequence that took out another Hydra head, Zhang Yi felt utterly invigorated.

Smooth controls, extremely violent actions, and a perfect sense of impact with every punch and kick.

Coupled with the stirring background music, the entire game's combat experience felt epic.

And this was just the beginning. As Zhang Yi continued to advance, he experienced more exciting scenes and even learned powerful magic by conversing with Poseidon.

Continuing to explore further, Kratos arrived at the middle section of the ship.

Here, various enemies filled the area, and the remaining Hydra heads constantly attacked the crew members.

Compared to the Hydra's enormous heads, Kratos seemed unusually small.

But in actual combat, the seemingly tiny Kratos brutalized the Hydra.

It was somewhat similar to the previous head BOSS battle.

Only this time, he had to fight three heads consecutively: two small heads and one large head.

And the large head in the middle would revive the smaller heads beside it.

So, this required utilizing environmental props in the game, pinning the Hydra's heads to the deck with ship anchors.

After taking out the two small heads, Kratos climbed to the highest point of the mast and defeated the Hydra using Poseidon's magic.

At the same time, the fiery Blades of Chaos pierced through the Hydra's head, then violently smashed its head against the mast.

Then came a series of intense QTE sequences.

Using the ship's mast, he directly impaled the Hydra's head.

With the Hydra's painful struggles and blood gushing from its wounds, it continuously let out agonizing shrieks.

But against Kratos, all was futile.

Finally, as its life ebbed away, the Hydra completely died.

At this moment, a cry for help came from within the Hydra's throat.

Kratos crawled into the Hydra's mouth and found the ship's captain, who had been swallowed earlier.

"Thank you, thank goodness, you came to save me!"

The captain, who had been swallowed by the Hydra earlier, was surprisingly still alive. When Kratos pulled him out, he sighed with relief and hastily thanked him.

"Why are you being so polite?" Zhang Yi didn't pay much attention to the captain before him.

A crew member had conversed with Kratos earlier, only to be shot dead two seconds later.

Coupled with the fact that this captain clearly had a generic mob character model, Zhang Yi figured he was just a Tool-man NPC, unlikely to have any significant role later.

However, just as Zhang Yi thought Kratos would pull the captain up, Kratos simply stared expressionlessly at the captain, grabbing the golden key on his chest.

'I didn't come to save you.'

Words devoid of emotion came from Kratos. After roughly ripping off the key from the captain's chest, Kratos simply let go, watching him fall back into the Hydra's belly.

At this, Zhang Yi's eyes widened.

According to a typical story, shouldn't Kratos have saved the captain?

It was just a small favor, and then the captain would hand over the key as a reward to Kratos.

But to directly snatch it, disregarding the other's life or death?

An anti-hero protagonist?

Kratos the Great Villain!?

(End of Chapter) <>