Results[]
Friday, August 30th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
If ever there was a calm before a storm, this match and the one after were definitely it. We thought the Zelda/DK/Charizard tilt would also be boring prep for the big Link/Draven match, but that one ended up being a pretty damn good match in its own right.
There would be no random-ass upset here, a la Mario a few days prior. Nope, just Mega Man kicking ass and taking names, the way a 1 seed is supposed to do in the early rounds. The mid-contest Brawl announcement definitely helped him out, though we didn't know exactly how until a round from now.
The only thing of any interest here was Jill "upsetting" Kratos for second place, though it was clear that she was going to do that pre-match and it was an upset in seeding only. Kratos has fallen off a lot in popularity for whatever reason, though I'd like to see that duel without Jill's laughable MvC3 appearance. The entire MvC3 franchise, and Capcom in general quite frankly, needs to just go away. So bad.
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
Jill loves to give us close, entertaining matches. Mega Man blew these two out pretty hard, and he ended up looking great here despite Jill and Kratos not exactly being pushovers. That left Jill and Kratos to fight for the scraps, and if I remember correctly while Jill was the favorite, Kratos had his share of support as well.
Kratos was getting a lot of hate at the time and the really mediocre reception of Ascension didn't help. There was also that nontroversy about that Ascension achievement being named "bros before hoes." It was patched after people complained to change it to "bros before foes." I can't believe people made a big deal about literally nothing.
Jill seems to stay decently consistent with her strength, and Capcom loves her so much that it's constantly throwing her bones. She didn't get an RE7 cameo or anything but she was in an RE5 DLC (probably the best part of that game) and was a main part of the RE5 story. Revelations was pretty good, too, and it's been re-released several times.
So was this really an "upset" of Kratos? Maybe of classic Kratos, but not 2013 Kratos. The new God of War should boost Kratos quite a bit, it doesn't have the deepest gameplay ever and it gets a little repetitive but there are fresh ideas and a good story in there and I think it will win back a good amount of voters for Kratos. The director says he's planned for six (?!) more God of War games, so we're not going to see Kratos fade away any time soon.
Did you know that David Jaffe's original ending for God of War III was having Kratos meet Egyptian and Norse Kratos, teaming up with them to kill Ra, Odin and Zeus, and then becoming the three wise men? Like, the ones from the bible. Yeah. Sony rejected this pitch, and who could blame them? That's... pretty bad, even by God of War standards.