What does a good mom game even look like?

God of War

The Blades of Chaos fly through the air and rip into the minotaur’s flesh. Their chains give them range, keeping Kratos away from the beast’s horns and claws. After enough fiery swings, pure pain drives the minotaur to the ground, perfect reach for Kratos to jump on its chest. He grasps one of his blades with both hands, putting all of his strength into mashing it towards the minotaur’s head. It tries to push him back, almost pleadingly as if realizing now that death is real, but to no avail; Kratos smacks the minotaur's human hands aside and drives the red-hot weapon deep into the bull mouth.

Over a decade later, Kratos hacks at the legs of a massive horned troll. It swings a fiery club at him, but he perseveres. Eventually it is worn down, and he slams it to the ground. This time though, he calls out to his son, standing to the side with a nocked bow, to make the kill. But the troll’s pleading causes Atreus to miss, and Kratos must finish it himself. He does not unleash his rage on Atreus, but he does bitterly criticize the moment of sympathy. The troll is not a person, rather a thing to be hunted. 

Yet in all of this sharp reprimanding, the cruel lecturing, it is clear that this is not the same Kratos of before. At least not what most people know. This is the Kratos that maybe felt a spark of hope as he led Pandora through the Labyrinth. He reaches his hand to his son for a moment in affection but can’t quite complete the gesture. Maybe, like the troll, he’s not just a monster.

Now, Kratos is a dad.

Where are the mom games? It’s a frequent question in an era of prominent dad games. This is, to be clear, using the definition of dad games in which there is a dad (surrogate, otherwise, or maybe even both) and that their role as a dad is prominent. The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, and new God of War games are the most cited examples. Even God of War 3 fit the bill, with Kratos finding redemption and peace via Pandora. Those early to mid 2010s saw a host of dads, in all shapes. Bioshocks 2 and Infinite, Fire Emblem Awakening, Heavy Rain.

God of War Laufey could be the first real mom game

“Faye — who we have known as a wife and mother — is being given a chance to be a person,” Kate Cox writes.

MothershipKate Cox

There was a spark of the mom game at the same time. Metroid: Other M bridged Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion by having Samus process the loss of her imprinted metroid child. The aforementioned Fire Emblem Awakening has time-traveling kids whose personalities are mostly shaped by how they processed their mothers’ future deaths. Bayonetta’s debut title saw the titular witch escort and protect a young girl, all while getting called “mummy.”

But just as these games certainly do exist, they also certainly don’t match up with their dad game contemporaries, at least not in the parenting sense. Besides the amount of unsubtle and eyeroll-inducing motherhood references in Metroid: Other M (it’s M:OM! The “other M” is “mother”! It takes place on the Bottle Ship!), the plot is ultimately far more interested in Samus reconciling with and grieving her adopted father figure. Fire Emblem Awakening’s moms are optional (the only necessary kid also happens to be the only one attached to her dad), and the actual mom-and-child dynamic is all but nonexistent in the strategy game part. Bayonetta’s adopted daughter turns out to be herself due to time travel silliness, and the plot really focuses on her relationship with her dad.