I’m back to talk more about the story and characters in Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have cleaned up everything I wanted to do in the game, and I think I’m ready to uninstall it and walk away. I’m not going to say how many hours I put into it; I will say that I wrung every bit of content out of it. I want to continue talking about the story and the characters, and here is my previous post about both of those things.
I want to start off by saying I think there are two camps of people who play the Hades games. In the first camp are the people who play it for the gameplay. They don’t care about the story and are impatiently mashing through the dialogue to get to the next run. The other camp is filled with people who are there for the story and/or love Greek mythology. The runs are to be tolerated or put up with while getting to the good parts.
I’m in the second camp, which is why, after some deliberation, I think I actually prefer the first game. Yes,, the gameplay is smoother in this game, and, yes, Supergiant improved several things in that realm, but something got lost in the translation in this game. I think they could have made two games out of this one, and while I appreciate what they were trying to do, I don’t think it worked.
One of the reasons is that the story completely fell apart at the end. Warning. I am going to spoil the hell out of the end of the game. From here on out, there will be massive spoilers.
*SPOILERS*
I need to clarify that The Crossroads (the hub world and where I return after each run) is between earth/Olympus (upward) and Tartarus/the House of Hades (downward). At the beginning of the game, because of the family curse, Melinoë cannot go upward. I think I might have tried it and immediately died, so that taught me to just stick to the downward path.
I have to give credit to Supergiant for seamlessly weaving in important gameplay elements into the story (for the most part). Like, at a certain point (can’t remember when), I got an incantation at my cauldron to counter the family curse. In other words, I could go upward. That was pretty neat, honestly, and, of course, I immediately went that way.
I will get to gameplay later. For now, I’m sticking to story and characters.
Someone in one of the Reddit threads suggested that Supergiant ran out of time, which is why the story ended the way it did. The commenter also said it’s why some of the relationships seemed to come to a standstill after maxing out the hearts. They didn’t explicitly say the following, but that’s in comparison to the ones that had more to them after forging a true bond.
I think that makes sense. I did not play at all in Early Access, but I can see how scope creep might have gotten out of control. I really think they should have split the two paths into different games or just binned one of them. Because, honestly, it was too much.
Again, I’ll get to that in a post about gameplay. I NEED to talk about the ending because it was shockingly bad.
Here’s the deal. My grandfather (Hades’ father) is the final boss of the downward path. Hades had him chained up in his basement after warring with him (Chronos) with his (Hades’) brothers–Poseidon and Zeus (and the rest of the family backing them up). Somehow, Chronos escaped and kidnapped Hades’ entire family and all the other denizens of the House of Hades except for Melinoë and Hypnos–who were rescued by Hecate (she was working for Hades).
Hypnos was one of my favorite characters in the first game as he always greeted me (as Zagreus) after a run. It was our thing, and he was a loveable dolt. In this game, he’s in a deep sleep and can’t be woken up. Hecate has tried everything, and throughout the game, I have to gather ingredients to make incantations to try to wake him.
There are three incantations you have to make, and each one is increasingly difficult to get the ingredients for. This quest takes the whole game, and it’s not until you roll credits (which in itself is elaborate and time-confusing) that you can get the last ingredient for the third incantation. Remember, this quest has been going on since the very beginning of the game.
I do the final incantation and I give what I need to give to Hypnos. I go through the ridiculous dream sequence I’ve had to go through every time, and then nothing. Nothing happens. I don’t remember who I was talking to about it, but they asked if I had told him to wake up. Like, directly said, “Wake up!”
No, I hadn’t tried it. I do, and….He wakes up. He freaks out that he’s not at the House of Hades because he’ll be late for his job! I try to explain what happened, but he’s panicking too much. He runs off and–that’s it. That’s the end of that quest. I got an achievement for it, but what the actual fuck?
I spent all that time getting all those ingredients and waiting for some of them to grow, and that was my reward?! Not to mention, I didn’t actually have to do any of that to wake him up? I was so mad. SO mad. It felt like a colossal waste of time, and I didn’t know what was the point. He’s one of my favorite characters in the first game, and that’s what they do to him? He was done dirty, and I was not hapy at all. I read that the ability to awaken him was only added to the official release, which makes sense. Or it would if they actually did something cool with it.
Honestly, I would rather they did not bring him back to this game than do that to him. From a quick Google search, it seems that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Also, only 8.2% of playres got the achievement for waking him.
If it’s true that they ran out of time to come up with something more emotionally gratifying, I would feel a little better about the end to that quest. I can understand and forgive scrambling for an ending; I cannot abide by it if this was their intended ending for the quest.
I have so much to say about the ending of the game (the true ending), but I’ll save it for the next post. Let me just end this post by saying that overall, I prefer the first game to this one. That might be the nostalgia glasses talking, but it’s what I feel in my heart.