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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk about story and characters, part three

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I have stalled enough. I need to talk about the ending of Hades II (Supergiant Games). Early warning, there will be spoilers from here on out. As always, I will always try to keep the spoilers as vague as possible, but I will have to get prettyt specific in this post.

*SPOILERS*

When I say the ending, I mean the true ending. The one true ending. Sure, you can beat Chronos in one run and be happy with that. However, there is so much more to the game than that. I expected the true ending to be huge because there was so much more game this time around. I was nervous, though, because the whole theme of the game was Death to Chronos. Chronos is time. You can’t stop time, so what was the solution?

As I killed Chronos again and again, I was able to go travel a mystical road to visit my brother, Zagreus, in his bedroom. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s enough to get the gist across.
I had to convince him that I was his sister from the future. I said we needed to find a way to kill our grandfather, Chronos. I could not do it permanently in my time, so he had to do it in his.

Was this weird? Yes. Was it cool? Also yes. Was it fan-service-y? Yes as well. I was fine with all that, to be clear. I didn’t know where it was going because when you think about it, if you kill Time, well, then what do you have left? Zag even asked if that meant Mel wouldn’t be born, and Mel kind of brushed it off.

I did wonder how they were going to sq0uare that circle, but I shrugged it off. I mean, if they were going to go down that road, they had to have a resolution? Right? I will admit, there was doubt in the back of my mind, though. Chronos is Time. If you kill him off permanently, then how can life continue?

Mel and Zag realize that they need Hades’ spear, Gigaros, to kill Chronos and *double spoiler* Typhon, the final boss of the upward path. I’m not  going to get too into who Typhon is except that he’s the Father of all Monsters, and his boss fight is ridiculous–UTTERLY ridiculous. I will save that for my post on gameplay. For the purpose of this, I will say that I can understand why–no, wait. 

I can’t. Because my stance on this is that the game should have been one or the other path, but not both. It was too much, and as a result, I feel that the story and characters suffered.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk story and characters, part two

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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.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk story and characters

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I’ve been winding down my obsession with Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have a few things that are nagging at me, but in general, I’m done. I’m in the middle of reviewing the game, and I have wanted to talk about the story and the characters for quite some time. I did not want to put it in my official review, so here it is. Oh, and here is my last post, which was part two of my official review.

*SPOILERS*

The story is, I’m sad to say, hot trash. No, that’s not fair, but I wanted to say it because I said it about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, and I meant it for that game), and I thought it would be funny to repeat it for this game. Also, I will be spoiling a lot for both Hades game, so this is your fair warning about that.

I don’t play the Hades games for the gameplay; I’m in it for the story and the characters. In the first game, the story was simple and heartfelt. I played as Zagreus, the son of Hades. He was my gruff, uncompromising f ather who did not know how to show love. Or rather, did not care to show love. He had nothing but disdain for me, in part because I was a young kid who just didn’t care much about his duties.

I started trying to make it to the surface in order to find my mother, Persephone. In order to do this, I had to get through four levels of Hades (the area), which included Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and Temple of Styx (I had to look the last one up). There was a boss at the end of each level, and the big boss of the fourth level was (and this is the biggest spoiler, I guess) Hades, my father.

I mean, who else was it going to be? I don’t remember why he was opposing me. I have a hunch it was because those from the Underworld could not survive on the surface, and he was trying to protect me in his gruff, understated, bottled-up way.

That game was so fucking hard. I despaired of ever beating Hades. I was able to get to him rather regularly, but he wiped the floor with me. I thought about turning on God Mode, but I resisted. Though it took me many more tries than I care to admit, I finally got Hades. Much to my surprise, that was just the beginning. When I returned to the House of Hades, my father informed me that he wanted me to run security because it was clear there were holes in it. That was the excuse given, and it was serviceable.

The first time I escape, I meet my mother. She is surprised to learn she has a son, and I’m pleased to meet her. However, since I cannot live on the surface, I expire soon after and return to the House of Hades.

After I beat Hades ten times, I get the true ending. I think I knew this by the time I got to my tenth win, but it involves Persephone coming back to the Underworld (at least for six months of the year). There’s also a special family banquet that includes the Olympiads. It’s not depicted (or at least not a cut-scene), but it was mentioned.


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