In traditional Mind Games style, we are ridiculously late to the bandwagon. Hades was released in the second half of 2020, to uproarious applause from the gaming community. Nominated for various awards at the Golden Joysticks and the Game Awards, as well as winning several, Hades had the opening season that most game developers dream about. Whenever a game does so well off the bat, I tend to be instantly skeptical. My cynical soul will wonder whether a game is doing anything new or if it is treading over the same ground that has been trod a thousand times before. However, I am glad to say that Hades has proved me wrong. It is a game well worth all the awards and accolades being thrown its way. So, let us see what all the fuss is about.
Hades takes a leaf from the Breath of The Wild playbook and lays out your final goal from the get-go – escape hell. You must wage war against the onslaught of enemies and obstacles that the underworld has thrown into your path, to stand on the surface of the earth – a feat no other had achieved. You play as Zagreus, known in this game as the son of Hades and Persephone, though the earlier mentions of Zagreus in mythology quote him as “Zagreus highest of all the gods”. Others say that Zagreus was the child of Zeus and Persephone. Go look him up, there is a lot more to him than Hades can get into during its gameplay.
Let me explain how Hades works for anyone who does not know or like me, hid under a rock away from popular trends for several months. Every time you attempt to escape from hell, you fight your way through a series of chambers until you reach that regions boss. Beat the boss and you travel to the next region, so on and so forth until you reach Styx. It is here where the entrance to the surface world dwells and after bribing the best three headed doggo to stand aside, you challenge your father to a fight. If you survive all of that, you can venture out into the surface world and witness some cool story things. If you die at all in the course of your escape attempt, you emerge from the pool of what I assume is blood, back in the House of Hades. Not sure how good a bath in blood is for your skin but hey, I’m no dermatologist.
There’s something remarkably addicting and therapeutic about Hades. Sure, it has a similar approach to losing a fight as most roguelike games – Dead Cells, Dark souls and Bloodborne for example, where death has more of a consequence than a slap on the wrist. However, your deaths in Hades have a greater purpose than simply sending you back to the beginning. The various gods, servants of hell and lost spirits that you meet during your trek out of hell can be found in the House of Hades, allowing you to discover tidbits of the story and explore the relationships that affect the world around you. Naturally, your quest to escape from hell is the focus of the story, but there is so much more to Hades than simply conquering the Underworld through brute force.
I love the combat. It feels more than just a mechanic or a button masher to me, there’s a remarkable elegance to how Zagreus weaves through his enemies, dodging projectiles and traps, utilizing his gifts from the gods of Olympus and the weapons known as the Infernal Arms. When you fall into the fight’s rhythm, it’s so viscerally satisfying and heck, pheromone inducing, that you want nothing more than to lose yourself in the siren-song of Hades. Not that it’s easy, it is far from that. You are meant to die, to learn from your mistakes and improve Zagreus’s abilities. Sure, dying repeatedly is frustrating, like when Hades himself only had a tiny sliver of health, after which I may or may not have thrown my controller down in rage.
As humans, we learn from our mistakes. We seek to improve ourselves, to adjust the parameters of the situation to ensure that failure no longer remains an option. There’s a reason we don’t throw ourselves from great heights, eat raw foods, have fist fights with sharks or surface immediately after diving deep into the ocean – we know these actions have negative consequences and risk our health, so we evolve, we change. Game developers have become very good at creating experiences that force the player to adapt, to change, to persevere in a seemingly impossible situation and to eventually emerge triumphant. Hades is one such game. Regardless of how many times you’ve run through the depths of Tartarus in your attempts to escape hell, your combat strategy will not remain the same. Different enemies require different approaches, something that becomes painfully clear when you stop clinging to the starting weapon (yes, I know about that, don’t deny it, we all do it). Variety is the key to success – no run through Hades is identical. Some of the most satisfying combat in Hades comes from experimenting with various combinations of “boons” from the Olympians.
If you’ve read some of my other articles or have the misfortune of following me on Twitter (@CaitlinRC/@OurMindGames), you’ll probably know that I am a big nerd when it comes to all thing’s mythology. There’s something fascinating about the field of mythology and the impact that it’s had on the world as we know it. Every civilisation in history had their own belief systems, deities, and methods of worship – imprints of which can be found in all forms of media nowadays. Take the rising of the sun every morning. The scientific community explains that the sun rising in the morning is a result of the rotation of the earth on its axis, and its relation to the rays of light being emitted by the giant blazing ball of gas at the centre of our solar system. However, in Greek mythology, such as what Hades is based upon, the sun rising is the god Helios riding his flaming charity across the sky. There are countless explanations for things we now dismiss as commonly known facts. It’s fascinating!
Hades does a fairly good job at sticking to the more commonly known mythological figures and deities in Greek mythology. The core Olympians are all present, references to minor gods and key players are present throughout the dialogue, the regions that you battle through are all beautifully distinct, with entrancing visuals and music accompanying you on your journey. Plus, it’s nice to hear the often-overdone tales like Eurydice and Orpheus or Hades and Persephone told from a different perspective. Then again, maybe I’m biased. The game doesn’t rely entirely on the player’s knowledge of mythology to be enjoyable, it’s very much a detail that adds more dimensions to the world you explore and the trials the characters speak of.
Going to talk more about the plot points here so if you still haven’t played/watched a let’s play of Hades and want to remain unspoiled, beware!
Although based in mythology, Hades is very much a game about family. The entire reason that Zagreus wants to escape hell in the first place, is to find his mother. Persephone, known as Kore to her mother Demeter, left the Underworld shortly after Zagreus was born and the boy grew up knowing Nyx, goddess of the night and mother of the fates, as his mother. He eventually finds out that Nyx is not his birth mother and sets out to find her in the outside world. When you eventually escape hell, you arrive in Greece and have a few moments with Persephone on her little farm – filled with beautiful life, a sharp distinction to the swathes of death that Zagreus has spent his entire life surrounded by.
The reunion between mother and son is remarkably heartfelt, more so when Persephone tells Zagreus that he was originally stillborn. Heartbroken by the loss of her child, she had to leave the realm that reminded her too much of the son that never got to live, leaving Hades and the later revived Zagreus alone. Their time together is cut short hover, as Zagreus is unable to survive on the surface world for very long. Like his father, his life force is bound to the Underworld and perishes in his mother’s arms, returning to the House of Hades. Eventually, after many trips to the surface, Zagreus convinces his mother to come home and his family is reunited, with an …adjusted version of the truth told to his various uncles and cousins on Olympus to prevent a war breaking out – after all, Demeter wouldn’t be happy to hear that Zeus had essentially kidnapped her daughter and handed her to Hades as a “consolation prize”.
End of spoilers!
Hades is a game that has stuck with me throughout lockdown and the shit show that the last 18 months have been, and an experience that thoroughly deserves all the awards that it received. Plus, you can pet Cerberus.
Anyways, I’ve rambled for a while, so I’ll let you all get back to whatever you were doing. I know all that I’ve really posted since February has been episodes of my Dungeons and Dragons campaign (which you really should listen to, it’s bloody brilliant if I do say so myself), but hopefully this article is the start of me getting back into the swing of things. I’ve played a lot of great games over the last six months, and I’d like to write about them, as well as a few more think pieces about general life/pursuits that I have outside of gaming.
Thank you for still being here,
CaitlinRC.
I *just* finished my first run of Hades last week after playing it non-stop since the Game Pass release. I wasn’t expecting to love it so much. I hadn’t investigated the actual mythology, was just going by my basic knowledge and memories but it does make me want pick up a collection and refresh my memory of these complicated tales of gods and men. Great write up!