Hades

Supergiant Games have always made room for their characters alongside their action. Bastion’s ubiquitous narrator transformed a fierce hack-and-slash into a comforting storybook. Transistor split the difference between action and strategy and infused the product with a melancholic narrative featuring a talking sword. Pyre was half visual novel and half NBA Jam, both parts of which benefited from the finest and only mustachioed dog I have ever seen. Supergiant’s characters are playful and grim while their action is constructed as accessible and calculated. This fusion is their identity, and, since Hades’ release to Early Access in late 2018, it’s been alive and well inside of their first roguelike

Hades is an isometric action game infused with roguelike elements. The player is intended to run through similar, but not identical, arrangements of four themed levels by dispatching every enemy on the screen. Death restarts linear progress. A variety of weapons creates varying combat foundations. Different modifiers, called Boons, lay the framework for each run. Skill is developed by managing the kinetic variation all of that entails. Structure can be established through a careful series of permanent unlocks. This is wonderful. Ideally, a game of Hades’ class—one layered with viable options, filled with enticing unlockables, and marked by its persuasive unpredictability—doesn’t require the additional compliment of a story.

Hades probably didn’t need its story and yet I can’t imagine it without one. Adopting its characters and setting from Greek mythology, it follows Hades’ son Zagreus as he tries to escape from the densely packed Underworld. In the lower depths is a lounge where he can seek advice from Achilles, brood with Nyx, and pet Cerberus. During his ascent, amid hordes of monsters, Zagreus can encounter and continue running dialogues with Olympian gods like Zeus, Aphrodite, and Dionysus. Hades’ flow and organization keeps each run in canon, allowing individual storylines to evolve from Zagreus’ relationships with major and minor characters.

A roguelike’s strength is measured by the viability and variation of its styles of play. Hades feels as if it has incentivized every possible route through every imaginable method to engage with its systems. Weapons, called Infernal Arms, are rife with variation inside of their standard and special attacks. The Stygian Blade is the default slasher, and upgrades can modify it to do double damage without a knockback effect, emit a pulsing wave, or fire off tinier but quicker slashes. Coronacht, the range-friendly bow, can be modified to divide its standard arrow into three parts, inflict 200% damage on faraway enemies, or create additional damage if enemies are slain successively. A spear, a shield, and a rail gun compose some of Hades’ other weapons.

Few of Hades’ runs will issue identical upgrade patterns and yet I never felt handicapped by any upgrades I received. Every weapon felt practical at its base and powerful as it progressed through upgrade chains. Hades gives players the opportunity to sell off upgrades they don’t like and reinforce those, with additional power levels, they prefer. I rarely let go, however, and once I internalized the enemies on each of Hades’ four major zones, I felt encouraged to find a new weapon and explore all of its possibilities. I settled on the bow or the shield, eventually, but maybe every fifth run I’d switch over to something else. Hades’ internal balance is centered around making the player feel as if there are no wrong choices. Every path feel serviceable.

There is some safety in internalizing what’s ahead. I know Tartarus, the first of four levels, as a cakewalk where I can focus on outfitting my upgrades correctly while warming up on Wretched Thugs and dancing between Brimstone fire before battling one of the Furies at its conclusion. Asphodel is the common interpretation of hell, lakes of fire abound, where Skull Crushers and Burn Fingers test my patience. Elysium keeps my attention by essentially resurrecting half of its enemies if I lose sight of them. Styx is where everything in Hades comes together, and where the player is forced to apply lessons learned along their journey. The collection of nefarious weirdoes lining these levels extend past the usual measures of fodder, as either their numbers or their prowess can take precious life away, somehow, when you need it the most.

The call for repetition is the hardest for a roguelike to answer. The best of the genre—Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Dead Cells—either thrive on chaos or outfit the player with meaningful progression systems. But they don’t fundamentally change. A story either doesn’t exist or the game hand waves it away with a clever explanation. Death in Hades is not treated as failure, but rather an inevitable process tied to trying and learning. Zagreus will wake up in a pool, shoot the shit with whomever’s on the lowest floor, try out some new weapons or accessories, and then make another run at it. It takes a long time to exhaust dialogue. The Underworld’s architecture, thanks to yet another  ingrained upgrade system, is always changing. Every run is simultaneously familiar and novel. The player and their power are both getting better.

Progression in Hades kickstarts a machine that never stops spinning. Each run earns multiple currencies the player can invest in their immediate and long term future. Do you choose the path that rewards Darkness, which can be spent on permanent upgrades back in Zagreus’ room? Do you choose Charon’s Obol, the physical money that can be spent between floors for immediate rewards? Maybe you want some Gemstones to upgrade facilities back home? Boons of the gods, immediate upgrades to your weapons and power, are also available. One of these options manifests with every single floor and the tension of choosing between them is an exquisite pleasure. Are you feeling it, and do you want to go all in? Or are you near death and trying to gather all the Darkness you can to prep for the next run?

Every system in Hades creates a feedback loop into another system. The gods are sources of divine power, but their relationship with (and encouragement of) Zagreus and his journey is central to Hades’ narrative thesis. Meeting a god levels up the avatar’s stats, the narrative’s plot, and the player’s central operation of Hades. It’s near perfect integration, bridging the gap between story and action in a manner unseen since the Persona series linked visual novels with dungeon crawling. In a genre that always plays by the same rules, Hades evolves and grows with each run. It’s remarkable.

Supergiant’s character work is consistent with the comforting collection of eccentrics and mavericks that have populated their past games. Hades feels different because almost every one if its characters are working from, if not against, a belief founded in the middle school lessons of Mount Olympus. Aphrodite is always tastefully nude and offers Zagreus Boons that make enemies weak and/or cursed. Dionysius, the god of winemaking, inflicts hangover and seems obsessed with hedonism and merrymaking. Athena’s wisdom creates excellent defensive Boons while Ares’ bloodlust has options for creating incredible violence. Their personalities shine through their rejection of Hades, curious embrace of Zagreus, and everything this wonderful tweet suggests. Hades’ writing and characters feel as tested and calculated as its combat engine.

There was a point with Hades where I wondered if I even wanted to win. Would that end Zagreus’ story prematurely? Would I not get to see everything the gods had to say? I knew Hades would have some kind of mechanism built-in to protect against these pointless anxieties, but I always felt I was at risk of “missing” content. I enjoyed getting lost in the daydream visual pallet, chatting up Sisyphus and Bouldy, and working to save 500 Darkness for another shot at life. I was the dog chasing the car unsure of what to do when I actually caught it. I just knew I liked the chase. Hades was thriving on a fundamental level, even before and after I knew where it was going.

You will find victory, but it isn’t the end. Death isn’t, either. Hades persists, if you want it to. It’s the signature difference between Hades and Supergiant’s last game, Pyre. I loved Pyre and I loved spending time in its world, but the winding tale, despite every opportunity to induce change, fundamentally felt like a one-shot story. I was content with a single round and I loved every minute, but my story was over. This applied to Bastion and Transistor as well, where I didn’t feel an overwhelming compulsion to test higher challenges. Hades converges all of its systems to a single interface, presenting everything Supergiant learned over the last decade as a single product. It proves Early Access as a smart investment and it’s a shining example of trust in a community. Hades’ construction and performance feels like a product of everyone involved paying attention to the culture of game development.

An exemplary roguelike incentives and broadens its intrinsic repetition. An ideal narrative adventure paces its characters and their conflicts across a finite timeline. Hades is a vantage point engineered to view a singular setting of both perspectives.  Whichever side you ultimately settle on, Hades is a capable ascent from the dregs of genre stagnation.