Intro: “You still have yet to see the sun itself, you know only of the light of Ixion, but the sun? Positively blinding. Hideous.” Hades 2018 Telling the tale of Hades in an accurate, fun, and emotional way is a hard task to do. The lore, the mythology, and history of mount Olympus and Greek mythology, in general, is an erroneous task to compile and take and bring into a game so it becomes bit sized and easy to digest. Hades is a new-age take on the classic dungeon crawler but done with accurate historical representation and writing that is not repetitive, or boring and does not try too hard. There is a casual, natural flow to the way the characters talk, and how the story plays out.
Hell Is Not Your Home: The escape from the underworld is not as easy for the prince of hell as one may think, after all being that Hades is the guardian and he has some of the most iconic gods who have been sent there, it is rather difficult, to say the least. When going into this game, I thought it to be like any other, it would save along with the progress I have made, but to be frank, that is not the case. The entire game has to be completed in one run. Yes, you heard that correctly. As you go through the game you are meant to die, you are meant to get stronger each time, and it is meant to hurt, A LOT. It makes the victory sweeter; you’ll have a good cry afterward as well, accompanied by a victorious clanking of glasses.
Through the game, you go through trials much like Hercules. We see our main protagonist fight the hydra, Cerberus, and the Cretan Bull. I love how the developers at Supergiant made the effort to put the ACTUAL mythology into the game and make something that was not just a cute fun experience, but something impactful and meaningful to those of us who know the history of Greek mythology. With each run, you meet different gods from Mount Olympus, and each one gives you boons that make you stronger for that particular run. For me personally, the gods that I found aided me the most were Poseidon, Zeus, and Chaos. There are also more gods that you meet that are newer when you finish your first play of the game that aid you tremendously in each round. The Little things are important: When I tell you this game has everything, I mean it has EVERYTHING. From the fights with legendary creatures to the dialogue to the hints of Persephone’s capture, this game made a clear effort. When I saw the dialogue, none of it was recycled or re-used when it came to character interaction. All of it was new each round that is both tricky and hard to accomplish in a game. Each time I died, the game had a new bit of dialogue to throw at me that not only helped me in the next round but added to the story tenfold. When I got more into the story, and how the game was presented to me, it was very clear that the developers and writers knew their onions when it came to Greek lore. The pomegranate is one very prominent example that not too many would pick up on. When Persephone was taken to the underworld, Hades tricked her into having six pomegranate seeds, and it was ruled by the fates that anyone who has food in the underworld, or consumes any drink, that they were doomed to stay there. This denotes how the Greeks have explained their cycles of the year. Spring and summer are when Persephone is present in the mortal realm, winter and summer are when she resides with Hades.
This may be a stretch but there are also connections to Dantes inferno within this game. Having to finish it 9 more times before you get the true ending, the 9th layer of hell was the coldest one and where Judas resided and shows that you have to literally at the end of the game beat your father, in WINTER to get to a metaphorical heaven. Purgatory is also mentioned somewhat vaguely in the letter that Zagreus reads in the game where Persephone explains where she’s going where she might find “somewhere in-between.” There is also a lot of psychology within this game as well, the concept of going through hell and back, trying to reach the surface, and Persephone explaining to her dead son that she thought he was stillborn….yes, that is a thing in the game, and it is something we could go into more depth about, besides the discussion the game itself. Nothing Lasts Forever, Final Thoughts: This game is now one of my favorites. Having completed it once and seeing how much this game has in terms of content, lore, accuracy, and good writing, it is a game I would STRONGLY recommend to any Greek mythos buff or fan of good writing in general. The way this was crafted is nothing short of impressive, even the voice acting I was astonished by how immersive it was. When Zagreus reaches the top, he knows his time is limited. It tells us nothing is forever, and every attempt at life should be a well-fought battle that even the gods would stand in awe of.
Comments