Why I Like The Thing - Hades

[Music] hey um have you guys heard of hades it's uh yeah it's pretty good some of you might remember about a year ago that i decided very much on a whim to try out supergiant's latest which had just entered steam early access even with it being a very incomplete version it still snaked its tendrils around me nice and tight and wound up being my game of the year of 2019 when all was said and done hades then went through a lot of changes adding more characters story weapons and mechanics until it reached version 1.0 and was officially out of early access and got a surprise release on the switch as well this of course heralded in a deluge of new fans and the accompanied internet fervor that occurs whenever a cool thing comes out that's filled to bursting with the hottest hotties it then very much broke through that layer of general obscurity that most games in early access are veiled under it's not all that dissimilar to zangrius ascending to a higher plane within the underworld but instead of finding elysium he was greeted with oodles of fan art ships and an endless parade of memes but in that same game of the year video i only lightly touched upon what makes this game so special and since then i really haven't had the opportunity to gather my thoughts on the complete package until now there are some very specific things i want to go through here but first yes hades combat is snappy impactful and teeming with thousands of possible builds and yeah the music is incredible and features so many sexy bass lines that it should be illegal oh there's fishing and the art direction is sublime and brimming with so much detail that you get my point so for this video i want to highlight the less obvious things about what super giant has achieved here so grab your most potent boons favored infernal arms and your most treasured keepsake and allow me to tell you why i like the thing [Music] i can't live this charade any longer up until about like two years ago i wasn't even sure what a roguelike was and to be honest i still might not be a hundred percent i like when my genres make what they are abundantly clear beat em ups boomer shooters and of course jumping papas but with supergiant's pedigree coupled with hades obviously strong art direction plus its focus on the greek pantheon of gods was enough to entice me however if this game was just that merely a stylish look and a solid bedrock of mythology well that wouldn't have been enough to garner all the praise it's been amassing it goes far far deeper than that because the design decisions on display here have made it so that even the most ardent shouts of i don't with roguelikes have turned into it's 4 13 a.m it one more run see the most common criticism that tends to pop up regarding the sub genre is that a lot of people myself included simply aren't into the concept of losing really good weapons or buffs they've amassed upon death when they start anew and largely hades doesn't change that but it makes deaths almost some might say even more engaging than the dungeon crawling itself what sets apart supergiant's work from its contemporaries like let's say dead cells an incredible action game in its own right is that once you've gotten as far as you can and the last vestiges of your life slip away you are then treated to a menagerie of wonderful characters and plotlines once you've again risen from the pool of blood ah cheers for that meg within the dour hallways of the god of the dead's home you'll then make progress in a different way scuttling across the nuanced web of the underworld's gods both demi and full learning more about what drives each one as well as how they relate to our hero zagreus it's in the moment you return after a failed run that you can still feel a sense of progression the more you interact with achilles than a toast or nicks it changes things ever so slightly elsewhere within the game it makes it so that zags socializing is just as important as what weapon will be taken into tartarus or choosing between health offense or defense that isn't to say that the game forces you to interact with these characters but if you do choose to ignore them you'll be making the game much harder for yourself for no real reason sure it's not advisable but the game lets you do that now just looking at videos we can all tell that the moment-to-moment hacking and or slashing of hades has its own brilliant design decisions that just i i die okay i love this part heavenly boon or buff awaits you every time you start a run and it's randomly bestowed by one of the olympian deities this will then set the tone for your ascent to each lair and along the way you'll be bestowed with other boons that could very well complement or even replace that initial power if you so choose soon after that you'll be presented with the first split in your path each route promising tantalizing new possibilities one room can lead to carrom the stygian boatman and his shop that has wares for sale if you have the coin and another might grant you daedalus's hammer which can drastically change the way your weapon behaves this may in turn lead to a lot of sophie's choice style moments but not in the example that i just gave the answer is always hammer once you start getting a handle of your chosen weapon you'll be able to unlock more of them then the ability to physically manifest the god's power into the battlefield becomes available and once you've stocked up enough titan blood you can then reveal your armory's full potential and then duo boons become a thing it it goes on and on like this the game very slowly introduces these mechanics to you so it's not an overwhelming mess of menus and percentages this is another big factor into why i think hades has been so successful in luring in new fans they don't assault the player with too much information all at once it's through these facets that it creates this addictive loop of gameplay that never really has a dull moment or a true sense of loss of progression even after a failed run you'll always be bringing back a few resources with you whether it be gifts for whoever you're crushing on darkness to permanently increase zang stats or gemstones which lets you commission changes throughout the underworld okay right so let's say you still somehow fail to bring back any of those resources simply fighting will then fill out your codex where you can then learn more lore about your weapons enemies or the various locations within hades every single escape attempt will ultimately net you something all of these systems have been tinkered with and polished over the course of more than a year from the time hades spent on the epic game store and steam early access including fan feedback which resulted in about as much balance as one could hope for so it's no surprise that the marriage between narrative and gameplay is tightly woven but still somehow independent from each other while a lot of what hades does isn't new in any sort of drastic sense it's these design choices that are so well thought out so expertly crafted that you feel like you're playing something unique which is what separates a merely good game from a special one now while it's obvious that strong design is the key thing here there's other ingredients to the nectar of hades that make it so potent and rich bottle of nectar who should i get this too how was your want and ransacking of my domain greetings father my round second was a delight thank you for asking so i'll just be on my way again when you decide to dip your sandal clad toe into greek mythology you're gonna be dealing with uh a pretty large cast and with so many of them you'd think there'd be some lame-o's well i mean there are but overall these are the most interesting interpretations of the gods i've ever seen so it doesn't come as a surprise that writing for so many characters is nothing short of a i'm sorry herculean task i'm actually not sorry and that's what i want to discuss now writing something that supergiant has been excelling in ever since they released their first game i mean off the bat the sheer girth of the script has to be monstrous as there's so much unique dialogue that i haven't heard at all and i'd be surprised if anyone has so many events and choices influence these interactions between gods so you can definitely complete a few runs of the game without seeing every single one the key thing here is that each character is also very clearly written to be well their own character every single one has a particular style of speech or quirk that if you were to remove the voice acting and specific names you'd still know exactly who they are just by the raw text not one of them spouts generic lines that feel interchangeable with others which tends to happen a lot in video games you'd better not be giving me the run around old man leave me alone i'm busy the animosity between hades and zagreus is especially unique as it never really feels like downright hatred but something like far more complex a mutual disrespect or vitriolic acknowledgement you're trying to guilt me into funding the exorbitant furnishings you desire perhaps once we are finished with repairs for all the carnage you have sown throughout my realm then we might finally have time for all the needed renovations that have piled up nice all i can say for sure is that the relationship is at somewhat of the core of the narrative you're trying to escape him after all but yet it's handled pretty subtly when you know compared with stuff like zeus let's take another example nyx is a benevolent but still distant entity for lack of a better term and mother figure to zagreus she's immensely powerful her speech is unlike any other and while she cannot reveal her true intentions or desires publicly in a few choice moments you can see her emotions just barely manifesting oh my dear child so now you know so now you know but only half the truth i can explain the rest so please it never was my wish to hurt you this type of nuance permeates throughout the rest of the cast yes even theseus uh a naked attempt to sway me actually no not this is theseus this same quality in writing also carries over to the codex where tons upon tons of lores kept safe and sound as you progress through the game you'll fill out entries on just about everything even the most innocuous stuff like just how miserable asphadel is or what exactly is that on chaos what is that all of these descriptions feel like they came straight out of any greek epic which is a testament to all the research and work put in by greg cassivan overall the writing manages to maintain a classical feel to it while still coming across as something with a modern flair as cliche as that may sound character dialogue doesn't take itself too seriously as you're never far away from a delightfully devilish insult or cheeky remark the house of hades that dark and lavishly appointed layer of the underworld's king is home not just to him but to his willful brothery you know i can hear you old man the narrative also manages to avoid being too dark or too jokey and actually achieves that oh so rare balance which is something i think you'll agree is a bit of a running theme when talking about hades but for as good as the writing is you also need incredible voice acting to complement it and as it just so happens voice acting almost never gets the credit it truly deserves as advancements in facial and performance capture have equalized a lot of the aspects of what goes into a believable emotive character so when you have any type of game that relies on one still picture for a main character the actor behind the voice then has to do a lot of the heavy lifting such is the case with hades each god or denizen of the underworld has such distinct designs that a suitable voice needs to be attached to it and boy are they ever logan cunningham who played the narrator in bastion is certainly the mvp here because while many will recognize him as salty old hell dad hades himself he flexes the old vocal cords by also giving life to poseidon charon asterius achilles and the storyteller as well dude brings his a-game to pretty much everything super giant has had him do and the range he displays here is truly impressive surely all those who once defied my brothers and myself would much prefer a post within my house over eternity within the lower steps of tartarus i want your love of history to grow not just your love of warfare besides maybe you can finish out the rest of it i mentioned nix earlier in regards to the game's writing and to voice such a role mustn't have been an easy task as her nature demands a certain repression of feelings even with this restriction however jaime landrum plays her with such subtlety it's actually astounding you know your father does not like it when nectar is doled out on the premises dear child however i am not he and i wished regardless to provide you a token of my affection in addition jaime also pulls double duty by playing the goddess of the hunt artemis however i have to give a special shout out to a particular actress that made me and many others feel things simply through the power of her voice avalon penrose awesome name has caused tingles to undulate down the spine or in any parts of the body of anyone who speaks to megura the first roadblock in zagg's quest ever stubborn aren't you maybe my whip might make you reconsider whatever it is that you're attempting here just uh i don't know what it is it could be the slight modulation or the step on you energy she projects but just yeah hey uh what's that you're drinking meg anything good whatever it is it's weak enough to be mistaken for your blood then we have zagreus skelly himself i never would have guessed that darren corb who obviously has the lion's share of dialogue and perhaps the hardest job of them all it's always difficult to play the protagonist and especially one like zang as you're going to be hearing him the most and thankfully it was always a pleasure he's played in such a way where he never feels too arrogant nor too heroic there's a depth to him that slowly unravels as more characters are encountered whether he's being snarky serious inquisitive or even hurt there's a true sincerity in how corp plays him that's worthy of any greek tragedy you mean megura she's on my case all right under strict orders not to let me out of tartarus i guess that means you've got yourself a break about down time they gave one to you sir um nix you've done so much for me i thought you might like this there's only one heavenly archer i know of well several really anyway in the name of hades olympus i accept this message all right let's give it another shot all of this goes to show just how much performance truly matters especially when a game is using still images to convey its character's emotion so having such a talented cast play these larger-than-life deities was certainly a boon to supergiant and thanks to solo here and of course higgins regis and marzipan for all your hard work hades is something that comes along very rarely an example of a game being so well designed and so polished that it's able to convert people who otherwise wouldn't have touched the genre with a 10-foot pole hell it worked on me and has worked for a number of you that have said as much to me either on my twitter or in my youtube comments that said just because a particular genre might be outside your regular comfort zone that doesn't necessarily mean you might not wind up loving it hell it even resulted in this happening wow this game is fan tastic i'm really glad i discovered it right there's nothing like discovering a game that nobody else has ever mentioned ever played to be the first one to finally figure a true diamond in the rough sort of game experience and to have it be so enjoyable hades is a reminder that video games can still be very special when the right one comes along made by the right people and that in turn can make you fall in love with the medium all over again however that doesn't mean this game has to be that for you not every single person will be into it and that's fine but what this does is bring to light the fact that everyone has that one magical game that really speaks to them and in such a year of trials tribulations and disappointments it's nice to be reminded of that sometimes so i hope you enjoyed this video have a safe and happy holiday and with that my fellow shades i hope i've adequately explained why i like the thing [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 38,577

Rating: 4.954989 out of 5

Keywords: Hades, Supergiant Games, Matt McMuscles, Zagreus

Id: KEpt8-qQXmI

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Noctantis]

My friend: Dude you gotta try it. I know you loved Bastion. It's such a good take on the rogue-lite genre.

My two brain cells after seeing Dionysus and Artemis:

[u/Cactuar001]

Man the last time he did this was with Final Fight so he must really love Hades.

[u/GyroGOGOZeppeli]

Is this the thing that Max found on his own?

Good of Matt to find this because of Max.

[u/ArrBe-]

Hades is one of the good ones. Please vote for it in the steam awards. 😬👍

[u/The_Draigg]

Hades really does deserve all the credit it gets. It gave us Zagreus, the cutest and most fun himbo in gaming.

[u/WTK55]

Does this video contain spoilers? I want to watch it but I havent beaten Hades yet.