Disclaimer: Greg Kasavin is the former executive editor of GameSpot. Mike Hahardy also previously worked for GameSpot.
Hades recently left Early Access and released version 1.0 on PC and Switch, and players have been digging into all the little details sprinkled throughout the game. Now, in a brief Twitter thread about a tremendous reactive narrative moment, the game’s writer has shared some insight into the philosophy behind the game’s writing.
Polygon’s Mike Mahardy noted on Twitter that Megaera, one of the Fury bosses in the game, chastized him during a fight for taking her own after taking on so many upgrades from the mirror in Zagreus’ room. So, out of curiosity, he reset his upgrades and fought her again–and found that she actually acknowledged that he’d done it after their discussion.
Greg Kasavin popped up in the responses to offer some more insight, revealing that there are different variations on the discussions you can have with Meg back in the House of Hades after all of this transpires, too.
In a follow-up, Kasavin explained the simple philosophy underpinning the game’s writing, and said that an Early Access release made it easier to keep fine-tuning the characters and their interactions. The game sold about 700,000 copies in Early Access.
According to Kasavin, the game continued to add new check conditions as it grew, and by the time of full release it was quite hard to track everything.
In a separate Twitter thread, Kasavin talked about how the story of Hades is unique in that dying is how you advance the story. For that reason the team didn’t want to include a traditional “easy” mode to let players breeze through, because that would impact how much of the story they see. Their solution was to introduce a “God Mode,” which comes with a famous Latin (not Greek) reference.
Hades earned a 9/10 in GameSpot’s review, and its writing was singled out as one of its best qualities. “What sets Hades apart isn’t just that it’s a great roguelike with the kind of repeatable depth that makes it engrossing to play for hours, but also how it uses its structure to tell an ongoing story about family, secrets, and resolution,” wrote reviewer Suriel Vazquez.
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