Game: Hades
Publisher: Supergiant Games
Platform: PC
Target audience: People who know Greek mythology, especially younger people.
Hades invites you to care about the world through its narrative through its sympathetic main character and the threads of existing mythological narratives that it picks up through its supporting characters. Zagreus is sympathetic main character because his story is familiar, especially to younger people: he wants to escape his overbearing father and get out to see the world. Contrast this to early titles in the God of War series: though they feature the same mythology, Kratos’ revenge missions are alienating rather than sympathetic. Because the narrative design in Hades makes the main character relatable, we are immediately on his side, and so viewing the world through his eyes draws us into it.
View from Zagreus’ perspective, the world further draws us in by integrating its story into existing mythological narratives. This leads to a well-designed mix of evoked and emergent narrative. When you meet a character, their story in existing mythology (if you know it) is evoked: Orpheus and Eurydice, Achilles and Patroclus, Sisyphus, Persephone all have an existing narrative. The emergent narrative comes as the game slowly reveals both where in their original narrative you have found them and how their story will evolve from its original version to fit this narrative. For example, in my playthrough I found Patroclus in section three of the underworld before Achilles made any mention of him, which made me wonder: Does Achilles know? Why is he separate from Patroclus? Over multiple runs, the answers to these questions emerge. The interplay between evoked and emergent narrative speaks to the games target audience—without pre-existing knowledge of Greek mythology, the evocative element of the narrative is diminished.
In addition to the narrative, the formal elements invite you to care about the world by drawing in additional narrative and character development through power-ups. The boons that Zagreus receives from the gods, in addition to being a powerup mechanic, come with dialogue that deepens Zagreus’ relationship with the god giving the boon (this relationship is quantified in the relationship book, which is crucial to advancing the late game narrative). Further, this mechanic causes a dynamic wherein the player will try to maximize boons from certain gods during a run in order to achieve a specific build. This dynamic leads to challenge fun from trying to min-max your strategy, and the sense pleasure from visual and tactile aesthetic of using each gods power. The personification of the gods through diverse dialogue alongside these types of fun makes them characters the player cares about, which makes them care more about the world. In addition to powerups from god boons, the weapon aspects deepen the world because they are linked to a mythological character, including characters outside Greek mythology. This extends the world beyond Greek mythology in a way that gives it a sense of scale which makes the player want to discover more.
The mechanics depict the body according to a modern concept of the Greek ideal of physical prowess. When the gods give you boons, they appear in physically evocative poses: Poseidon lounges with his trident like a surfer, Aphrodite (naked) leans coquettishly forward, Artemis sits lightly on great bow. This is a specific design choice to make the gods more physical and human-like—they could have been depicted as statues or in much more regal, courtly poses. Finally, all the gods are conventionally attractive. In addition to the gods, the base fighting mechanics are all about movement. All the starting weapons are physical weapons—there’s no magic option besides the cast, which has limited uses. This extends to the game’s boss fights, which all feature physical combatants (with the exception, late in the game, of Chiron). All this combines to center physical prowess.
While it makes sense that the game inherits a centering of physical prowess and conventional attractiveness from Greek mythology, the game could be modded in ways that highlight aspects of Greek mythology that diverge from these ideals. For example, Hephaestus, canonically an ugly Olympian, could be included as a boon-giving god. Further, the game could feature fights less focused on physical combat—for example, riddles posed by sphinx, webs to unravel spun by Arachne, or tough choices posed by the three fates. The existing games includes some of these elements (tough choices) in interactions with Primordial Chaos, but they could be featured to a greater extent.
