For my critical play, I played Hades from Supergiant. Hades is a game for teens and mature audiences, it has suggestive themes and plenty of violence and gore. The game is out on pretty much all platforms, and is beloved in the gaming community. It is one of my favorite games of all time.
Hades does a lot of things right, and that starts with its worldbuilding. The world of Hades is rich with narrative, and this starts with a deeply evocative world, one set in the underworld amongst a cast of misfits from the Greek pantheon. By choosing to set their game in such a widely-known universe, Supergiant created a world that many players would immediately care about.
Supergiant doesn’t settle for creating a world exclusively through references though, and it goes on to create a world that is perfectly interwoven with the game’s narrative and mechanics. The main game loop of Hades, a roguelike, is that you attempt to escape the underworld, die trying, get stronger, and try again. Unlike most games, where dying and respawning requires some suspension of belief, in Hades this mechanic is so seamlessly integrated with the narrative and the world that it feels completely natural. In Hades, you are an immortal. When you are killed in the underworld, you respawn from the pool of blood, back at the house of Hades. The respawn mechanic is ultimately what enables the dynamic of progressing in strength over many escape attempts, and the fun of overcoming challenge. Having such a core mechanic also intimately intertwined with the world makes players care about the world more.
In “The Psychology of World Building”, Gabriela Pereira argues that the supporting cast is the most important aspect of world building, outside of a main character. In video games, the relevance of the main character is subject to some leeway, as many games opt for “blank slate” main characters, so the supporting cast is of even greater importance. This is an area where Hades excels. The game has a whole cast of beautifully drawn and voiced characters, with tons of unique dialogue, conversations that react to the outcomes of your most recent run, gifts, relationship progression, and even romance. 
Image: Talking to Hades, deep in the post-game. Still at this point, after beating the game, there is new voiced dialogue.
So on top of evoking narrative through using characters from Greek mythology, Supergiant allows the player to enact their own story and form relationships with these characters. By creating mechanics specifically centered around players’ relationships with the game characters, Supergiant is encouraging players to become attached to these characters, and to care about the world even more.
In Hades, there is not much variety in how the body is portrayed. There are some “biological” based groups in the game, Gods, demigods, and mortals, but the game doesn’t feature any mortals, the lesser category. Since the “biological” groups in this game don’t map to real world examples, I don’t think this game is promoting any harmful stereotypes in that area. The real lack of diversity in this game’s bodies are not in the groupings, but in the body types. Everyone in this game is fit and slim, and conventionally attractive. I imagine this is justified by arguing that it is a game about literal gods; all of them should be slim, fit, and good looking. I think the lore of the Greek Pantheon has enough room to include more body variety, so going with the all supermodel cast was definitely a deliberate choice by Supergiant studio. This is just an example of another piece of media that is subjected to and contributing to societal beauty standards.
