After a fittingly shifting early access period, Hades 2 released last fall to largely raucous applause. But there was one sticking point – or rather, a handful that coalesced into a larger whole like our dear good boy Cerberus: the narrative, previously incomplete, built to a conclusion that to some felt unsatisfying. So Supergiant patched it in an effort to provide greater closure for all involved. The decision, says creative director Greg Kasavin, was a no-brainer despite coming after the early access period rather than during, but he’s also made his peace with the fact that not everybody’s on board with where the game’s larger-than-life tale of gods, titans, and fates ultimately ended up.
Spoilers for Hades 2 follow.
Hades 2’s ending presented players with a plethora of potential quibbles, but many found themselves inconsolably at odds with the fact that Zagreus, main character Melinoë’s brother and hero of Hades 1, as opposed to Melinoë herself, made the extremely consequential decision to show compassion to a past version of Hades 2’s central villain, Chronos, thus forcing Melinoë to abandon her lifelong mission of scattering the conniving titan to the sands of time in favor of bonding with a suddenly remorseful version of him. This, in some players’ minds, did not feel true to Melinoë’s character, stealing agency from her and robbing her of retribution following a lifetime of injustice. The updated version allowed Melinoë to make that call herself and dropped in additional scenes supporting it, showing rather than telling.
At DICE in Las Vegas earlier this month, Kasavin explained that the eleventh hour decision to reconfigure an ending years in the making – a rarity for narrative-driven games despite high-profile instances like Mass Effect 3’s controversial ending overhaul – came after only a small amount of consternation.
"I mean, of course if all of us had perfect foresight, we would make all sorts of decisions differently throughout life, but none of us are so fortunate,” Kasavin told Aftermath when asked if he had any regrets stemming from the original version of Hades 2’s ending. “[But] when you're making an early access game, it's almost like you've created a contract with you and your players. We're working in partnership with our players and we're taking their feedback and synthesizing it as part of what we want to accomplish and make something that is true to our vision while also hopefully being as satisfying as possible to our player base. The decision about the ending, in many respects, was very straightforward because it was simply the same process we've used all throughout: We get feedback, we consider it, and then we ask ourselves 'Is there something we can do to address it?' It just so happened that this related to a part of the story, and it was after version 1.0 rather than before."
Tweaking the ending, then, felt natural, especially considering who much of the criticism was coming from.
"We made the decision [to change the ending] really quickly,” Kasavin said. “We knew that we wanted to do something because we knew players had really high expectations – particularly our early access players, who played a lot of the first game and also this game in early access. They had good feedback, as they did all throughout early access."
Reactions to the 2.0 version of Hades 2 1.0’s ending have been mixed. Some feel that Supergiant’s effort to fill in blanks helps sell a once-rushed face turn, fleshing out multiple characters en route to a legitimately heartwarming finale. But much ink was spilled before and after the patch about larger narrative issues, especially in terms of Melinoë’s inability to budge a Sisyphean status quo that Zagreus at least made a (or several hundred) run(s) at marginally improving. The game’s cast, as a result, winds up feeling static – bland, even. There’s also the matter of Hades 2’s grander endgame ambitions: a reckoning with the idea of fate itself that catches gods and mortals alike in its sweeping net while shunting Melinoë’s more personal concerns off to the side. As Defector pointed out, Hades 2 is ultimately at odds with its own structure, attempting to depict seismic change within a framework of necessary repetition.
Kasavin has heard the criticisms and, indeed, sought them out. But when it comes to engaging with articles, videos, and comments directly, he prefers to let the game do the talking.
“We welcome criticism of our work and read all of it that we can find,” Kasavin said. “We feel our work ultimately needs to speak for itself. If nothing else, discussions around the themes, characters, and broader differences between the two games suggest to us that players are engaging with the work, which is great.”
Kasavin also recognizes that the original Hades, a record-breaking roguelite that has spawned countless imitators, was always going to be a tough act to follow – even for himself, the guy who directed it.
"We didn't have a lot of room to make something where people would be like 'Oh wow, that just blew the previous game out of the water,' because [the original] Hades won more than 70 game of the year awards and exceeded our wildest expectations,” he said. “We wanted to make something that was on the level and had its own distinct identity – that could assert itself. We knew that players would compare and contrast. They would contrast Melinoë to Zagreus."
"For some people, [Hades 2] lands really well,” he added. “For other people, their memory of the original is so strong that it may not pass it, and that's all OK. ... We've been fortunate to have worked on games that, one after another, have been able to strike a chord with people at their own point in time. We have never endeavored to tell our players that a game will be better than the last one, because if you got a tattoo of Hades, who are we to tell you that this game is going to be even better than that? You're at a different point in time; you have different expectations, and we try not to pressure ourselves into making something that would be better for everyone in that way. But of course, we don't want to disappoint people either."
So of course, Supergiant’s next project is going to be a sequel to its real best game, Pyre, right?
"Who knows?" Kasavin replied with a laugh. "We have no idea right now. We never even begin to think about what our next game is until the dust has settled on the one that we've been working on. How we feel at the end of that process is really important to where we go next."
Ideally, though, Supergiant’s core crew – who’ve been together since the beginning, practically a miracle in the modern video game industry – will figure it out together.
"Our ambitions, such as they are, are simply to be able to make another game after the one that we work on," said Kasavin. "We like working together. We think that the creative chemistry we have is why our games have been well received. Each of us have experienced our greatest successes working together. So we have all reasoned that we are greater than the sum of our parts. Supergiant is more than 25 people now, but we're on the relatively smaller side for a studio that's been around 15 [or] 16 years. A goal of ours is just to be able to keep doing this for the long haul. It doesn't mean it will happen; people go through their different life changes. But we as a team try to do the best we can to support one another and keep doing what we're doing because we love it. We wish we could do it forever."
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Jay Castello
