Hades: The Hell That You Know
I woke up to a lovely message from my best friend:
I hate you. I bought Dead Cells. I stayed up until 3 a. m. and I can’t beat the first boss.
He was referring to the 2018 roguelike video game developed by Motion Twin, in which you play as a sentient, gelatinous blob capable of possessing the bodies of dead adventurers inside a gigantic dungeon. The game’s charm is exactly what would make anyone hate it, and it’s as simple as this.
You die, You start over
In Dead Cells, there’s (almost) no progress. No predefined purpose. No motivation or overarching goal except for the will to keep going. You don’t know where you’re going, how far the exit is or what you’re going to find over there. To make matters worse, every time you restart, the map shifts, so you never know what you’ll find on the other side of each door.
That’s the nature of the roguelike game: each section is generated randomly (or procedurally) so it gives you the feeling of being trapped in a small room that’s part of a seemingly eternal and labyrinthan dungeon.
For the record, I love Dead Cells and I think it’s an amazing game, but, over time, it became one I played in between work meetings or before going out. A game to be played in short bursts, as a challenge, just to see how far I could get this time. And there’s only so much you can reach through willpower alone.
Most roguelike games made me feel exactly the same way: frustrated yet wanting for more, at least, until I got tired of the same challenges and the same environment.
Then, I played Hades…
A Reason to Keep Going
Hades was released in 2020 by Supergiant Games and it quickly became one of my favorites. You play as Zagreus, Hades’ rebellious son who is attempting to escape the Underworld to find his mother. During each randomly generated stage, he fights waves of demons, damned souls and mythical creatures while seeking aid from the rest of his Olympian family.
From the perspective of Zagreus, Hades (the Underworld) is presented to the player not so much as a place of torture and damnation but rather as dark palace that serves both as home and office to Hades (the god). However colorful the interactions with the employees and servants that are sympathetic to his cause, the ever-present tediousness of being locked up in his own home is only overshadowed by the disgust he feels over the beaurocratic job of his father.
Because he’s a god, Zagreus doesn’t die. Instead, if he’s defeated, he returns to the Main Room, where his father lifts up his nose from his paperwork only to belittle and mock his son’s pointless endeavors. The game would still work if Zag’s motivation was as simplistic as “being free” but Supergiant goes above that by adding an emotional value to the challenge: Zagreus has a horrible relationship with his father. Hades wishes his son would just accept his place and learn the “family trade”, but he, as any hero would, wants something more out of life.
To Live is to Restart
It’s very easy to see that Zagreus suffers the effects of parental neglect from a father that doesn’t recognize him as anything but a lazy, good-for-nothing freeloader. He has spent eternity learning aggression and resilience, and that aggression gives him the strength to push through barrier after barrier. However, he longs for the gentleness and caring that only a mother can give.
He’s fractured, and finding his mother, at least to know why she left, represents a way of validating his sense of self. Something instinctive inside him tells him that the encounter will free him from the inner demons, way more pervasive and hurtful than the ones he lives with. The desire for inner peace proves to be stronger than any frustration.
A testament of the outstanding talent displayed by the people at Supergiant Games is that, in every one of their titles, the story is directly connected to the gameplay, instead of being two separate elements. In Hades, you don’t just push though stage after stage for your own sense of accomplishment, you do it because you feel Zagreus’ pain, because you relate to it, and you want to do your best to free him of it.
This story speaks to me not just because its fun characters or its incredible artwork, but because it encapsulates what life is all about. Day after day, you push through obstacles, some unexpected, some part of the routine. You move forward and you go back, sometimes to square one but always having learned something. You fight and you lose and you keep going, not really knowing what you’ll find on the stage the next day. And you keep going because you’re still seeking what everyone desires most: inner peace.
