Hades and The House of Escape | GC Vazquez

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With Hades out of early access, I thought I’d take a gander at Supergiant Games’ new title. But, given that I’ve looked at every other Supergiant game, why not look at Hades through that lens? As it turns out, it isn’t just the next milestone on Supergiant’s tenure, it also reflects their journey as a studio. From Bastion, to Transistor, to Pyre, Hades remembers where it came from, and underneath it’s story about strife and conflict, is the tale of Supergiant Games themselves. About their close relationship with escape as a theme and concept. How their view on it has evolved across the last decade, and how their own growth has affected that. This is Hades and The House of Escape!

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From Wikipedia:

Hades is a roguelike action role-playing video game developed and published by Supergiant Games. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Nintendo Switch on September 17, 2020, which followed an early access release from December 2018.

Players control Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape from Underworld to reach Mount Olympus, at times aided by gifts bestowed on him from the other Olympians. Each run challenges the player through a random series of rooms populated with enemies and rewards. The game has a hack and slash combat system; the player uses a combination of their main weapon attack, dash power, and magic ability to defeat them while avoiding damage to progress as far as possible. While Zagreus will often die, the player can use gained treasure to improve certain attributes or unlock new weapons and abilities to improve chances of escaping on subsequent runs.

Hades was developed following Supergiant’s Pyre, a game in which they wanted to explore procedural narrative storytelling, but due to the nature of the main gameplay, found that players did not play through Pyre multiple times to explore this. The roguelike structure of Hades gave them the opportunity to tell these branching stories to the player over the course of multiple runs. Hades received critical acclaim, particularly for its gameplay, art and narrative and was nominated for and won several awards, including Game of the Year by numerous publications.

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18 thoughts on “Hades and The House of Escape | GC Vazquez”

  2. Great video that had an insane turnaround time on GC's part!

    Shoutouts to the ad that I got that was just a guy holding a metal credit card, turning it over a few times, and dropping it on another metal credit card over and over without any explanation of what I was being advertised exactly. No name, no nothing.

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  4. Great job GC. Nice thoughtful analysis that wasn't afraid to be ambitious. As someone who's gone from being a video essay superfan to someone who's a little tired of them, this felt unique. You hit that sincere-but-not-melodramatic style feels fresh in a YouTube where every essay seems like it's either "this video game saved civilizations with its wisdom and sanctity to the literary tradition" or "haha isn't it funny how we take games seriously on YouTube, guys?". New favorite vid of yours.

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  12. Just came here b/c someone is talking about my favorite indie title of the year. And honestly, it could be a whole lot more than that over the years. And you hit the nail on the head about the game's themes and what Supergiant Games are doing too. Plus, I know a bit of the tale of Persephone and how it would end up, but that didn't taint or spoil the adventure of Zagreus anyway. Seeing Orpheus and Euridice back together, and singing together was the ultimate euphoria of the entire game!

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  15. Phenomenal video that really captured an idea I hadn't considered. Growth as a reflection of their own game development history. The connections via the early enemy design and the window escape wrtr both novel to me as well.
    Pyre will remain my favorite Supergiant game, but I've definitely put more hours in Hades than the other three combined.

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  17. With my limited history with the games they've made, and significant adoration towards how Pyre tackled the concept, I find this conversation they've put forward to be downright important and interesting, and you summed it up fantastically with the analogy of meeting an old friend and the evolving and maturing talk.

    Hell even summing up things here seems irresponsibly lacking because it's a series of stages, different to each situation, and way too much more- but I will say if the read I'm interpreting here from Hades havin' not played just yet:
    That escape became a process of improvement rather than a destination- escape grew into a means to improve what was once a broken home and (hopefully) turn where you're at now into where you once hoped to escape to-
    If that's the take I'm reading, I'm just happy to see it as a potential end to what escape can mean to someone. Again, great work GC. Damn double comment from an interruption lol.

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