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#hades #hades2
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#hades #hades2
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My playthrough of Hades 1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKTj6PrgxBv_DWCaKZpryz8G2-eRVPjS0
As far as I know, Hephaestus being ugly varies between the tellings? He's always disabled, but stories differ on if he was thrown off Olympus because of his disability, or if he was thrown off for being ugly which then CAUSED the disability.
1:02
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAREAHREAHRESJTEDKYGTVLAUTVAÇUBAV~PIAV KADÕIA
Ooooo, I was waiting to share some theories.
– About Melinoe headpiece: I think a dialogue mentions that she was found by Ermes and Artemis as an infant after Cronos attacked the House. The headpiece might be a token of Artemis, who is shown to be close to her. Furthermore, Hecate, Selene and Artemis (though more in her roman incarnation, Diana) are goddesses associated with the moon and its phases. It's not very clear if the Archer Twins were regarded as a Sun-Moon duo in ancient times, but the idea that two Olimpians take the sphere of influence of two Titans after their defeat is very cool to me (Artemis takes the Moon from Selene, Apollo takes the Sun from Helios. The two titans still exist, but they are more incarnations).
Given Melinoe association with witchraft, night, etc… the Moon, in all of its forms will play a huge role.
Her arm I think it's more of an Hecate thing, since Zagreus' "Mirror" is replaced here with tarot cards, and the UI indicates their cost with a hand. Very witchy.
– I love that they are showing the 3 daughters of Kronos as older than their brothers, Hestia even mentions helping the elderly, fitting since she's the first child of Rhea.
– Aphrodite is fantastic, and I think you can see her design from 2 point of view:
1) A reference to her origins as a goddess of War and Fertility, who arrived firstly in Sparta. The war paint on her eyes is kinda like Ares in the first game, her most famous lover. Love and War and all that, very cool.
2) The way she's armored, or rather, not armored is kinda silly for a Pantheon that is dressed for war, it almost looks like one of those ridiculous fantasy armor, it's even less of a chain-mail bikini. This could be more of a Homer characterization, where Aphrodite tries to fight in the Trojan war, gets wounded by a mortal, then Zeus tells her to leave the battlefield: literally a "there is no love in war" metaphor.
– Apollo looks good, but as a god he has such a large portfolio that it's hard to fit on a character: Sun, Medicine and Disease, Poetry Music and the Arts in general, Prophecy. It's a lot of stuff, I think he looks cool. I kinda hoped they made him more similar face wise to Artemis cause they are twins, but tanned Sun god and pale Moon goddess works very well.
– Hecate's abs are an unexpected choice, but a welcome one. Muscle mommy awooga aside (Both Hecate and Nemesis are fantastic) it shows that she's not just a witch, she is a goddess of witchcraft, frailty is not a divine trait. Also Nemesis' sword looks like her Stygian Blade aspect in the first game, I love that attention to detail.
Hecate has the two face on her shoulders because she is known as the triple headed goddess.
Aphrodite really going to battle like that. Dayum.
About the Dyonisus argument of being fit without proper diet, I mean, he is a god, I don't think his body works like ours.
Aphrodite in this game looks to be based on her Aphrodite Areia epithet, where she’s more of a war goddess that was very popular with the Spartans (what a surprise).
The one thing I am wondering is if the sickle Melinoë is using is the same one Kronos used to castrate his father Ouranos
Artemis also largely associates with women, so maybe she literally just came off weirder in Hades 1 because Zagreus is a guy, and now she's more open in Hades 2 because Melinoe is a girl?
Kind of a crack theory, but thought I'd throw it out there.
so im noticing both monster characters in the games , dusa and archnea are one athena transformed.
As a gay man its really interesting, and in a way really funny, to see the things that you dislike about some of the male designs
one thing abt demeter, she could appear to be less old due to at least where she daughter is, the stress of having to find hwe is gone so the old matriarch can be a little bit more like a sweet (althought at war) gradma
For me Moros and the hair almost gives a feeling of quickness. Like he arrived so quickly and is just THERE now and looming over someone like the impending doom he represents.
Also, about Melinoë's weapons she has in her promo art… While you could say that they are placed in that way to contrast Melinoë's duality of life and death, with the dagger being death and the sickle being life and Persephone's side of her, I think there's more to that.
That dagger looks like a Parazonium, which was used by the greeks, and therefore connects her to that side of the artwork, the side of life/Olympus.
Meanwhile, the sickle IS a symbol of death as well. Death is usually depicted as the Grim Reaper, which is, well, a figure that reaps souls with a scythe. We already have that in the form of Thanatos with his scythe, so Melinoë having a sickle reflects that as well. (Also, Death from Puss in Boots also used sickles for this reason, it's a less cliché form of a reaping tool).
I think we can see the sickle connecting to death in the form of "death to those whose time has reached its end and the reaping of their lives", just like crops, while the dagger is "premature death to those who still have more to live". The dagger is an unfair end to life, and the sickle is the natural consequence of death.
Furthermore, the sickle also has a crescent moon shape (and has moon decorations), connecting her more to Hecate and the death aspect of her design. AND the dagger's blade is way more ornate, which is more inclined to Olympus's indulgent behaviour (as opposed to the sickle being simple and efficient, closer to a more practical side of things with Hecate).
I really don't like the new designs of the Gods we saw in Hades 1.
Almost everyone of them feels like a huge downgrade. I kan only hope they are incomplete as the feel flat and unfinished.
Hypnos being an obvious exception to this. Love the new look for Hypnos.
Mythology Nerd making some notes that could probably help with some of your reviews of the characters, but not all of them because I may be a nerd for mythology, but I'm not VERY well versed.
Hecate: You brought up her mask on her shoulder @16:10. Hecate is often depicted with 3 faces because outside of magic, one of her "domains" was crossroads and the three paths there(Left, right, or backwards). So on her other should is probably another face mask.
Selene: So. Selene isn't actually a god, she's a titan and she IS the moon as well. Well, I say "is the moon" but she would carry the moon behind her on her chariot. With her being here, I don't know how much Apollo and Sun will be connected, because her counterpart is Helios, who is the sun(again, pulls a chariot across the sky with the sun on it). But as time went on, both Selene and Helios slowly got removed and instead Apollo was the sun god and Artemis the Moon goddess.
Arachne: You were correct that there are multiple stories about why and how, but the goddess is in fact Athena and the version I'm most familiar with is the "beat in a weaving contest and out of spite the goddess made her a spider", but one interesting note is that, from what I remember, Arachne is supposed to be the FIRST spider. I have to say, if all spiders were like arachne, people probably wouldn't be as scared of them.
Demeter: She's not just the goddess of seasons, but also the harvest, which is why she has the cornucopia. So those "corns" you see, are supposed to be sheaf of wheat. I do agree that she's probably in her "autumn" outfit. But probably LATE autumn because of how the wheat is kind of falling apart and starting the freeze and the empty cornucopia, as if it was early spring, I would expect to see the cornucopia full from the harvest.
Artemis: I feel one reason for the difference in both the tone and design is because of the Main character being a woman. In the myths, Artemis was, well, not a fan of men with one of her most famous stories being turning a man who accidentally wandered into her bathing into a deer, and then him getting eaten by his hunting dogs. So with Zagreus, she's more aloof, standoffish, and reserved, where as with Melinoe, she's more open and like "Hey girl, what's up?" and you can kind of get that from the difference in the poses. In hades 1, she's still got her bow on her, she looks like she is ON the hunt at the moment. In Hades 2, she looks like she's relaxed, chilling. She has her bow just kind of slung over her back and that wide stance is just inviting you in to a conversation. I also feel in Hades 2, she looks younger to me personally, rather than older.
Aphrodite: One of the most famous gods, no real notes to make. But one thing I wanted to point out is that ALL of her curls in her hair make a heart, which I thought as a fantastic touch of character design. You can even see some in the top of her arm band, and in her shield. Just hidden hearts all around her design.
Nemesis isn't a lifter, she's a heavy weight boxer/MMA fighter build. In that sense, her frame makes perfect sense.
Selene in Hades 2 is a Titaness. So, she was an older divine being than the Olympian and the Chthonic gods. The boon she gave is also different than other gods. It made sense that her portrait was really extravagant which reflected in her portrait.
Those feathered wings floating over Nemesis' shoulders also connect her to her brother Hypnos ❤
It’s so crazy how on point you are with sussing out their personality based on their character design. Whenever you get a chance to play hades 2 you should totally rewatch this video to see how close you got it.
In my opinion, new Artemis is actually more simplistic then the first one, Look at the lack of color and details in lineart, I think she suffers from the second one the most out of all the characters in Hades 2. Look at the simplified hair, headgear looks tamer, more modest. It's a central part of her art in part one. Pose is not as dynamic. Althoigh I guess it's a theme of every character artwork in Hades 2 in comparison to Hades 1. And once again… Colors. So many bright color is absent on Artemis, only some small parts as accents.
A small detail I really like about Hephaestus is the lighting in his portrat, the lightsource is bellow and to his side, the highlights get bigger, redder and hotter the closer they are to the source, that's the light of his forge. It's sooooooo well done, we don't see a hint of the thing, it's only implied but it's done so expertly that we don't even notice it at first glance, it's perfectly natural, it's correct.
An interesting thought I had about Demeter might look older/younger depending on the season, so she may look younger in 2 due to her not being in Winter
Just reached Artemis. But I noticed, the colored band she Mel, Heaters and Seline all wear, has the colours of all four goddesses.
Orange for Mel
Black for Hecate
Blue for Seline
Green for Artemis.
It seems to connect the four a whole lot. Best friend bracelets lets go
One thing that I noticed with the olympian gods who appeared in the first game is that their nrew designs now incorporate more reds and warm colors as accents. I see it as a signifier of sorts for the reconciliation that happened between them and Hades in the last game. Like they're now incorporating motifs more associated with Hades, now that the plot of this game is rescuing them from Chronos
i hope hypnos have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome represent
Not a Mythology nerd but from all i know Selene is the moon, moon incarnate, also a titaness, like Hypno and Thanathos are their own concepts incarnate.
10:45 This is more specifically a boline, used to prepare ritual materials.
I think in one version Erachne was scolded so badly by Athena because her tapestry in their competition was his uncle Posidon and his father Zeus doing very terrible non-consent things to people after scolding she wanted to unalive herself so Athena turned her into a spider either as out of pity or punishment.
Selene and Helios are literally the Sun and the Moon. While Apollo is representative of the Sun, and Artemis was later connected to the Moon because "oh yeah, sun and moon, twin siblings." Selene and Artemis have no interactions and (as far as we know) doesn't have any myths where they both show up.
Hecate likely has the faces on her shoulders to represent her position as the Three-Faced Goddess of Magic. She is also a fun representation of Time and how inescapable it is because many popular myths have Hecate start the day as a young woman, live through the day as a middle aged woman, enter night as an old woman, and dying and being reborn every dawn
Arachne did, in fact, get turned into a spider by Athena after claiming she was better than her. There are multiple interpretations of what caused the Spiderization. Personally, I like the one where she doubles down on her herasy, and the tapestry that lost her the competition was even more insulting to the rest of the gods.
Aphrodite is part war goddess. Her earlier myths show her having a deep connection to War (Ares is the person she cheats with the most) and her Spear and Shield show her connection to Sparta, where she was revered alongside Ares. Also, when it comes to all that stuff about seduction, contrary to popular belief, she isn’t a seduction goddess, she isn't the sex goddess, she is the Goddess of Love and Beauty. Being naked already, being already at the point of vulnerability and naked connects to love, I feel more than an evening gown. She is the goddess of beauty, so why would she hide the natural beauty of her body?
In the original legend Melinoë is actually the daughter of Persephone and Zeus (which being the fuckboy asshole he is, changed into Hades to trick her). I'm curious if that in any way will be relevant to the game, or if they decide to not go into that type of drama👀