Game analysis that compares Hades to the developer’s earlier games (Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre).
00:00 Introduction
01:24 How Hades Improves on Pyre
05:12 How Hades Improves on Transistor
08:28 How Hades Improves on Bastion
11:57 Conclusion
The Gemsbok site: https://thegemsbok.com/
The article that became this video: https://thegemsbok.com/hades
Hades on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1145360/
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The media clips used in this video are expressly for review commentary, academic criticism, and comparison; their inclusion falls under the purview of Fair Use and does not violate copyright.
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New video let's go!!
Hades is one of those games, much like Disco Elysium and TheWitcher3 etc., which I know is amazing, but I will never play because either I already know everything about it already (from essays and such) or because I just don't have it in me anymore to internalise it properly.
Gemsbok never misses. Love it.
Let's go, this gon be good.
Nice video. Personally I have a gripe that after Transistor Supergiant fell into a routine and peppering their games with unnecessary amounts of dialogue. What was intriguing about Bastion and Transistor was that they were story-heavy games with low amounts of dialogue, having less of he obnoxious "character explains all aspects of their character to the player" stuff that most dialogue heavy games are saddled with.
I was starting to think they would never put out a product I could love the way I love bastion… but then hades dropped and I was happy to see I was wrong about that
I still haven't got around to this game, but I am one of those weirdies who likes Pyre as much as the first 2 so you might have finally convince me to try it out.
I like it when you say boon
It's been months since my wife and I wrote an essay on this game and I still can't stop thinking about it. Everything in the game just works so coherently, between the gameplay mechanics and story, how the gameplay synergizes with the workplace and family drama in the narrative, and how that relates to ideas around corporate bureaucracies and labor (Pact of punishment and the archives spring to mind). Even the criticism related to the lyre, although annoying in practice (And is a valid criticism), still conceptually makes sense considering that practicing any skill is always going to be a tedious experience.
I've beaten the game twice and I still feel tempted to play again, but I have to pull myself back because the game completely consumes my personal time 😅
Compulsory engagement contribution: deployed.
Got a "roguelike" game mode for you to try that'll buff your win/loss ratio maximum past the one in Hades, if you want: Hitman Freelancer. 100% in that is an enormous grind, and while the variation of tasks and the sheer bredth of options available in Hitman's base gameplay save it from tedium, the kind of dedicated player who is actually pushing Freelancer to 100% will win far more than they lose…even if they do their runs in Hardcore mode. (That is a genuine difficulty spike, with a lot of little effects, but once you get used to how the game works in that mode, you'll still be achieving a pretty high success rate. As long as you don't pick the bugged prestige mission of "arrange a meeting" since prestige missions are required in Hardcore and the game has about a 20% success rate of recognizing that you've done that action for purposes of objective and challenge completion.
I enjoyed the game but it is very repetitive. Once you beat Hades, you finished the game. There is nothing more than challenges to increase difficulty after that.
I do declare decisively 😊🎉 I am declared best at foment influence revolution ❤. How do you AcTUALLY play this game is the main question of WE. 😮. Small differences BRO…. Obviously yo. 😢. PACT OF PUNISHMENT!!!!!
I am not a music guy, but I did immediately recognize Bastion's music a good 10 years after I've played the game. Amazing studio, hope Hades 2 will be a success.
I actually always considered Pyre to be one of the best examples of narrative and gameplay being tied together, and I thought that Hades was a step back in that regard.
I agree that in moment to moment gameplay Hades makes more sense, and it's impressive how many reactions NPCs have to what you're doing, however, when it comes to Pyre, I wouldn't separate the decision making you're doing outside of matches from the matches themselves, considering how much they affect one another and I think active sports gameplay has a lot more going on because of that.
Player's choice is one of the most impressive things about Pyre to me because even losing a game doesn't stop the story, altering it instead, and because you're always fighting against other character's who have their own motivations and because sometimes those characters are quite likable, the player might want to lose the game intentionally or at least feel very conflicted as they're scoring goals and sealing opponent's team fate. I never once felt as invested and emotional during Hades gameplay as I did during some of the Pyre's final matches, where while I was jumping around and throwing a magic ball, I actively felt that with my gameplay performance I'm changing that world's and its people story, especially towards the end of the game.
Meanwhile Hades doesn't have any narrative to gameplay choices, all quests have a single outcome and you can do all of them, get all trinkets, romance everyone, can't even fall out of favor with an Olympian if you ignore them in duo rooms too often. No high stakes, no sacrifices, do everything you want as much as you want at no cost, nothing about the gameplay changes as the story goes on. And there's an argument to be made that it's like that because it's a rogue-lite game, but I'm not sure if it really has to be this way or if it is, then perhaps Hades limited its potential by the choice of the genre.
Especially considering how actually similar Pyre's and Hades' setups are, both are about escaping the underworld prison realm and having a cast of friendly and rival NPCs, and I feel like Hades could've had some powerful moments and actually top Pyre in every regard, where you have to make sacrifices to achieve certain things, where you can't get it all.
Bastion and Transistor had a couple of big choices, Pyre is full of them and Hades, sadly, has none.
I also find that Hades was a lot more surface level when it comes to tying gamey(but not strictly gameplay-related) details to the story and the world, it's often laughed away in a "Haha, weird thing, right?" kind of fashion. The most disappointing example of it is the narrator, they acknowledge it that it's just some disembodied voice talking to Zagreus and joke about it, which at first I thought was neat, until I finished the game and realized that it's the only Supergiant game, where narrator isn't a character in the world itself.
Love the content, looking forward to more
A friend got me this for my birthday last year, glad to see you put out a video on it! Maybe I should play it more haha..
How have you been btw? Sorry I haven't been commenting here for a while, just graduated and I've been busy
12:17 I mean learning to play an instrument takes time and can at times be tedious so that one’s fair hahaha
I mostly agree, and I played Hades for maybe 10-15 hours, BUT I stopped, because it felt like I couldn't progress the story with a more chill experience. Like I lost almost all the time, and prefer how much more chill pyre, transistor, and bastion, are, compared to Hades, and therefore I never got to see more of the content. It was just too hectic for me, I'm sad to say. But maybe I'm missing a way to make it more chill?