EFFORT OVER SKILL: DYING AGAIN AND AGAIN IN HADES

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**SPOILER ALERT: Minor spoilers for Hades follow.

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Introduction

Hades is an isometric roguelike dungeon crawler that was developed and published by Supergiant Games in 2020. It follows the player character, Zagreus, and his mission to escape the Underworld and defy his father, Hades. The way values have been embedded in this game’s elements, particularly within the roguelike structure, gives the impression that it was designed very thoughtfully with the player’s experience in mind. Specifically, there are many values present in the game that are related to promoting and maintaining a highly motivating player experience that rewards effort, not skill. This is evident in several game elements and the way they interact with each other within the roguelike structure, such as the narrative, the roles of non-player characters, and available player actions, as well as how and when the player is rewarded throughout the game. Generally speaking, Hades is a play experience that seeks to keep its players engaged and motivated by rewarding them for putting effort into their actions, not for simply being skillful. The game communicates this to players through its design and implementation of specific values in its game elements.

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Perseverance and Conviction

One of the most prominent values in the game is perseverance, which is highlighted in various game elements. Mainly, the game is based on Zagreus’s goal of escaping the Underworld, and in order to do this, the player must successfully navigate a series of increasingly difficult environments. Encounters consist of relatively continuous combat until all opponents have been killed and no more appear, which requires the player to be strategic and utilize the space to guide their decision-making during combat. After successfully completing an encounter, players are rewarded with helpful boons, improvements, and items, making them increasingly stronger and capable of continuing; their progress is supported in a way that promotes perseverance even as the player reaches more difficult levels and bosses. 

However, as a roguelike, Hades utilizes a permadeath mechanic that strips the player of their progress if they are killed in combat, returning them to the House of Hades. Usually, this mechanic might be in place to punish the player or force them to “think about the decisions taken, what has led them to death”, therefore “making the weight of our decisions ever more impactful” (Hamill) in the context of a procedurally generated environment where playthroughs are random each time. However, as Clayton Ashley of Polygon points out, “death is probably the biggest impediment for people who don’t really enjoy roguelikes” (09:57–10:01) because it often ends up being discouraging rather than emboldening. If the player is unable to progress further in the dungeons, they are unable to discover more of the story, which can feel like a frustrating loop that is impossible to break from; perseverance feels pointless if the player is not rewarded for trying. In Hades, perseverance is not just communicated as a value during the run, but also in between runs and after failures. Each time Zagreus dies and returns home, he is presented with a new opportunity to speak to the inhabitants of the House of Hades. Many characters praise the player’s progress or encourage them to try again after their failures. Otherwise, these conversations give Zagreus a brief opportunity to learn more about the characters and their stories, or to deepen the relationship between them. Therefore, “death is not just a mechanical tool used to make the player consider the consequences of their decisions, death is a narrative tool, experienced and remarked upon by Zagreus” (Hamill). Without death and failure, the narrative cannot progress in Hades. This communicates to the player that their efforts are important. Rather than the player being confronted with punishing failures over and over again, they are essentially told that death is inevitable but that it is also something to look forward to. 

The value of perseverance is supported by another value, conviction, which is embedded in the narrative and other game elements. Zagreus must have full confidence in his actions, despite objections from his father and the risk associated with attempting to reach the surface. He knows that death is inevitable, but must believe in himself and his ability to persevere in order to be able to continue in spite of repeated failures. This is also true for the player’s perception of escape attempts and combat; players must have a certain amount of faith in themselves in order to maintain their motivation after failure. The game supports this by providing a variety of ways to approach escape attempts, and a certain degree of randomness during each escape so that players can make different decisions each run.

The values of perseverance and conviction are not just visible during escape attempts; they are also echoed in many of the other actions players can choose to take, including fulfilling prophecies (quest objectives) and pursuing relationships. In many cases, players meet resistance or find that objectives or required actions are left intentionally unclear. Players cannot simply rely on perseverance to accomplish difficult or time-consuming tasks, they must also believe in their approach when the required actions are ambiguous or they are told to abandon their efforts. This can also be considered alongside the perseverance required during escape attempts, as some prophecies can only be fulfilled during escape attempts, while others must be worked towards between escape attempts by speaking to one of the denizens of the House of Hades; if that character is not available to be spoken to or steers the conversation in a different direction than expected, the player must attempt to escape again in order to have another chance. 

By prioritizing the value of perseverance and rewarding the player after failure, Hades promotes a gameplay experience that must be repeated again and again according to the roguelike structure but also encourages the player to want to do so by incorporating narrative progression into the permadeath mechanic. 

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Equity and Variability

Although the narrative is fed incrementally to the player after they die, not only when they progress, progression is still required in order to access the full extent of the main story as well as most subplots. In order to keep players of all skill levels engaged and motivated, Hades offers accommodations to be applied to each escape attempt. In this way, equity is shown to be a value embedded into the gameplay. There are numerous ways players can shape their play experiences to suit their needs and preferences. Before attempting to escape, players can choose whichever weapons, keepsakes, and talents best suit their play style, which they unlock throughout the game. During an escape attempt, players navigate by choosing which rewards they want to appear after completing the next level. When interacting with characters or various elements of the environment during an escape attempt, players may choose between several boons or items in order to tailor their playthrough. Having all of these options available to the player gives them more control over what happens during the run despite playing in a procedurally generated environment, and “these decisions can lead the player to have either a successful or unsuccessful run” (Hamill). During the escape attempt, the player is always presented with two or three options, but the roguelike structure of the game “allows all your weapon decisions to be spread out, so you're never making multiple decisions all at once” (Ashley, 02:19–02:24), keeping the player from being overwhelmed by choice. However, one of the most significant pieces of evidence that presents equity as a value in Hades is the God Mode feature, which gives Zagreus a defence buff that increases by a small amount each time he dies. Rather than punish less skilled players, the game rewards them for their effort and gives them an advantage for their future runs, allowing them to stay motivated and be able to access the whole story.

The value of equity is not just applicable to less skilled players, as skilled players benefit from being able to tailor their play experience to suit their preferences, and there are also options available for players who want an additional challenge. Within these same elements discussed above, the value of variability is also present. Players are rewarded for using and successfully escaping with different weapons, weapon aspects, keepsakes, and talents, as well as accepting different boons and items during their escape attempts. When players vary their play styles, they are rewarded when their keepsakes improve after using them for a specific number of encounters, infrequently used weapons award bonus resources, and accepting all of a given character’s boons fulfills side quest objectives, which may also allow the narrative to advance. After successfully escaping for the first time, they are also given access to the Pact of Punishment, which allows players to add additional challenges to their runs, such as giving bosses new techniques or imposing a time limit on the run. Using the Pact of Punishment allows players to collect additional rewards during their subsequent runs, and generally “encourages players to gradually experiment with the difficulty to make escape attempts novel each time” (Junius et al., 6). In combination with the ongoing narrative, this mechanic keeps players motivated to keep playing and challenging themselves even after successfully completing an escape attempt. 

By presenting a variety of options to the player, as well as the random aspects of each playthrough, players are “encouraged to take on a slightly different gameplay goal for each run: sometimes to advance the main narrative, sometimes to advance a particular subplot, sometimes to complete a prophecy, sometimes to acquire more resources, sometimes to overcome a self-imposed Pact of Punishment challenge”, and players are allowed to “deliberately negotiate how hard they want to push themselves on each performance” (Junius et al., 7). Hades presents its various options and choices both as a way to allow players to tailor their play experience to their own needs and preferences, as well as a way to challenge players to try something they’ve never tried before. This helps to keep players of all skill levels motivated, and not discouraged by repeated failure; each failure provides a new opportunity to try a new approach in order to find success in a variety of areas, whether it be advancing any of the game’s plots or simply to cross an objective off the list of minor prophecies. 

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Love and Friendship

One of the key ways Hades keeps players motivated is by presenting death as part of the narrative, and a large part of this is allowing Zagreus to have conversations with many characters who live and work in the House of Hades. Love and friendship are values that are embedded in every narrative thread in the game and in the way Zagreus is able to form meaningful relationships with nearly every character in the game. By frequently interacting with characters, the player is able to deepen their relationships, and for certain subplots, this unlocks new objectives as a result of characters becoming more open with Zagreus. The game encourages close, compassionate relationships with NPCs by emphasizing an image of them and their words during conversations to make them more personal, having narratives progress after speaking with them, and the actual dialogue that is spoken during conversations. By having these various characters share their feelings, concerns, and wishes with Zagreus, the game fosters the value of empathy, and in many cases encourages the player to act on this feeling by giving the characters gifts or accomplishing thoughtful tasks for them. Generosity is also a key value that is embedded in the dialogue and the mechanic that allows the player to give gifts of nectar and ambrosia; the player has the choice to do this and usually is not given any kind of physical reward for giving away this resource. 

By putting effort into Zagreus’s relationships, by having frequent conversations and giving gifts and doing things that are kind, the player is rewarded with meaningful relationships with Zagreus’s friends and family that are a direct result of the player’s choice to care. By choosing to care, the player gives themself another reason to keep attempting runs again and again, so that they can continue to deepen their relationships and progress the various plots of the game. The game has the “ability to weave several story threads despite the supposed limitations of the repetitive rogue-like genre, in which playing the same short game over and over again is the whole point” and has an “all-encompassing commitment to evolving character arcs, even after your 100th death” (Park). Death is a part of the story; Zagreus has to die again and again in order to build his relationships and attempt to resolve the complex problems that are present in many of them, particularly with his father. The focus of the game is not to test the player’s skill, but to test their commitment. The game encourages the player to try, and keep trying, because that is what is required for them to build and maintain healthy, loving relationships, and this is part of what makes the game feel so rewarding.

Conclusion

By implementing values such as perseverance, conviction, equity, variability, love, and friendship into the narrative and other game elements of Hades, Supergiant was able to design a roguelike that cares less about how skillful players are and cares more about how willing players are to put effort into their play. It has “an addictive gameplay loop and a perpetual sense of reward, both extrinsic and intrinsic, in the powers you gain and in a narrative that evolves even after failure” (Park). Hades is a more accessible play experience because it rewards players for trying, not just succeeding, and it has the capacity to be infinitely replayed. Death is inevitable and ultimately, there is no escape, but players will continue to die again and again for the opportunities that those deaths bring them, and the chance to try one more time. 

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Works Cited

Ashley, Clayton. “Hades Is a Roguelike for Roguelike Haters.” YouTube, uploaded by Polygon, 28 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5MHJXpMsKM.

Hades. Xbox One version, Supergiant Games, 2020. Kasavin, Greg, director.

Hamill, Jacob. “There Is No Escape: How Hades Connects Game Genre and Greek Myth.” First Person Scholar, 2021, http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/there-is-no-escape/. 

Junius, Nick, et al. “There Is No Escape: Theatricality in Hades.” FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1145/3472538.3472561.

Park, Gene. “Here’s How ‘Hades’ Makes Going Back to Hell Feel Fresh.” The Washington Post, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/10/13/hades-game-origins/.