I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

Should have been published: 2021

In my last a previous post I objected to the phrasing “Hades is the rogueli(k/t)e for people who don’t like rogueli(t/k)es” . So what could be more appropriate today than introducing another equally odious dictum, only slightly less cliché:

“Hades is the Supergiant game for people who don’t like Supergiant games,” says Bold and Dashing. I am pretty sure that hasn’t been done by anyone else and to boot, I think it’s actually more informative and relevant than RFPWDLR. and I will try to earn my stupid dictum a little better than the RFPWDLR crowd.

To be fair, Supergiant have released four games including Hades and apart from Hades, I have only played Bastion. I played it to the end, long after it’s 2011 day in the indie sun and was pretty underwhelmed. In a word: Meh.

And to be clear, this is not an attempt at raining on Supergiant’s parade. Hades is brilliant and deserves it’s accolades. Everybody has to start somewhere and it’s blatantly unfair to compare a debut to the work of more experienced developers. If anything I’m just proving a stupid point: The whole “X is the Y for people who don’t like Y” formula is tired and unhelpful.

It would take a better games analyst than me to explain why Hades’ combat is better than Bastion’s. Superficially, they’re very much alike, yet in all respects, it is clear that Hades improves by leaps and bounds. Connecting with enemies feels better, sounds better, and the tiny cues to the player to react are expertly timed. The choices that the weaponry allows for are interesting and easily understandable even for non-expert players. In short, it is fun and varied to play whereas Bastion can be summed up with the words “always be spamming”.

I feel better equipped to discuss the games’ respective storytelling chops and here I think Supergiant have improved even more with Hades (what metaphor do you reach for when you’ve already used up “leaps and bounds”? As Calvin and Hobbes once said, “You should always save hyperbole for when you really need it”) What’s the plot of Bastion? Quick, I challenge you to sum it up. My best bet without looking it up would be as follows (I would say spoilers ahead, but what follows is at best the plot by way of Chinese whispers in the 10th degree):

Some sort of catastrophe (“The Calamity” which just makes me think of a gunslinger of Western legend) has befallen the land. And we need to collect some puzzle pieces (shards? doodads? thingamabobs?) to undo it (or just atone for it?)… And there are sad aliens what we might have wronged somehow, maybe even genocidally somehow. And the aliens stab us in the back but ask yourself whether we’re really a goodun or a badun what with all the genocide and stuff? And then we save a girl (or her corpse, I forget) while the aliens are shooting at us because they’ve got no decorum or sense of fair play. And then… some wrap up to close the deal on a metaphor for how we treat the planet or each other? I forget.

For comparison Hades’ plot is as follows:

Zagreus, Prince of the Underworld, is running away from his home and his da, with help from his extended family of Olympian gods.

That’s it. Strawman-you could argue that that is only the setup, not the entirety of the plot because a gradually introduced metanarrative adds context for the running-away-from-home theme. I would respond that it’s the plot of each and every run, regardless of metanarrative. 99% of what happens in the course of a run can be understood in the light of that one sentence. The metanarrative adds a ton of valuable and important emotional tone but I can’t help but think of it as optional.

My point is that less is more and the ambitious reach for Big Themes in Bastion are lost on idiots like me. I need sufficient reason to care about bluefaced melancholiens and Bastion did not give me one. So Supergiant, I’m going to skip your slow walking, somber music playing, gently side scrolling funeral march of a cutscene, if you don’t mind.

I don’t know what happened in between, I don’t know how they told Transistor or Pyre but lessons were clearly learned. Don’t get too selfcongratulatory, keep it simple, keep it relatable. And who cannot relate to wanting to get the fuck out of Dodge?

But doesn’t that leave Hades rather deficient in story vitamins? When The Who covered young male angst in three minute songs they arguably did a better job of it than when they stretched the material over three hours. Good question, strawman. The Narrator of Bastion got a lot of credit for a few programmed reactions to player input (basically, you smash stuff up for no good reason and Narrator points out that you’re just smashing stuff up for no good reason, but hey, you do you). What people forget is that the Narrator also served as delivery vehicle for a lot of exposition. Which was exactly as inspiring and memorable as my recap above indicates.

It’s not hard so see all of that reflected and built upon in Hades. It is tweaked in just the right places, though. Hades adds so much more responsiveness that it actually has the power to surprise when some obscure combination of traits, characters and progress triggers a comment. But more importantly the story is a) chopped up into tiny bitesized snacks and b) delivered by way of dialogue between Zagreus and the rest of the cast.

Finally, the device of using a huge cast of characters to shed light on the backstory allows for more variation in perspective than a single narrator. Think the Song of Ice and Fire’s viewpoint characters. Hermes might see stuff Zeus does not. Astute Athena might start questioning things drunken Dionysus will not. Zagreus starts out naïvely, not having any viewpoint other than a cynical distrust of his father but gradually gains perspective through the contrasting stories he hears from the other characters. Obviously the cast also allows the writers to go full soap olympia with their literally larger than life characters. It’s not exactly great prestige drama but it adds a bit of fun and beef and helps the game avoid the pitfalls of Bastion’s Big Important Story.

Also, the art is nicer because hawt gods.