Minor spoilers for Hades ahead.
I've lost count of the mornings I've spent just lying in bed for hours before finally getting up. Most days, this vegetative state feels like the endgame: no work, no partner within hugging distance, and no day without the demon of my anxiety crushing the oxygen out of my chest. As I measure each day's passing rooted to my bedroom floor, I constantly find myself encased in a bubble of loneliness. It feels like the pandemic took away all the things that have held my life together so far and replaced them with a crippling fear of death arriving earlier than expected—a fear that engulfs some of us more than others.
How can it not? Death has become the topic of the living this year. It's on the news, in your group chats, and it's in the lived realities of those confronting this pandemic head on. Death's crushing frequency, which injects itself wherever we try to manufacture some semblance of normalcy, often makes me feel like this could be it and that nothing follows.
Even in the video games that serve as my primary escape in this time of unease, death is a lonely, if recurring, experience. Dying over and over in a virtual fashion doesn’t prepare anybody for the one that comes for us in real life. (In the same way that shooting a gun in a video game does not a killer make.) Most of the time, death is just a fail state that exists incongruous with the simulated world framed by your TV screen. When you reload your game, it’s the same merchants with the same canned dialogue; the same boss repeating their overdramatic monologue. It’s as if you were never gone and the losses you incurred are no one else’s grief to carry but your own.
That is, until Hades came along. Its approach to player death in a roguelike setting—where failure costs you everything—has become the hallmark of a game universally praised for treating death as a narrative device. As Zagreus, prince and immortal runaway of the Underworld, you are empowered to push past each defeat in pursuit of a relationship with a story and cast of characters that reveal more of themselves as you try again and again.
I won’t pretend that Hades has helped me get out of bed with a renewed energy for life. It’s difficult when your own body keeps beating you back into the ground each time you try. However, I can appreciate what it tries to say of death and defeat—that these are situations that shouldn’t have to be faced alone. Not when there are people around us with all kinds of love and support to give, should we learn to recognize the shapes that they take.
Because you are consorting with the gods, the most common form of affection you encounter in each run are boons: gifts of power that modify your abilities depending on which deity finds you favorable. Athena the shield-bearer helps you deflect enemy attacks; almighty Zeus charges your weapons with lightning; wily Aphrodite charms your foes, and so on. In exchange for a rare token, these deities will also bestow trinkets that can be equipped for specific stat improvements.
While the mechanics of Hades seem transactional at first glance, it rises above this core gameplay loop through the relationships that you continually build with everyone you meet on your runs. Soon, it’s not so much about building a powerful loadout as it’s about getting to know the characters around you, whether it’s the typically meddlesome Olympian gods, the motley retainers of the House of Hades, or other popular figures from Greek myth.
Everyone, save for Lord Hades and those employed to stop you, is on your side and constantly finding ways to say they’ve got your back. Early in the game, you learn that the night goddess Nyx, who stands as a mother figure to Zagreus, has been making sure your attempts to escape go untracked by your father. Achilles, trapped in servitude for all eternity, becomes a trustworthy confidant who shares all he knows of the dangers you face. Even Cerberus, resident doggo of the Underworld, manages to express its affection for Zagreus by throwing a tantrum and destroying a section of the house when he learned of your disappearance.
It helps that Zagreus did not inherit his father’s temperament. Barring his contempt for Hades, he’s a pretty swell young man with a good head on his shoulders. He’s polite, thoughtful, and well-spoken, whether he’s communing with his Olympian uncles and cousins or exchanging pleasantries with the colorful attendants of his father’s house. A little later in the game, Zagreus develops a healthy competitive relationship with one of the region’s bosses should he survive long enough to face them. In some way, the friendly banter that he exchanges with them before each fight helps take away the sting of defeat. In moments like these, you find that it’s not through bloodshed that Zagreus earns his most important allies—it’s the way he builds a good rapport with them, even when some of them enjoy running him through with a spear.
After a number of runs and a few important confrontations, the object of the game changes. What begins as an act of rebellion for rebellion’s sake transforms into a hunt for the truth: a piece that’s been missing from Zagreus’ life. From this point, each chamber you clear and every foe you defeat becomes an act of love for the person you’d suffer all the bruises and cuts for just to be with, until you are inevitably dragged back by the ceaseless gravity of hell once more. In Hades, it’s the people who matter who will lead us, like a ball of string, out of the dark.
As each defeat piles itself on top of the last, these relationships become increasingly valuable as you slowly piece together a greater understanding of the people who stay by your side despite everything and why. Maybe its because they’re just as trapped as you and find solace in your determination. Perhaps it’s because you were always one to offer a kind word and they’d like to return the favor. Or maybe they know you deserve a life better than one full of anguish and they’d love to see you get out of bed.
Until recently, a friend of mine disappeared from our group chat for a long time to take care of her health. When she came back, I told her how lonely it felt to be the only person left in the house who understood the dangers of the pandemic. It turns out that we were both trapped under the same roof with adults who would repeatedly expose themselves to people unprotected. The situation hasn’t been kind to me or my friend, but in sharing the same fears with her, I find a little of my burden lifted. With my partner’s help, I’ll also be able to move to a safer place once the year comes to a close. Bit by bit, I’m able to pick myself off the ground.
I don’t know what I’ll do without the people around me. It’s easy to feel you’re alone when you’re trapped in a corner, until you learn to recognize the patterns of love and support that people around you express in their own way. Sometimes, it’s pure words of empathy. Often, it’s just a funny Telegram sticker. If you’re lucky, they’ll come with their car and take you away from whatever terrible place you’re in. For Zagreus, it’s the people in the sidelines who never run out of encouraging words even after he shakes the blood out of his hair for the thousandth time. These are the people we collect and keep—the ones who will suffer a trip with you to hell and back.