The original Hades was and continues to be one of the best games ever. I don’t think that’s really a controversial statement. It’s like a delicious potion, consisting of only the finest ingredients: tight and varied game design, an absolutely killer gameplay loop, and an intensely memorable sense of style. It’s sleek, stylish, and, yes, sexy. And it looks like its sequel, recently unveiled during a technical test, is shaping up to be just as sultry, and perhaps even more so with the new variations upon sexiness. Sexy, after all, is subjective.
It’s no secret that people find the characters of Hades deeply attractive, and I’m not going to disagree. Megara’s sultry sense of dominance and toned muscles, Zagreus’ bad-boy looks, Aphrodite’s… everything. Turns out, it’s actually kind of difficult to focus on escaping the treacherous underworld when you’re surrounded by mythological hotties. And Supergiant’s game designer and writer for Hades, Greg Kasavin, has noted that this was an entirely intentional choice on their part; art director Jen Zee’s quest to honour classical depictions of these figures resulted in a lot of nudity and an even greater dose of attractiveness.
With all this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that the game’s sequel should follow the same style, and yet I can’t help but malfunction a bit whenever I catch a glimpse of Hecate’s washboard abs. Indeed, Hecate – voiced by Amelia Tyler, of Baldur’s Gate 3 fame – has a design I was pleasantly surprised by. There’s a tendency amongst modern imaginings of classical deities to simply confine them into rather dull, stereotypically gendered designs. Many of the female characters of Hades 2 manage to escape this tendency, appearing as bright, inquisitive characters, rather than women. Nothing about Hecate’s design appears explicitly gendered, and is better for it. And it certainly doesn’t deny her sexiness; on the contrary, I think her mysteriousness is attractive.
It’s also worth mentioning that Supergiant have continued with their provocative (and I mean this in both senses of the word) designs through other means too, with Hecate and others. Hades opened upon a dark-skinned Athena promising to help Zagreus, and quickly unveiled a godly pantheon consisting of all skin colours, much to the frustration of weirdos online. This racial diversity has continued into the sequel, and is better for it. The way Selene’s dark skin contrasts against the light surrounding her, as the personification of the moon, is simply entrancing, and I wouldn’t have her any other way.
New variations upon sexiness are featured pretty heavily across Hades 2’s designs, as well. Hephaestus, a newcomer to the series, has had people on the internet drooling over his design. After being (literally) thrown out of Olympus, Hephaestus is featured upon a wheelchair seemingly of his own creation, a means both of depicting an explicitly disabled character and displaying his penchant for craftsmanship. And he’s no less sexy for it, or for being plus-size; while we all might have had the hots for the designs in the original Hades, it wasn’t exactly a game known for depicting body diversity, so the new additions truly do a lot to even further diversify its style of sexiness.
Hephaestus is also, in the Hades signature style, showing off a startling amount of skin. It was nice, in the original game, to notice that sexualised designs were not exclusive to the female characters, including nudity. While Aphrodite might have had the only fully nude design – which is preserved in her redesign in Hades 2 – the majority of female designs were actually more covered up than the male ones. Moros, a relative of Thanatos, appears to be in Hades 2, and I was easily able to identify their relatedness both through the white hair, and the shared refusal to wear a shirt.
There are plenty of other designs I’ve not even touched on here – I mean, I’m sure the girlies are intensely enjoying Apollo’s design – but I think I’ll reserve full judgment on the game until it goes into full early access. Either way, this is an exciting look at a game which seems intent on outdoing its predecessor, tough task though that might be.
