How Hades Was Made and Why its Early Concept Didn’t Work

Her name was Jen Zee!?

sorry greg kasavin looks like juan bolsa and i cant stop thinking about it

Supergiant is a rare gem. And that term is thrown around a lot. But SG definitely deserves that moniker

minos prime

Correction: Athena is a bronze woman. Bronze is yellowish when new and polished, but turns a dull, greyish brown with age. Athena's skin is definitely not natural in appearance, unlike that of many of the other gods. She also grants the Bronze Skin boon so it's thematically relevant.

And now theyre making a second game. What a beautiful story!

Even my mum plays this game lol

Hades two?

Just got my wife to start a playthrough on the GameCube version, I’m very very excited

Early access done right

And the next title is Hades 2 >:)

Great video!

Most fascinatign part of the video is the name of the art director

Art director's name is literally Gen Z lmao

I love Hades to this day :)

Man I remember greg kasavan back form when he was one of the better Gamespot reviewers. Supergiant is incredible.

I find it kind of exhausting that companies push corporate art toward diversity for diversity's sake. I would have been deeply pleased to hear that the art team had designed the Greek gods as being from varied ethnicities as a nod to Xenophanes, who pointed out that the belief that the gods looked like Greeks, or even like humans, was merely human (or more specifically Greek) arrogance, as the Ethiopians believed the gods looked Ethiopian, the Thracians that their gods looked Thracian, and that if horses had the means to depict the gods they would probably depict them as horses. Of course his point was that the form of gods (or more accurately God, as he was a monotheist, a peculiar kind of heresy in his time) was utterly unknown to mankind, but it would still have been a nice nod to ancient Greek philosophy, especially in a game centering around Zagreus and with references to Orphic myth, already some of the more esoteric parts of Hellenic religion and philosophy. Hearing that it was just more "woke" grandstanding is disappointing.

SuperGiant literally just makes the same isometric shit on repeat

played this in early 2021 on the switch and loved it. played it until the "ending" and maybe a little further. i got bored one day recently and decided to pick it up on the ps5 and i've fallen in love all over again. weird how i'm having even MORE fun with it now during the replay. what a uniquely special game. thanks for putting this development documentary together. really great stuff

This entire video is "this videogame was being developed, and the developers were made aware of potential improvements and made those improvements". Yea, they made a videogame.

Supergiant was OBVIOUSLY paid by Epic to go exclusive for a year on EGS (which is completely reasonable from a business perspective imo). This is exactly the terms Epic was offering, exclusive to EGS for 1 year. What a coincidence that they were exclusive on EGS for exactly one year!

But this would be bad PR if the public knew the actual reason (b/c the vocal minority of gamers are retarded valve fanboys). So they made up some ridiculous excuse of "yea yea.. it was like, the best choice for reasons, like Epic had the bestest early access support and stuff". Yea, sure whatever. Again, I don't blame them for the bs excuse.. they're running a business.

Good video but come on.. don't be so naive.

I absolutely love Supergiant Games since the release of Bastion, but let's not fool ourselves: the reason they launched early access on Epic all had to do with money. Their entire userbase for PC was on Steam before, so it would have been a way more logical step to do early access there. Nonetheless, Hades is without a doubt the best game they made so far, and can't wait to see what else this underappreciated developer can bring us next

i’d love to see a video about tunic! seeing the development process of it would be super cool

HADES ROCKS

I wish I had found this game sooner even though I don’t play on PC. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid. Newfound love for gaming has been achieved 🥹

Why there no Irish god?

Its taking me a while to get past Hades because im pretty bad at games. But my love for the concept, story, and charachters keep me going. Honestly, this is probably my favorite game.

The development itself looks like the game. Tons and tons of feedback loops. Well played!

So hyped for hades 2

Of course... "Greek gods were worshipped in acncient Greece, not because they themselves were ethnically Greek". Can you Americans stop projecting your idiotic diversity culture on everyone?

Jen Zee making some of the characters different ethnicities is a very Gen Z thing to do. Lol

the person in charge of adding diversity to the greek gods was called jen zee. perfection

Just waiting for Hades 2 now

Was I’m the only one like: “gen Z did what this time?”

The bisexual in me is very glad they decided to make everyone so hot

No one is talking about how their creative art director is named "Jen Zee"...Ya know, gen Z? Like wtf? Lol it'd be awesome if she actually was

Concepts are just like that, concepts. You work on something until the point it makes sense. Sadly many, with projects this day & age, stop right before it starts to make any sense.

How long did it take for Jen to concept art the whole game?

Well given that their next game is Hades II, I suggest you're probably right

Hades just feels like such a loved and carefully crafted masterpiece, I'd put it up there with Hollow Knight as one of the best Indie games of all time.

It cannot be understated just how good the interactions between the community and Supergiant were handled. Amir and Greg routinely appeared on their Discord and subreddit to explain patches and hear the community reactions and feedback on changes or features. To this day the only company that has even come close in my eyes is Coffee Stain Studios' handling of Satisfactory. I think that without holding discussions with the Early Access community the game may not have ended up quite as magical as it did.

Lmao black Athena doesn't make any sense, Athena is wise and beautiful, so she can't be black

No way the original name was MINORS lmao

Her name was "Gen Z" and chose to make inclusive characters?
How ironic :)

So, some pretty cool members of the blind community have made mods for the pc version of Hades, that adds accessibility features. So now, even someone completely blind like myself can experience this fantastic game.