Hades

0:17 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I'm Andrea. And my name is Tom. And we are the podcast that brings you the plot, lore and more behind all of your favorite video games, video games you haven't played, video games you should be playing, and your soon to be favorite games. And if this is your first time listening to us, you can check us out at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. Over there, you can get links to all the different areas where we are accessible. We have our Patreon there, we have our Discord sign up. You can sign up for our newsletter, all sorts of different stuff, if you want to get involved. Our Patreon just did fucking Donkey Kong, and that was so much fun to get into. I did have like a minor like, fuck you moment, but still, in good spirits, it's good shit.

0:59 Yeah, that was a really fun episode. The story of Donkey Kong and like its creation and all the stuff that happened around it is one of my favorite stories in gaming. The controversy and the lawsuits are fucking wild, and it's like, this should be a Suits episode, right? Yeah, exactly, right? And yeah, it's only $2 a month to sign up for our Patreon if you'd like to. But anyway, so over here at The Other Castle, we are doing a game that honestly, I don't think I would have ever done if we weren't doing this show. Really? Yeah, it was a really popular game. I'd seen it everywhere, but looking at it, I was like, eh, just probably not for me. It's still very popular. There was a second one on the way at the time of us recording this. Right, there is a second one on the way, and honestly, I don't know why I ever felt that way because this game is absolutely incredible.

1:41 And that game is Hades. Hades, now I wanna shout out my friend Michelle. She is obsessed with Hades. It was like, this is such a fucking excellent Switch game. You're gonna love it. It's amazing. And I was like, I've heard about it peripherally, but I hadn't seen any gameplay. I think I'd seen trailers, but not locked into my brain. So I downloaded it and was like, hey Tom, I think I'm gonna run through Hades. And you're like, have fun. I don't know what the fuck that is. Yeah. And then you picked it up. I still have not played it. That keeps happening. It's so embarrassing. That happened with Bendy too. Yeah, where I was like, holy shit, this is wild. Never played it. Right. But now I know what happened, so I feel like I don't need to, because of this show.

2:21 Well, before I start, I really just wanna give a shout out once again to Noclip documentaries. I've shouted them out before. This documentarian just kind of knows how to pick his subjects. Oh yeah. Because he documented the creation of Hades from about two months before release, up through two years after its release. That's so fucking cool. And he got to talk to the creators and everything, right? Like real behind-the-scenes shit. Yeah, he really did. He was right in there with them. If you want a super in-depth look into how this game was made, definitely check it out on YouTube because there's literal hours of content about the making of this game. Wow. That's so rare. Because we talk about Rockstar who's notoriously secretive about their processes and things like that.

3:04 We talk about Insomniac, where they let some things leak, but you really don't hear about things. But getting into these kind of more indie creators, they're so open with what's going on. And it's so great to see someone kind of compile that and tell the narrative of the story. So it's like a cohesive tale of the beginning through the success. And it's so beautiful to see. Yeah, well, fortunately they just had nothing to hide. Yeah, thankfully there's no secrets, which is fucking great. Yeah, they were operating the way a company should be operating. It's kind of nice to see. You'd think, yeah. Well, anyway, so Amir Rao and Gavin Simon started Supergiant Games in 2009. They met working for EA, making the Command and Conquer series. Oh shit. And that was like one of the first big, top-down real-time strategy games.

3:48 They started seeing indie games grow as a market, so they left EA and moved into the house I'm pretty sure they used for Facebook and the social network. Like dead ass. Like it looks exactly like the exact same house, and it's in San Jose, California. Oh, Silicon Valley, like that is actually perfect. It could genuinely be the house. Yeah, and they hired a small team of around 10 people, and they built a couple games out of that. With success, they moved out of the house and into a real studio where the team ballooned to about 20 members. So it's still a small team, but one that could get some serious work done. That's really cool. In 2011, they released Bastion, an RPG and a critical hit. Was that their first game?

4:28 That was their first game ever, yeah. 2011, like that whole teens years, that was such a great time for indie gaming. Like there was such a pop and bloom, like you mentioned of people coming together and being like, it doesn't have to be a AAA. There's people putting out really great content right there that don't have fucking deep pockets like EA right now. And a lot of them had AAA experience anyway. Oh, hell yeah. So three years later, they made Transistor, a sci-fi love story adventure. Oh. Another three years after that, they released Pyre, an RPG adventure with branching narratives and hundreds of different endings based on your choices. Oh, shit, that sounds like something I would play. Don't tempt me right now. Fuck, wait, I love everything about that.

5:10 Also, that's a pretty quick turnaround for games. That's their thing. They wanna turn around these games really fast and they're still super high quality. Yeah. For the world of their fourth game, they set their sights on ancient Greek mythology since creative director Greg Kasavin had a deep fascination in it since childhood. Oh, who doesn't? He always felt the character of Hades was underrepresented, even in mythology. The best anyone could think of for Hades is the Disney character played by James Woods. Oh, he's so fucking good. Yeah, he's a wonderfully goofy villain for Hercules, and actually, eventually Sora. So they set out to make a family drama about Hades and his relationships with the people around him.

5:54 They then tasked an in-house artist with the coolest name ever to create the look for these ancient beings. A person named Jen Z. Shut the fuck up, that's so cool. Yeah, so it's J-E-N-Z-E-E. Oh, I love that. With each game they made being a different genre and play style, they next wanted to dip their toe in a genre that had become really popular in recent years, a roguelike. Can you describe what a roguelike means? Absolutely, because I personally have heard this word a bunch in the last few years, but I never really understood what it meant either. I straight up just don't, so please do it for me. Yeah, I kept hearing different games being described as roguelikes, and they seemed like drastically different games.

6:39 So you're like, where's the connecting line here? Yeah, and shockingly, a reference to a game from 1980, it was a freeware computer game called Rogue. It was an extremely ambitious title that wanted to be as big as possible, despite having less than one gigabyte of memory to work with. Oh my God. To create large and sprawling dungeons, Rogue was programmed with a ton of assets, and then it would randomly generate rooms to explore using those assets. Oh, that's a very clever use of space. Right, but due to the amount of memory being used for the dungeon generator, the game also didn't have any form of save system.

7:20 Oh, it was just kind of an ongoing thing, like pick it up and figure it out. Yeah, but when you died, that was it, game over. Oh, shit. You had to start over from the very beginning. Oh, no. So games that incorporate both of these elements are considered rogue-likes. My brain fully went to like, well, the D&D class rogue-like, there's something there. No, not at all. It's about a video game called Rogue, yeah. That's fascinating. So technically, Supergiant's fourth game in today's episode, Hades, is considered a rogue-lite. A rogue-lite is a game that incorporates just one of the two aspects that make a rogue-like, or it has them both, but tweaks the mechanics slightly.

8:01 And so that's why a game like Dark Souls and Minecraft are both considered rogue-lites. Despite seemingly not having any connecting factors. At all. And yeah, they both are more like RPG blenders, but they still both have rogue-lite aspects to them as well. Fascinating. And in fact, hardcore mode of Minecraft has all of the mechanics required to be considered a complete rogue-like. Oh, shit. Now with Supergiant's previous titles, they were traditional releases. Once the game was released, the team moved on. Yeah, reasonably. Yeah, maybe a patch here and there to remove some bugs, but mostly that was the game. Yeah, I feel like that's common.

8:42 You release it, you celebrate, you have your big party, you're like high five for the first week watching sales, and then you're like, all right, what's the next fucking thing? Yeah, what's next? With Hades, they wanted to take a different approach. They were of the opinion they had a great game on their hands, but they wanted to be sure it was a game people would not play for just a while, but for years to come. Oh, okay. So they decided on a wild release tactic that I've only ever seen done in the movie industry, and even then, I've only seen one movie do this. So the plan for Hades was to release it for early access on the day of its announcement. Oh shit, like Cloverfield? Yeah. Is that exactly what you were thinking about? Yeah, for that Cloverfield Paradox movie.

9:24 And they were going to do it at the 2018 Game Awards. Very cool. They wanted to debut the game with a trailer and have the trailer say, available now at the end of it. Exactly like what happened with Cloverfield Paradox. That was, I think the Super Bowl that year came out. They were like, here's a new Cloverfield movie. It's on Netflix right now, fuckers. And you're like, oh shit, do we, should we check that out? Should we stop watching the Super, well, we can't say that word, but yeah, should we stop watching the big game? Yeah, oh right, it's copyrighted, my bad. That's very interesting, like that's a ballsy drop. Then they would spend the next year working with fans of the game to deliver the ultimate Hades experience. That's really cool. So they're like, hey, we have a free beta essentially going out there.

10:06 I'm sure it's a limited version, and then we'll take our learnings and give you a really, really, really good one in a couple months. Yeah, I'd say it was about a quarter of the game itself. And then after that, they would remove the early access and declare the game complete. So having come from EA, the heads of Supergiant were fully anti-Crunch Culture. Hell yeah, that's what we like to hear. So they took their time and were willing to grow with the game itself. You know, for being anti-Crunch Culture, it's still impressive they were able to turn out the previous games like two to three years, like paced out, you know, that's still knocking out some really tight timelines without killing people's personal lives. Well, setting realistic expectations and goals, you know, and then it's also kind of an attestment to like, oh, if you treat your people right, they'll do good work.

10:54 Yeah, crazy concept in the gaming industry, unfortunately, but no, that's really impressive. But also being a small company in studio, there wasn't a ton of money. Ah, yes. So things like character voices had to come cheap. So performers would have four or five characters each, such as actor Logan Cunningham. He voices the titular Hades, as well as five other characters, scoring him a BAFTA for his work in the game. Wow. So first of all, you're telling me he did not get a big ass paycheck. Like this is not a Troy Baker level of contract negotiation. He came in, he knocked out a couple of characters, kind of flew a little under the radar, frankly, because this isn't a big title, and then still took home a fucking BAFTA.

11:35 Yeah, killed it, right? That's some dick-swinger shit. Yeah, you got the best supporting actor. Hell yeah. Some of the other performers were programmers and not professional actors at all, because they liked being able to work on the fly. And if they needed a line recorded real quick, they were able to just kind of hop in the booth and bang it out. That's so cool. Also very indie, very startup of like, ah, shit, all hands on deck. Who wants to be fucking Zeus? Let's go. Yeah, everybody, like, in watching the documentary, especially, you see, they really do have this kind of family feel to it. And I hate when companies are like that. They're like, oh, we're a family. Yeah, that's a cult. But they also just really seemed to cooperate well, is what you really saw in the different groups. So you're telling me about this crazy concept where respecting the people you work with pays off.

12:18 Yeah, entirely, right? That's a wild notion. Oh, and it was an extremely diverse group of people, too. All the ages, all the gender spectrums, all the races, everything. This is a very big, open group, too. That makes sense. San Jose itself is a very diverse area. It's just straight up. Walking down the street, you'll get smells of every cuisine. Oh my God, the burritos and the pho there are fucking amazing. I like, San Jose's food scene is wild. I totally believe that it's like a wide range of people that were there. Well, not only were they going to be launching at the announcement, they were also going to be one of the inaugural games on the Steam competitor, the brand new Epic Games Store launcher.

13:00 Oh shit. The launcher was announced to go live the same day as the Game Awards as well, but they had already announced the launcher before the show. Okay, so they weren't doing a surprise thing the way Hades did, got it. Right, the surprise was that they were going to be on the launcher. On the day of the Game Awards, Amir Rao, Gavin Simon, Logan Cunningham, and the game's composer, Darren Korb, attended the ceremony. Now Darren Korb was along for the ride because not only was he the composer of the outstanding music for the game, he was also the voice of the playable character, Zagreus, who we'll meet later in the episode. Oh, the full protagonist was the composer? Yeah. That's fucking cool. So he really knew how to capture, like, the energy and feel the character was having.

13:43 Yeah, I bet that insight really helped drive the composition of the music. That's beautiful. And the music is just un-fucking-real. It fucking slaps. Like, you played this so much, and I've just kind of been in and out or doing something on my computer or been in the room. And every time, like, the voice acting so fucking good and the music goes so hard, you're always like, oh, do you want me to turn the music down while you're working? Like, no, absolutely not. Yeah, it's wonderful. On December 6th, 2018, the Game Awards started and Epic kind of beefed the launch by making the game available about an hour early. Oh shit. But really only the team at Supergiant noticed because nobody even knew to look for it yet. Right, they were like, I know this store is happening, but who goes to a new online store the second it happens while there's a major video game thing happening culturally in like an hour of the Video Game Awards?

14:34 If you give a shit about video games, you're probably watching the awards, not scrolling through the Epic Games Store. So the trailer played and the audience went nuts. Then the website playhades.com appeared on the screen. Now available in early access on Epic Games Store. The team back at the home office hit the computers to watch the traffic on their newly launched game, refreshing Twitter and Reddit watching for reactions. Oh, I love that. After about a half hour of nobody talking about it, they started to get worried. So they went to the website playhades.com and it was a dead link. No! Yeah, it was 404-ing on them. Genuinely, the hairs on my arm just stood up.

15:15 I'm a professional marketer and have been for years. That is my fucking nightmare. How did no one check this before it went like, oh my God, I'm losing my mind. Yeah, they were able to fix that up very quickly and suddenly people were playing the game. Some pretty frantic texts were exchanged. Holy shit. Well, not only were they playing, but they were already streaming it on Twitch. Clever. Oh my God, immediately get it out there. Hell yeah. And they were getting to the final boss fight that was available in the early access version. Immediately, same night? Yeah, same night. It's really cute too. The whole team watched the first streamer beat it.

15:56 Oh, so they were like cheering along with the streamer and stuff. And then after they beat it, they jumped into the chat to let them know that the entire team at Supergiant had watched that. Wait, that's beautiful. Right? That's fucking community. That's why we do this shit. Hell yeah. Exactly. Over the next year, they did what they set out to do and made tweaks and changes to the game, utilizing player feedback to make their adjustments. Oh, just obsessively watching streams to catch frustrating points or broken things. On December 10th, 2019, a year later, it released on Steam. That's a tight year turnaround too, wow. Well, it was still in early access. So they were going to release the final version a couple months later, but 2020 hit.

16:39 Oh, that whole thing. And so that put a delay in the project. Oh shit. It was just a short one, and it would release the final version of Hades with its console debut as a Switch exclusive. Hell yeah. On September 17th, 2020. The other consoles wouldn't get Hades until August of 2021. Okay, so Switch had it for nearly a year. Right, I think that's really cool that Switch made it to land that for the console exclusive. You know, Nintendo plays better with indie developers than I think they get credit for. I feel like obviously PC is the home for indie, but Switch is very loving to smaller developers and publishers and stuff, you know? And it's wild because I would say Xbox was known for that for a really long time.

17:23 But I think they've kind of dropped the ball on it in recent years. And we're obviously omitting PlayStation because they're like, are you Insomniac? Yeah. Are you Naughty Dog? No? Okay, good luck, I guess. Like, you can have a spot, but we're not gonna tell anybody you're here. Yeah, you're not getting in the newsletter, babe. No. Well, it currently has a Metacritic score of 93%. Out of 100, hell yeah. As it has captured the hearts and attention of just about every person who has touched this game. Including my friend, Michelle. And for me, it's a cozy game despite all the dying. It's a pretty morbid cozy game. You're literally in hell with Hades. Yeah, but I can just pick this game up, play it for a bit, and then put it down for a while.

18:03 To me, that's what a cozy game is. That's, I mean, yeah, a core concept that is a cozy game. I feel you. And honestly, I'm so excited that I got to do this game because it's gone down as one of my absolute favorites. Really? Yeah, all times. That's beautiful. Get ready to die a whole bunch of times, goombas. Because this is Hades. The game opens with an image of an archway, and at the top of the archway are three skulls with big red jewels for eyes. The center head has its mouth hanging open, and it has a gold coin in it. The other two heads each look off to the sides. A gravelly voice speaks as the name Hades spreads across the screen.

18:44 None of the skull's mouths are moving, but it's pretty well implied the center one is speaking. The narrator says that the story of Hades is one not many people talk about, because the name itself invokes fear and reminds us all that we are mortal. Memento mori. But the narrator, and I guess myself now, are going to tell you the tale, because neither of us fears death. You fear death a little, Tom. Oh, so much. Come the fuck on. The next screen takes us to just outside a giant door. The door is made of stone and marble, and it has the image of Hades' face carved into it. There's a rocky path that leads to a platform surrounded by the bloody River Styx.

19:26 In Greek mythology, the River Styx is the river that dead took by boat to the underworld. Now, most of my understanding of Greek mythology is from watching Hercules and Xena in the 90s and then the Disney Hercules movies. So I will appreciate you explaining some of the Greek mythology references and lore as we go forward. Yeah, I think you'd be better off ignoring all the things you know before this. Oh, okay. Yeah, let's just say, start fresh on your knowledge of Greek mythology. Clean slate, go for it. Yeah, we're gonna learn a lot in this game. You slam down from above, landing on the path just outside the gate. You say goodbye, father, as you set out on whatever adventure is awaiting you.

20:10 You play as Zagreus, son of Hades and prince of the underworld. Nepo baby. He's a stupidly good looking guy with a chiseled jaw and a reef around his short dark hair and the three headed skull of a dead three headed dog as shoulder armor. He wears a red toga with black and gold accents and carries a big ass sword. To add to his exotic looks, he also sports one red eye and one hazel eye. Like Bowie. When you run, you notice you have flaming ankles leaving little footprints of fire in your wake and just a level set. Almost every single character in this game is a literal god or goddess, making them all insanely good looking.

20:57 Leave it to someone named Gen Z to give us a true bisexual nightmare. I love everything about this. Why is this game so horny? Well, Greek mythology is horny because this is the way that they were portrayed back then. You can't even use a word like woke on this game because this is just the way they were portrayed. Everyone was bisexual. They were all insanely beautiful, and the sexual tension in the air with these gods were at a constant all-time high. I love everything about this. They're pouring wine. They're fucking. They're hot. I love it. This is a dream. It was weird, too, because half of them were related. Aside from that, it's very fun outside of the incest.

21:37 Yeah, they ignore that part in this game. We are in an area called Tartarus, and it is the first zone of the underworld. There's zero form of tutorial in this game. They're like, fuck it, figure it out. Yeah, everything you're gonna need to learn, you have to experiment and figure out on your own. I honestly like that. You know, tutorials feel so heavy handed in so many games, you know, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna stop the entire fucking game to tell you to press X, and you're like, can I just play the game, though? I appreciate a non-handholding tutorial. Yeah, there's no handholding in Hades at all. Ooh, handholding in Hades, that was weird. Madder than a hatter in a hat, have a dashery. Your basic commands are regular attack, special attack, dash and cast.

22:22 You also have two buttons for calling in summons when you unlock them later in the game, but it's not an insanely complex battle system. The amount of strategy you're gonna need balancing those four basic controls will test even the most skilled gamer, though. So that's where the complexity comes in. It's not like you have this wild weapon wheel. It's just actually being strategic about how you attack and how you lay out your battle patterns. Yeah, you're gonna need to learn all of the enemies you're gonna fight, how they attack you, how you can avoid their attacks, how you can attack them, all sorts of things. It's chess. Yeah, very much so. However, it also makes itself accessible to a less skilled audience as you're going to advance over time regardless of your skill level.

23:04 Oh, okay. Yeah, so you'll eventually experience the full game. A higher skilled gamer will just do it a bit faster. I'll get there on my own goddamn time. Thank you very much. Get there when we get there. As for our immediate environment, the stone platform you're on is covered in greenish ghostly apparitions. They are completely harmless, and they're called shades, as they are just the shadow of the person they once were. Oh, God. So all mortals who have died are called shades. The ones we're seeing here look like traditional ghosts as they're a green sheet with glowing eyes floating around. Is it just a new crop of the dead coming in from the River Styx? Yeah, basically.

23:45 Oh, recruits. We'll also meet some shades who retain their human form, even in death, for one reason or another, and that reason usually being that they have a name and lines to speak. Yeah. Shades are the majority of the inhabitants of the underworld, and you'll see them everywhere you go. But the green ones mean you so little harm, they can't even touch you. So you head down the platform a short ways, and you come to a door. Instead of a knocker or a peephole, it has a big round basin, and in the basin is a giant glass sphere. These doors will appear in each room you enter through the entirety of the game. The image inside the glass sphere represents the type of reward you will receive in the next room.

24:26 Oh. Once you defeat all the enemies in a room, you'll receive that reward, and you will be presented with one to three new doors, each with different rewards. The rooms, prizes, and bad guys you face are all, for the most part, randomly generated. Roguelike, got it. Yeah. The types of rewards you receive vary as there are multiple currencies and power-ups. The power-ups you receive, called boons, come from the Greek gods of Mount Olympus. I know what a boon is from D&D. Yeah. The gods that will grant you these boons are as follows. Ares, the god of Roar, despite what Kratos may tell you.

25:08 Aw. He grants boons that deal extra damage. That makes sense. Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Her boons are protective in nature, reducing damage taken. Poseidon, the god of the ocean. His boons cast tidal waves when you attack, knocking your enemies back and causing extra damage. That's fucking sick. Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She grants you the ability to make your enemies weaken the knees, causing them to take more and deal out less damage. Aries will make you punch harder. Fucking Aphrodite will make you flirt so hard. You got your motherfuckers in a twist. I love that. Dionysus, the god of wine.

25:49 And my personal favorite of the gods in this game, because his voice actor clearly had more fun than anyone else playing his character. Really? Oh yeah, he's great. Good for him. He's like, I'm the god of wine, bitch, let's party. He makes your enemies hung over, causing them to move slowly and take damage just by moving. Stop, I've been there, I fucking get it. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who also has my favorite set of boons. She increases your ability to land critical hits. I bet she has a nice set of boons. Hermes, the god of speed. His boons can make your attacks, your dash, your run speed, your recovery rate, or any of your other feats faster. Demeter, the goddess of seasons.

26:30 She is the only god who appears as an old lady. And she grants ice boons, like the ability to freeze your enemies. And of course, Zeus, the god of gods and king of Mount Olympus. His boons grant you the power of lightning, which you can use to strike down your foes from above. Now the powers I listed for each of these are just an example of a single boon they may grant you. They each have about 20 different boons they can offer. Oh. And each boon also has different power levels that can increase as you progress as well. And these generate just randomly, so it's a crapshoot every time you interact with one and what's available to you. Every single time.

27:11 Wow. Later in the game, you'll also be able to combine their boons to make even stronger ones. That's cool. It gives you an insane amount of variety in gameplay and fighting styles. These are also just the gods of Mount Olympus. We still have the gods of the Underworld to introduce, but we'll do that in a bit. When you receive a new boon, some of the time you'll have a quick chat with the god first. Sometimes it's story relevant, sometimes it's just nonsense and chit chat. You can also make them like you more by giving them offerings of nectar and ambrosia. This increases your relationship with them, causing them to give you more powerful boons and trinkets in return.

27:51 So you can kind of warm them up and be like, hey babe, I brought you some fruit salad. It's called ambrosia. Can you hook me up with a better lightning bolt? That's exactly how it works, yeah. I love everything about that. As you meet the Olympian gods, they refer to you as their cousin, and they keep promising to help you escape the underworld, which is why they offer you the boons in the first place. The randomly generated rooms you're going through here in Tartarus have different types of shades that can hurt you, and you'll fight waves of them in every room. Instead of being harmless green shades, the shades that can hurt you stand out as they are reddish orange color. Ooh, the evil colors.

28:32 Right, because as everyone knows, red is bad and green is good. Right. Each variety of shade being what you'd expect from a beat-em-up, some with like brute strength, some with magic spells, some that move fast, all of them trying to kill you. And every once in a while, a door sphere will sport a little skull on it. This indicates that there is a boss fight in the next room. There's two different types of boss fights, mini bosses and zone bosses. The mini bosses being just more difficult versions of shades you've been fighting all along. And the zone bosses are different Chthonic gods, which are the gods of the underworld. Chthonic gods? In Tartarus, the first boss you encounter is one of the three fury sisters.

29:19 The furies are triplets, and over the course of the game, they'll switch out which one you fight at random. So there's Magira the first, Electo the second, and Tessiphony the third. She's the Anne Peggy sister. There's always one, you know. Yeah, the other two sisters can talk, while Tessiphony can only say one word, and that word is murder, and she struggles to save in that. Oh, honey. There's very few opportunities to heal yourself in Hades, which you probably are not going to be aware of on your first playthrough. So by the time you reach the Fury Sisters, your health is likely drained, which will inevitably result in your first death, if you haven't already died before getting to the first stage boss.

30:04 After you die, the screen goes mostly black, but you can still see yourself. You fall into a pool of blood with the words, there is no escape written above you. That's so fucking cool. Regardless of when and where you died, you awaken in a new location. You're in something I can only describe as being a wading pool full of blood. You come crawling up out of it saying, I'm home. And you're in a grand marble hallway with big pillars every few feet. Above us, the words House of Hades appears. You head down the hallway, which is full of the green shades just kind of milling about, and you see an androgynous looking person napping with a notepad in their hands.

30:48 You startle them awake, and this is the Chthonic god, Hypnos, god of sleep. They welcome you to the underworld explaining that you died. But then Hypnos recognizes you and is like, oh, you died? That's okay. Everyone dies sometimes. That's so sweet of him. I love Hypno. Hypnos' job is to check in every person that dies and comes to the underworld. They put the person whose god power is sleep in charge of checking people in? Yeah, a lot of shades make it by. But their job is to make sure that the records match with the shades' actual cause of death, and it always does. Okay, he's getting it done. And as you come through this hallway throughout the game, he'll often make fun of the way you died in the previous escaped attempt.

31:31 Hypno will rip you on like, oh, you dumbass. He's like, wow, you must be really bad if that killed you. Oh, shit. Wait, so the game heckles you? A little bit sometimes. I do like that. I like when a game's like, you're not good at this. And just past Hypno's is the throne room, where you find your father, Hades, the god king of the underworld and brother to Zeus, sitting at his throne, which has a gigantic stone desk in front of it. The desk is strewn with papers and scrolls, and it makes the throne room more akin to a CEO office than anything. I love that Hades has paperwork. It's all just paperwork. Wow. All jobs are paperwork. That sucks. Next to Hades' desk is a big, red, three-headed dog named Cerberus.

32:14 Aww. Yeah, he's a very good boy, and you should give him lots of pets every chance you get. You can pet the dog? You can of course pet the dog, and you should. That is the marker of a good game. On the other side of his desk are three shades wearing construction helmets. Wait, are they OSHA approved shades? I would assume so. Good for them. These guys let you use one of the currencies in the game to decorate the House of Hades as you progress through the game. You know, the place you're trying to escape. You can like put posters up and shit. Yeah, and actually you can make the place look really nice. Oh, I like that. There's also a spot for the Underworld's musician, Orpheus. Orpheus isn't a god. He isn't a shade either, really.

32:55 He's a mortal human. Oh. He came to the Underworld looking for his wife and muse, who had died unfairly, in his opinion, where he ran into Hades. He pleaded his case to the god of the Underworld. He even played Hades a song that his muse had inspired. Hades was impressed by the song and offered Orpheus a chance to take his wife back with him. But Orpheus failed to complete the one task assigned to him. Oh, no. And the task was nothing more than to trust that Hades will keep his word and send her back. I get it. Trust no one. Yeah, Orpheus failed the test of trust. Hades then forced Orpheus to live forever as a musical slave for his punishment and has kept him from ever seeing his wife again.

33:40 Oh, my God. So they're both in the ender roll, but he can't access his wife because he fucked up? Yeah. That sucks. Orpheus only plays music and refuses to sing for Hades because he has nothing left to sing about. Hades makes fun of you for trying to escape the underworld. He tells you that it's impossible to do so, as nobody in history ever has. He's just being a dad about it. But you're welcome to keep trying. He'll see you back here after your next failed attempt. It's very good luck, kiddo. Yeah. Down a side hall, there's a woman named Nyx, and she's the goddess of the night. You thank her for putting you in touch with the gods of Olympus.

34:21 She tells you that it was inevitable they'd get involved eventually anyway. She warns you, though, not to tell them why you're trying to escape, which even we the gamer don't know yet. Ooh. Down a side hallway, there are two locked rooms we'll get to explore later, but there's also often a man named Achilles. Achilles achieved the status of demigod in life. Legend has it, his mother dipped him in the River Styx as a baby, making him immortal. Oh. But she couldn't let go of him or she'd lose him to the river, so she held on to him by the heel, leaving Achilles with a weak spot.

35:04 Having died in the Trojan War when he took an arrow to the heel, Hades Volun told him to train you, Zagreus, as a mighty warrior. Achilles will often give you fighting tips and pointers, helping you escape in secret. Another character you can meet tends to appear in random spots. Her name is Dusa, as in Medusa. The Gorgon with snakes for hair and turns people to stone. The Gorgon? A Gorgon is literally what Medusa is, like Medusa is a Gorgon. Oh, genre Medusa. Yeah, is any being with snakes for hair that turns people to stone. Gotcha. She's not dangerous though, she's actually very sweet. She's a floating head and is the maid of the House of Hades.

35:47 Oh, shit. Get it, maid, Medusa. Oh, my God. Her snakes do all the actual work anyway, because again, she's just a floating head otherwise. She loves that you're so kind to her all the time, and she often gets nervous around you and runs off to go clean something after seeing something mildly flirty. She has a crush on Zagreus? A little bit. Aw, babe. And you can flirt back if you want to by offering her gifts and shit. You absolutely should, she sounds lovely. You can next enter your bedroom. It's a big room fit for the Prince of the Underworld. On one end is a gigantic mirror that takes up the entire wall. Through it, you can use one of the several currencies in the game to upgrade your abilities that will stay persistent through your death.

36:32 Because all those boons you collect during your last escape attempt, they're gone now and you start from zero. Ah, right. The powers granted through the mirror helps to kind of mitigate that loss, and as you progress, you'll gain much more staying power, allowing you to survive longer and longer as you make your way out of the underworld. And this mirror is the one thing keeping Hades from being a full rogue-like and instead making it a rogue-lite. Because you lose all your boons, yes, but you can still level up and progress. But it's also why this game resonates so well with all levels of ability, because highly skilled players won't need the leveling up as much, but people who need the help can grow over time and still get the same outcome. You pass through your bedroom to another chamber, and in this chamber is a little skeleton man in the center.

37:16 His name is Skelly. And he's your punching bag. Literal punching bag? Literal. His only purpose is to let you practice your moves on him. Oh, honey. As there are also five other weapons in the room besides your sword. Now you have a spear, a shield, a bow and arrow, metal gloves, and a machine gun slash rocket launcher. Okay, so one of these things is not like the other. Yeah, honestly, I think the machine gun is the worst weapon anyway. Really? But others might disagree. Fair enough. Because that's the beauty here. You can choose which weapon works best for you. Yeah. With the randomly generated boons, you never know how the next round is gonna go anyway. A machine gun feels so out of place in this world.

37:59 Fully out of place. Don't know why they included it, because it also has a rocket launcher attached. I mean, I love a rocket launcher in a game, but it doesn't feel great in this world. Well, it does pay to actually learn each weapon as you discover the hundreds of playstyle combinations available to you. From this room, there's an archway. And once you go through it, you land back at the start of Tartarus, in front of the door with your dad's face on it, ready to begin your escape attempt once again. So real quick, a lot of what I just said, you do not actually see on your first trip to the House of Hades. A lot of it appears after your first trip or after you unlock or buy certain things. For example, the additional weapons and Skelly the punching bag.

38:41 You first need to unlock each weapon one at a time. Oh, and there's five different ones, so it takes a couple rounds. Yeah, and Skelly doesn't appear until after the first unlocked weapon anyway. But you're going to be coming through here a lot, so I just wanted to cover it all on the first round, because I have no idea how many times you're gonna die. Fair enough. I've seen 25-minute speed runs where the person doesn't die even once, so they miss out on all of this, technically. Holy shit. But I'm sure if they're good enough to speed run, they probably already know the story. Yeah, this isn't their first rodeo. Right. And that cycle we just did, trying to escape the Underworld, getting killed, talking to people in House of Hades, gearing up and heading back out, that's basically the whole game.

39:24 And you're gonna do this over and over again, leveling up and making it a little further, hopefully, every try. Honestly, sometimes you won't make it a little further, and that's okay, too. Because death is just a part of the game, and you're gonna die a lot, so, like, don't sweat over it when you do. And that feels weird to say, because our natural instinct and this game's ultimate goal is to avoid death. But it's also inevitable, so just stop worrying about it and concentrate on the life you're currently in the middle of living. And you can take that as game or life advice, your choice. Fair enough. This cycle was actually the reason I almost didn't cover Hades for the show. Yeah, you know, when you started playing this, you were like, we could never do this for the show. And here we are now.

40:04 Yeah, I thought this was all there was, and hopefully, yeah, I'll eventually escape. But knowing the player was going to be playing this over and over again, Supergiant trickled the story out in such small doses that I didn't realize just how invested I started to become in the characters. It snuck up on you? It did. It started, like, with me saying to Andrea, this funny thing happened in the game today. And then it progressed to, like, so this god is mad at this other god, and it's all because of some drama with a third god. Full gossip girl shit. Yeah, it started to become this soap opera playing out in front of me, like, between the rounds of me trying to escape the underworld. But because everyone is hot, muscular and half naked, it's probably closer to, like, professional wrestling's storytelling than days of our lives.

40:49 Oh, I love that. And due to the fact that all of the levels and boons appear at random, some things come to you out of logical order. But you're in the underworld, outside of time and space. So those kinds of things just kind of happen sometimes. Jeremy, bury me, baby. So I'm gonna do my best to put the story in logical order from here out, because the game didn't even start at the inciting incident. Well, we bounce around, because time is meaningless. That happened before we started the game, which is why we're this far along and still have no fucking idea why we're trying to escape. So that's why I'm gonna go backwards to the inciting incident and then go forward from there.

41:29 As you're running through the game, you also have to pass through your bedroom to restart the cycle. If you approach your bed, you're given the option to rest. And 99% of the time, you say that you don't need any rest right now. But one time, early in the game, you decide you actually do need to take a rest. And we get a flashback scene. The narrator breaks down the scene over the black and white flashback. It's the nighttime equivalent in House of Hades. And everyone is asleep. Except for Prince Zagreus. He's awake, and he has a hankering for some mischief. The house is silent, as you had Hypnos cast his magic over everyone in the house except for you, of course.

42:12 After the narrator explains this, you break the fourth wall and tell him to lower his voice. You're trying to cause some mischief. Ooh. You head out of your room into the hall towards your father's throne. The narrator says that you are not ready for what you're about to find inside his desk. So you go straight to the desk because you can obviously still hear the narrator. As you approach it, the narrator says that for a long time, you've questioned your true identity. You've always felt out of place in the Underworld, and asking Hades about it would be a very bad idea. So you have to go behind his back to find out for yourself if there's anything you don't know about your own backstory. As you dig through the desk, you say to the narrator, you're not listening to him anymore.

42:56 You want to find it for yourself. You eventually find a note in one of the drawers. It's written in a woman's handwriting that you do not recognize. The note is addressed to Hades, and says that the writer is leaving the Underworld, no longer feeling like she belongs here, but she can't return to Mount Olympus, so she's going to go find somewhere else to live. That mysterious place in between the Underworld and Mount Olympus. We call it Greece. It's just Greece. Yeah, it's just Greece. She wants to just live in a cottage by the sea and tend to a small garden there, which my mom literally said the same thing to me just this last week. And have you questioned your parentage at all?

43:37 No, I haven't. She says to look after Cerberus, she's going to miss him. Signed Persephone. Oh, interesting. You finish reading the note, and the narrator says that you took a minute to absorb the meaning of this letter written by your mother. And you go, I'm sorry, my what? You address the narrator of like, wait, mommy? Nyx is my mother. Who the fuck is Persephone? And why did you just call her my mother? And the narrator goes, so Zagreus discovered his true parentage through pure chance. Oh my God. Persephone was once the queen of the underworld. But somehow, despite what Hades said to you earlier, she escaped. You storm off to go question your father in his bedchambers.

44:19 But you run into Nyx on the way, seeing as how she's the goddess of the night. And your adoptive mother, I suppose? Yeah, you just found out. And you tell her, you know everything. And she immediately is like, damn, so you found out, huh? She just accepts this and is like, cool, I don't have to keep this a secret anymore. I'm assuming she still has love for you and affection for you, though. Tons, yeah. There's a lot of chthonic gods that are her children, so she is a mother at heart. She admits to it all and says it's a bit more complicated than that. But you awaken and we don't get to hear the rest. The implication also being that you set out right after this conversation on your first escape attempt.

45:01 As you work your way back to the Fury Sisters at the end of Tartarus, you can encounter one of the three gift givers on your journey. One of the rewards takes you to a big room with really nothing more than a giant boulder in it and a huge, muscle-bound man standing next to it. The man's name is Sisyphus, and the boulder's name is Boldy. This is my favorite character in all mythology. Not Sisyphus, Boldy. I fucking love Boldy. I've seen this over your shoulder in just watching you play and being like, is that Sisyphus in the boulder? And you're like, yeah, this is Boldy. And I was like, I fucking love Boldy.

45:43 This is great. Well, the story of Sisyphus is that he was once a king on Earth, and he successfully cheated death twice in his lifetime. The first time, Thanatos, the god of death and Nyx's actual son, came for Sisyphus, for his time had come. Thanatos is like a super sexy version of death as we think of him today. He still has the big sickle blade and black cloak, but he's like a Tetsuya Nomura wet dream, attractive and sexy. I love that. I love how horny this game is. Fully, Sisyphus successfully trapped Thanatos and kept him hostage until Thanatos agreed to let him live.

46:25 That's pretty funny. When Sisyphus died the second time, he tricked Hades himself into letting him go back to Earth. Wow. He told Hades that he was worried his wife hadn't performed all of the correct rituals for a proper royal burial. He appealed to Hades' sense of respect for royalty and convinced Hades to let him go back up and check. That's fucking hysterical. Hades allowed it, and Sisyphus didn't return. So when Sisyphus died the third time, Hades punished him immediately. His punishment being to push this boulder up to the top of a hill. But just before he reaches the top, that boulder will always roll back to the bottom.

47:10 Because he's like, fool me twice, fuck you. And it's totally not a metaphor for how this game is going to go for you at all. No, I don't see any symbolism in this in any way, shape or form. Also, being in Tartarus, the Fury Sisters get to add extra torment to his life by harassing him constantly. So they're heckling him while he's pushing Boldy? That's fucking great. Honestly, it was a good swing. He had a good run. I know every day he pushes this boulder up a hill and it's never going to happen, but he's got to chuckle to himself and be like, honestly, worth it. A for effort, buddy. Sisyphus is super nice to you, though. He's been getting tortured for a really long time already, and he's just a big old softy now.

47:55 He sounds like the coolest fucking person. Yeah, he's the kindest, sweetest person in the Underworld, and just kind of a, gosh golly, G. Willikers kind of guy. So he's soft on top of this? Super soft. This is the best character. And Boldy has a face carved into him as well, and you should always talk to Boldy, even though he never has anything to say. Well, he's a boulder. Sisyphus has three rewards for you, each one granting you a grip of currency of your choosing or some health. And I know I just keep saying currency, but there's a few different kinds, and they each unlock different things, and it just depends on what you're trying to unlock next that helps you decide which to choose, because what the currency itself is is fully arbitrary.

48:38 Eventually, you'll make it back to the Fury Sisters, and we find out they were sent here specifically to stop you from moving on. Oh, shit. It's nothing personal, it's just orders. With enough experience and the right boons, you defeat whichever Fury Sister you encountered. This releases Magira, and you can see her in the House of Hades and the Employee Break Room from time to time, because they have one. I was just going to say, there's a fucking Employee Break Room? Are they like microwaving fish in there and putting up posters like, don't forget to wash your hands in hell? Like, that's wild! Basically that, but it does have a chef. Honestly? Flex. And you can also flirt with Magira into liking you back.

49:18 Because of course, this horny ass game is like, yeah, of course you can flirt with whoever you want to. Bisexual nightmare. But she's still going to fight you every time you make it to her lair and tartarus, because that's her job. And after you defeat one of the furies, the next sphere shows a set of stairs instead of a prize. The next room you enter is a staging area between zones. When you enter these rooms, Hades' voice will often ring out, and he's usually pretty pissed off at you for making it this far. Well, yeah. Tartarus was just the first zone, and we have a lot of dine to do before we get out of here. At least you can buy some boons from a big cauldron called Charon's Well.

49:59 Now Charon is the Stygian Boatman. Oh. He steers the boat down the River Styx. He's the River Styx gondolier? Yeah, he's the one guiding the deceased to the underworld. Do you ever think, like, on Halloween in Hell, he'll put on the stripy shirt and the hat and, like, sing? He doesn't seem to have that level of whimsy to him, unfortunately. Everyone should have more whimsy. Yeah, because honestly, he's the worst possible god for this fucking job. Really? Yeah, he's more what we think of when we think of the character Death. He's basically a skeleton that's shrouded in darkness, and he only groans and growls. He never speaks.

50:40 So it's a lot of doom and gloom for him. Yeah. So if you're newly dead and cruising down this river, he's just going to be terrifying and offer you nothing as far as answers go. That's kind of the experience you want, though. For Death? Yeah, I think so. You know? Well, for Zagreus, he's the shopkeeper, an actual demigod shopkeeper. Yeah, his life kind of sucks. He is the Death bus driver, basically, and then the fucking nepo baby of the underworld. His boss's kid is like, hey, can you hook me up with this shit? Poor guy. I get why he's grumpy. He has boons and power-ups for sale that are randomly chosen, and he's one of the reward options for finishing a room.

51:25 But he also has those cauldrons spread throughout the levels, and they always contain three random rewards as well that you can buy using one of your many currencies. You finally move on from Tartarus onto the next zone, Asphodel. Asphodel looks like it's inside a volcano, as it's kind of the lava zone. Oh, that's cool. Asphodel used to be beautiful and green, but then the lava river of Phlegathon overflowed, killing everything here and filling every hole and ditch with ultra hot lava. Your pronunciation is killing it right now. I would have fucked up every single thing you said. I'm trying real hard. I've been looking at these words a long time. There's a name coming up here that I'm worried about.

52:05 So everyone be patient with Tom because he's doing a better job than I ever could. Instead of doors at the end of levels, there's a raft of bones with the crystal ball on a plinth displaying the rewards instead. That's so punk rock. Here we fight more skeletons than shades and some fire-based creatures. As you progress through the game, two of the currencies you can obtain are nectar and ambrosia, which I briefly mentioned earlier. Yeah, you can give them to the gods as gifts, right? Right. Nectar is fairly common. Ambrosia is rare as fuck, and you have to win boss fights to get that. And they only give ambrosia the first time you beat them. Next round, if you make it back to them, you get a very common currency instead.

52:45 Oh shit, so you can't really harvest that thoughtfully. No, you need to use that very specifically on what you want to use it for. But both nectar and ambrosia technically have the same use. Every talkative NPC you encounter, whether it's an Olympus god or even Dusa, you can offer them nectar. It's considered a great honor and is contraband in the underworld. Oh. Hades has outlawed it because it reminds him of the Olympic gods and thereby his stupid brother Zeus. That's some upstairs shit. You're in the basement, bitch. Yeah, you're not allowed to have that down here. The idea that the underworld has contraband is very funny to me as well.

53:27 There are still things that are illegal down there, right? Yeah, like honestly, it should be a fucking party. But you offer these people nectar, and it increases your relationship with them. After the first offering, they'll give you a trinket that you can wear that will give you advantages like the ability to find health inside these clay pots you see in every room. Most of the Olympic gods, on the other hand, give you a trinket that guarantees a boon from them that will appear in the next room. Subsequent offerings of nectar keep increasing your friendship. Sometimes it develops into a loving relationship, like with Dusa. As you give her more and more nectar, the two of you get to chatting and flirting quite a bit. Yes. So I'm assuming Zagreus is kind of into whoever you as the player is trying to invest your time into, right?

54:13 Most definitely, yeah. God, what I would give for the master cut of Zagreus flirting with everyone. I'm sure that exists. And I'm going to find it. I'm sure you could play it. And this is quite the scandal, because you're the prince, and she's a maid. Once you max out that relationship, you can start offering ambrosia. And if nectar was like weed, ambrosia is like ecstasy. Oh, we're partying! Hell yeah! Yeah, it's way more illegal, and way more fun. Yeah, the fun ones usually are, I'm not going to lie. I used to be fun, guys. That sounds like a great time. Well, not everyone, but some will give you a second trinket.

54:55 These trinkets will give you a summon you can call in battle. Such as Dusa, she'll come to help you by turning your enemies into stone. She's like, don't hurt my mans. Or if you get to the point of offering Ambrosia to Sisyphus, Boldy will come falling from the sky when you summon him to crush your enemies. That is fucking hysterical. I almost want to look that up right now just to see Boldy. Big ass boulder with a little face carved into it. Is it a happy face, by the way? Yeah, it's a happy face. With a sweet little grin? Yeah. Yeah, a giant boulder with a sweet little grin crushing your enemies. I dream about that, Tom. I'll have to show it to you after we're done. That is genuinely a daydream of mine. Well, the downside to giving Ambrosia to Dusa is finding out she isn't actually attracted to you at all.

55:40 Is she just being polite? Yeah, she wasn't flirting before. She was just really nervous because her boss, Nix, told her she shouldn't be speaking with the royals. And that she should just stick to cleaning. The fact that you were talking to her just made her nervous she would get in trouble with Nix for not working. Or in trouble with you for not talking. Okay, now I feel bad because 110%, this is the stripper being nice to you, she's just doing her job. She's not that into you. Yeah, she felt kind of trapped in these situations. Oh my god, okay, so life lesson, don't hit on people while they're at work. Definitely never. Straight up. Oh, okay, now I feel like a creep.

56:23 Well, you're embarrassed, of course, because getting rejected is not easy on anyone. Especially for Zagreus, who's one Nepo baby, two fucking gorgeous, so he's like, oh shit, my bad, I misread that situation entirely. I would put Dusa as one of the least attractive people in the House of Hades too. She's got a cool personality though, right? Right, entirely, which is why you fall for her. But you take it in stride, and the two of you develop an amazing platonic friendship from there. Oh, I like that, okay, so she's like, yeah, I'm not trying to hit it, but we can hang out. Yeah, she's like, I'm down to be your friend, but that's really all I'm looking for. I understand that. I'm glad that Zagreus also respects that.

57:03 That's the appropriate response. She even returns all the nectar and ambrosia you gave her. Oh, actually, that's really handy, right? Because then you can use it with other gods. Yeah, because she felt it would be inappropriate to keep knowing they were gifts from your heart, and she doesn't have one because she's just a floating head. Shut the fuck up. While fighting through Asphodel, you can encounter another of the gift givers. Her name is Eurydice. Eurydice. Wow, that's beautiful. Eurydice is a singer and is always singing a hauntingly beautiful song when you arrive in her area. She's a bit more mythical than the other residents of the Underworld.

57:44 She's a deceased wood nymph. She was supposed to be immortal, but a venomous snake bite managed to kill her, and she became the first wood nymph to come to the Underworld. When you say wood nymph, is this one of those half-deer foot kind of people? No, she has a little tree growing out of her head instead of hair. Part of her is like she'd be able to hide in the woods. That's sick. I also want to take a beat. Every piece of art for this game is gorgeous. Insane. The way you're saying this, I'm like, I know that's fucking cool as shit. Yeah. Her husband was so struck with grief, he snuck into the Underworld and begged Hades to give her back. She's not supposed to be able to die.

58:24 She's supposed to be an immortal. She was also his muse, and he needs her back. So Hades had him play one of the songs she inspired, and he loved it. Hades granted the husband his wish on one condition. He had to trust that Hades was keeping his word, and that she was following behind him. But his insecurities got the best of him, and he looked back. She was there, following behind him, and then she wasn't. Oh, so the core value here is, Hades is actually very trustworthy. Yeah. Y'all motherfuckers need to put your heart in there. And also, all these women are muses.

59:05 These dudes should probably read a book or go outside, touch some grass, get some inspo up otherwise. Well, ever since, she's been imprisoned here in Asphodel, while her husband, Orpheus, is kept as a musical slave in the House of Hades. Yes, I was like, this has happened before. Got it, other side of the coin. I'm there. That is very sad. She didn't even know that he was there until you heard the two stories and put them together. Oh. The gifts she can offer you are one of three upgrades to your booms through the magic of her golden voice. She also might be my favorite NPC because of her amazing singing voice and her tragic story.

59:47 You are a sucker for a beautiful voice and some sad shit. These gift givers don't appear on every attempt either, as room rewards are random. But if they're going to appear, they tend to appear around the halfway mark through a zone. Also, doors and boats with spheres are also not the only way to move forward in the game. On occasion, a hole will open up at the completion of a room with purple wispy smoke coming out of it. These are called Chaos Gates. They're optional, and in order to descend into the hole, you have to sacrifice some of your health. Oh. Once down there, you encounter the god Chaos. Chaos is the primordial originator.

1:00:30 Mm. Nyx was birthed from the same void that Chaos controls. And not just controls, but also kind of is the void. Okay. Because if Chaos had another name, it would be Jeremy Baramy. Fair enough. He's everything, he's everywhere, he's all at once. He is going to help you basically out of boredom. It's just nice to watch someone doing something he's never seen done before. Yeah, because when you're around that long, at some point, you're like, fuck it, nothing matters. Yeah. Oh, wait, something new? I haven't seen that in a long time. Yeah, we'll be invested in this. That's cool. The everything bagel sees all. Right. His boons are weird, though.

1:01:10 They're crazy powerful, but you have to earn it. He'll usually debuff you in some way, like make you take 400% more damage for the next five rooms. Oh, shit. But survive rooms with that debuff, and you'll deal out 400% more damage for the rest of your attempt. And honestly, I kept waiting for the reveal that Chaos was going to be Zagreus after a bazillion escape attempts. But the reveal never came. Oh, okay. Yeah, Chaos and Zag just happen to have really similar faces, and the cryptic shit Chaos says to you, like, I've known you for longer than you realize, all mean absolutely nothing. Oh. Well, there's a second Hades game coming up, so there's still time.

1:01:52 There's still a chance. You can also fish in the River Styx every once in a while. That is the darkest shit you've said so far, and we've been in hell for an hour. You can go fishing in the River of Souls that brings people to the underworld. And the fishing in this game led to Andrea saying one of my favorite things I've ever heard her say. I was telling her about the fishing in this game, and then I said, honestly, every good game has fishing. And Andrea responded, Tom, every game has fishing. And you sat there and stared at me, like I stabbed you in the gut.

1:02:34 Like, why would you do this to me? And then every game we played for the next few months, there would be some sort of fishing element, and you'd go, God damn it, every game has fishing. Three of my five games this season have fishing. Holy shit. Ugh. I just had flashbacks of trying to get a Legendary Fish in Red Dead and Fury quitting because it was so fucking dumb, and going, I don't want to do fishing ever again. Don't make me do this. And then being like, oh yeah, I also rage quit on the last Zelda game I played when they were trying to get you to fish in a mini game to get something, and all these other games came to mind, and I was like, Tom, shut the fuck up.

1:03:15 There's always fishing. But you're like, it's this great game and it incorporates so many things, and I was like, shut up. Let me ruin your day. Sorry about that. Don't point to fishing as something special. It's in everything. And the fish can be given to the house chef, you know, the shade that works in the employee lounge. Hold up. I'm sorry. So in The River Sticks, a river filled with souls, there are just straight up fish. Biologically, how? I mean, they are hell fish, but they're still fish. Hell fish. Not a shellfish. Hell fish. A hell fish. That's fucking cool. I'm back around on it. Okay. When you give the fish to the chef in the employee break lounge.

1:03:55 In the cafeteria, yes. He'll give you different currencies based on the type of fish that you bring him. Based on how well he slices it. Yeah. Plot twist, the chef is Diver Dave. Oh, no. Well, he used to own a sushi restaurant, and things went rough, and now he's in hell. I haven't played that yet. No spoilers. This joke is hopefully not a spoiler. As you go through House of Hades, then back through Tartarus and Asphodel, you'll hear conversations between other characters. Hades is usually yelling at different people for helping you try to escape. And through these conversations, you start to pick up that your mother Persephone originally came from Mount Olympus. So that implies that she has some sort of god affiliation.

1:04:38 Right. And this is why the Olympians are helping you. They want to meet their cousin in person. Yeah, they're like, Zagreus has been in hell for his knowing existence, right? He's been down there, and he's been raised by Hades and Nyx as his parental figures. By the way, Hades, not a great parent right now. You could just talk to your son. Come on, dude. Anyway, so the Olympians, though, are aware of your parentage, and perhaps may or may not have known of Nyx stepping in as your mother. And we're like, we know that we have a connection to you, and we'd love to connect with you. So with the knowledge that they have this cousin that they're not connected with, they're like, absolutely, you know, we've been around forever. We're not going anywhere.

1:05:19 Of course, we'd love to get to know you, and have you involved in our lives. That's beautiful. Because also from the Olympic gods' perspective, they think Persephone died a long time ago. Oh, goodness. So they're like, this is our last connection to Persephone, actually. Right. That's beautiful. And this is why Nyx told you not to tell them what's going on. In fact, her mother, the goddess of weather, Demeter, created the Ice Age when she thought Persephone had died. Wow. Finding out Persephone had a child before her death fully excites them. So it was a big hit to them when they lost Persephone. Fully, yeah.

1:06:00 They really lost their shit when she left. That's really sad. And I almost brought the story up in the Bendy episode when Andrea was joking about Audrey signing up for 23andMe to find out her parentage. Plot twist, she's mostly ink, a little Scottish. But the concept of questionable parentage is coming up again, so I'm going to tell it now, because I recently had something very cool happen to me that goes with this theme. Andrea got me a DNA test for Christmas, and in doing so, I found a long-lost cousin that my aunt had given up for adoption in the fucking 1960s. Holy shit, yes.

1:06:41 And I can tell you from very real personal experience, everyone in my family is clamoring to meet this person. Does that make your family the Olympians in this situation? Yes, we are Olympic gods now. But I got to meet him first because I was the one who found him. You got to meet Zagreus. Yeah, and he's a really cool fucking guy. I think he was so sweet. I love him. Yeah, he was wonderful. Andrea and I both got to meet him very recently. But yeah, this shit really happens in real life. Does this story feel heavier to you because of this? It was so heavy writing this out and like going through it and being like, jeez, I can't not tell this story now, right? Because this is so close to what happened to me recently, especially.

1:07:23 Shit is wild. Anyway, so you ultimately, you make it to the next zone boss. And for Asphodel, the boss is the Lernaean Bone Hydra. Bone Hydra. Oh, that sounds like a monster truck. Yeah, in life, the Hydra was defeated by Hercules, and the Hydra was the many headed snake monster. So when you would cut one head off, three would grow in its place, right? Right, and it was a very big deal for Hercules to defeat. Now its job is to stop you from escaping the underworld. The Bone Hydra has one main head and then a few lesser heads. It fights in rounds, and because it's a Hydra, you have to kill all the lesser heads before you can kill the main head.

1:08:08 And when you do, it explodes into fire, and you can continue on to the next stairs, up and out of Asphodel. The idea that the Bone Hydra was placed as a challenge to Hercules in Greece, essentially, like that middle world, and now he's just doing security in the underworld. Feels like a bit of a downgrade, but I appreciate the resource management that Hades allocated for him. Yeah, the titans all really got reduced to just fucking, like, guards. One thing I like about this boss is the next time you encounter it, there will be a different skull for the head. That's really clever. Yeah, it's just different variations on the skull, too. That's so cool. You go to the next staging area, Hades shit-talks to you, you power up, and you move on to the next zone.

1:08:50 Terrible parenting. The name of this zone is a word we heard for the first time and then defined way back in our season 4 finale. We enter the cloudy, blue-and-white-hued zone of Elysium. Oh. As I defined in our Disco Elysium episode, Elysium is the place where the heroes go after they die. The Greek version of Valhalla, because not all of the Underworld is fire and brimstone. Mount Olympus and the Underworld can't really be compared to the Christian versions of Heaven and Hell. Back then, Heaven, or as they called it, Mount Olympus, was reserved for the gods only. Mortals were not welcome there. All mortals, good and bad, go to the Underworld instead.

1:09:35 Which means it's unfair to see Hades as being akin to the Christian devil. He's really not, because he sees good and bad people alike. He just sends them to different zones of the Underworld. Oh, yeah, he's just the fucking sorting hat for souls, it's fine. The sorting hat for souls, yeah! It's just all paperwork at the end of the day, like we said. Yeah, his desk is full of shit he has to sign off on. And the better a person you were on Earth, the closer you get to be to Earth, as good people are too honest to try and sneak back to the land of the living. It's still a little bit of a trust situation with Hades. Right, and honestly the fact that only gods were allowed in heaven is probably why humans largely switched to monotheism over time, because then it gave them a chance at heaven too.

1:10:22 Yeah. Being the place where heroes go, many of the bad guys we face in Elysium are former soldiers. Oh. So now we're fighting shades that have basically the same move sets that we do, and the difficulty level really kicks up a notch after this. Yeah. So these are people that were wonderful people on Earth, and often very skilled as well, because like you said, heroes. So these are going to be like war generals and like martyrs and shit like that, right? Yeah, some of them are. Also, the way to the next room is through a door again, and the sphere with the rewards are embedded in that door. I bet that looks beautiful. Yeah, it looks really cool. Elysium is also where we find the third and final gift giver as well.

1:11:04 He's a former warrior, and he's very sad. He won't even tell you his name, and you can encounter him dozens of times and still not get much conversation out of him. Because he's too sad? Yeah, on the rare chance you do get conversation, it's mostly complaints. He doesn't like Elysium. It's full of pompous, arrogant dead warriors who only got in here because they died doing something quote unquote heroic in battle, which is a noble death and pretty much instant access to Elysium. To him, they're basically a giant group of serial killers being told they're perfect angels. So he sees them as the warlords.

1:11:45 He's like, these people are fucking crazy. It's all narcissists. It's a lot of ego, and I'm kind of fucking over it. Yeah, they did one good thing, and that got them into Elysium. I appreciate the groundedness of that, though. He actually thinks life would be way more peaceful down in Asphodel, the closest thing the underworld has to Christian hell. But he always offers really great power ups that help you survive longer in battle, so there's that. So you deal with him whining for a little bit, being like, I want to hang out with the cool kids in hell. He actually has really good power ups, so you deal with it. He did go to Elysium because he did do something cool, so he is a helpful person.

1:12:26 Back in the House of Hades, you mention this particular gift giver to your mentor, Achilles. After a while, Achilles realizes, he knows this person, as he was a soldier that fought alongside him in the Trojan War. Oh, shit. He actually fought alongside him in every battle, because they were more than fellow soldiers, more than friends even. They were former lovers. He's like, I am so sorry about my ex. I know he gets testy. I know he's whiny, but I swear he's a good dude, makes a great eggs Benedict. Give him a chance. Yeah, they died on the same battlefield and were supposed to be reunited in death. Oh.

1:13:06 But Hades forced Achilles to train you, keeping the two separate. That's a dick move, Hades. Hades is a cock blocker. Fuck that. If you're friendly with Achilles and wear his trinket on one of your visits to the gift giver of Elysium, he'll finally tell you his name, and it's the one I'm worried about, Patroclus. Patroclus. I think. Okay, that's beautiful. Telling him about Achilles only makes him more depressed, though. Oh, because he still loves him. They died together. They lived together and they died together. And now you're wearing his boyfriend's watch now. Yeah, that's... I would be pissed too. I get it. Yeah, being sad is really all Patroclus is good for.

1:13:48 He's kind of like Kate for the sad girl in Life is Strange. Just being defined by being a bummer. Yeah. Oh, that is very sad. And then other than the gift giver, there's also a specific mini boss here that's different from the others that you've fought. Earlier, I said most mini bosses are just stronger versions of normal shades, but the Elysia mini boss is named Asterius, and he is a minotaur, head and hooves of a bull and the body of a man. We encounter him in a small arena, and he talks to you, usually taunting. He carries a big axe and can charge you with his horns like your Grecian matador. Asterius was the stepson of a king in life.

1:14:31 But being a minotaur, the king hated Asterius. Because it reminded him that he fucked a bull? Well, it's his stepdad. Oh, okay. It's like, yeah, that'd be really weird to just kind of raise this kid who's clearly indicative of like animal husbandry. He's mad that his wife dated somebody who was bigger than him. Oh, it's giving insecure. Get over it. Yeah, so he threw Asterius into a labyrinth where he attempted to escape, but couldn't, getting lost in the giant maze. And this is the first iteration of the Saw franchise. A different king named Theseus came through the labyrinth in an attempt to approve himself.

1:15:12 In doing so, he killed Asterius, thinking he was one of the challenges of the labyrinth. That is a reasonable mistake, honestly. If you go into a labyrinth and you see a Minotaur, you're like, well, clearly I have to slay them. It's not just some dude being like, hey, help, my stepdad's a dick, you know? Yeah, and I think that was kind of the king's intention anyway. So this sent him to Elysium, where we are currently fighting him. Well, at least that is the hero's death of like, we know you didn't ask for this fight. You got jumped after a very hard life. Like, you get to be in Elysium. Yeah, he was a good person otherwise. Okay, poor, he got dealt a bad hand. The other thing that differs with this fight is that you can't kill him.

1:15:54 He will go down to about 20% health, and then a bell will ring, like it's at the end of a round of boxing. And then he'll call a stop to the fight. Interesting. He'll bow and then exit the arena, leaving you there with your reward. He's a good guy. He's like, we don't have to do this all the way. Come on, I get it. You did well enough, Zagreus, go for it. Yeah, over time, the two of you develop a very playful rivalry, always showing each other respect and viewing these fights as more sparring than actual fighting. I appreciate that. Honestly, Zagreus is just so fucking nice to everyone. It's amazing when the character doesn't like him. And, you know, to take it back a little more meta, his vocal performance is so insanely charming.

1:16:36 Yeah. He has almost what would be like a European continental accent. You know, it's kind of nondescript, but it's very charming. It's a little Tom Hiddleston is Loki, I almost say, like those are the tones I'm getting. It's so charming. I melt. It's true. And like I said, everybody likes him, and there's already a metric fuck ton of characters in this game, but there's only two more to meet. One character we did meet, and I kind of glanced past, was Skelly, the punching bag skeleton just outside your room. Oh, yeah. And if any character has mysterious lore, it's Skelly. Okay, so is it Sans?

1:17:19 Oh, God, don't start that, please. Oh, my God. That would be terrible, yeah. The headcanon on that would make you explode. Got it. Okay, no worries. And he looks more like the brother, anyway, of Sans. Papyrus, yeah. Oh, Papyrus is the worst. I get it. Well, Skelly isn't like the others because everybody else has, like, literal IRL thousands of years of history. But Skelly is an original character, and he's the only original character in the game. So the best they could come up with name-wise was Skelly. For the one original character is Skelly. Everyone else is like, Zagreus. Honestly, Papyrus would have been better thematically, but I understand the licensing issues with that.

1:18:02 Go on. Yeah, even though the voices are completely different and even played by different actors, I think he's supposed to be the narrator. Interesting. Because he also has a gold coin in his mouth and red eyes. Oh, there's something there. Yeah, I get you. Even so, Skelly has a New England accent and the narrator has a regular England accent. New England, like Skelly's from Maine? Yeah, he's got one of those accents. Maybe a little Boston in there or something. A little bit of a mass hole. Yeah. Skelly is also voiced by the same person as Zagreus, Darren Corb. So he's talking to himself a lot. Yeah, those scenes he's always talking to himself. Honestly, Darren Corb is just a talented motherfucker.

1:18:43 One of the most charming vocals in all of gaming, just straight up. It's like him and Kratos and Roger Clark's Arthur Morgan. Like, those voices will make me melt. And Zagreus and Skelly couldn't have more different voices if they tried. That's just talent. That's just him being like, look at me go. The only characters that even know Skelly exists, though, are Zagreus and Achilles. Hades has never even heard or seen him before. Hades is a very hands-off parent. That's fair. Skelly does seem to know a shitload about fighting and especially war, but it's all shrouded in mystery. He tells you several origin stories throughout the game, too.

1:19:23 Like he's the Joker talking about his scars. Oh, that's funny. At one point, he even gives you instructions on how to end his miserable existence of being your punching bag. As every time you kill him, he just reassembles like new without ever having to go through the river of sticks like you have to. But the instructions are just a joke, and he reassembles again, laughing about it as he does, because, of course, you fell for it. I feel like that would be a very Sans Papyrus joke. I promise I'll drop it after this, but that does still feel very in line with like skeleton humor as we know it in indie gaming. Yeah, it's just a little ode to that. It's a little genre I like to call skeleton humor. Finally, you should be able to make it to the zone bosses of Elysium.

1:20:06 You go to engage them and see that you're in a Colosseum. There are shades lining the seats of the Colosseum, cheering. And around the walls, we can see a poster of a beautiful bronze skinned man with blonde hair, as well as Asterius, the Minotaur. In the center, we find the man, along with Asterius. The man is King Theseus, the one who killed Asterius in life. Oh, they have to spend eternity together in Elysium? Actually, when Asterius saw that Theseus had managed to make it into Elysium, despite having killed him, he forgave and befriended him instead. This is the coolest fucking Minotaur in history. Yeah, it wasn't Theseus' fault he was in the Labyrinth.

1:20:49 He went, I get it, man. Yeah, and as far as Theseus knew, Asterius was just one of the many challenges of the Labyrinth. Wow, so they're friends now. Yeah. That really shows why they earned their way into Elysium. Right, it's the content of their character, really. Absolutely. Plus, Asterius had killed a bunch of people who also thought Asterius was one of the challenges before Theseus ever got there. So it required a lot of skill to kill him anyway. Problem being, Asterius seems to be the only one in the whole underworld who actually likes Theseus. He's the only one that can vouch for this dude. Yeah, Theseus had earned his place in Elysium due to his exploits as a hero in his teen years.

1:21:30 In his 20s and 30s, he started to believe his own legend, and when he died, he was kind of a blowhard dickhead. Yeah, he's kind of the very embodiment of everything Patroclus hates about Elysium. Patroclus is like, this is why I'm bummed all the time. It's people like him keep winning. I miss my boyfriend. I'm surrounded by the worst dudes ever. This sucks. Basically, King Theseus went from zero to hero to serial killer over time. That pipeline is just a straight line. Yeah, taking enjoyment in his ability to murder others with ease. Big yikes. American psycho.

1:22:11 Yeah, for this boss fight, you have to defeat both of them. Is this a tag team situation? No, they're both fighting you at the exact same time. Oh, that's great. Word of advice, go for Asterius first. If you encountered Asterius earlier as a mini boss in this round, he starts this encounter with less health. Theseus is a cocky asshole the whole time. He's clearly the Colosseum champion, and the shades are all cheering for him during the fight. But like Green Goblin once said to Spider-Man, there's nothing people love more than seeing their hero fall. The cheers become your name, and you can even do a victory lap around the stadium as you kill him. Oh, that's cool.

1:22:52 When you pass by this one gigantic shade, you'll tell him that one was for him, buddy. I love that. You're like working the crowd. Fully, yeah. Zagreus is such a ham. I kept hoping over time that the posters would change to you, but they never did. You're the away team. Yeah, you're the underdog. Yeah. You head up the stairs to the next staging area and move on to the fourth and final zone on your ascent out of the underworld, the Temple of Sticks. We're in a big room on a raised platform with the River Styx flowing beneath us. Straight ahead is a giant door, but Cerberus is blocking it.

1:23:32 Bad dog. Yeah, he's not going to let you through the story either. The narrator tells you that the tales of those who have tried to get past Cerberus are far too graphic to describe. To the right is a shop being run by Charon, with some very expensive but very powerful boons. To the left are five sewer tunnels. Above each tunnel, there is a prize sphere, with two of them having mini boss skulls. Beyond the door Cerberus is blocking is the gateway to Greece. You must find something called a Sader sack in order to feed Cerberus. And it's basically just a giant bag full of rats. The sewer system is different from the previous zones.

1:24:15 The prize in the sphere will not be in the next room. The rooms in the sewer system are much smaller with only a few bad guys to fight. And there aren't shades in these areas either. They're mostly ghouls and gorgons and poisonous rats. These fights are sprints, but you're pushed to kill everything much quicker. Each path culminates in one giant room with a big long onslaught of enemies. If it's a mini-boss path, the giant room has the typical stronger version of one of the enemies you've been fighting in the sewers. And weirdly, I'd say the mini-boss paths are actually easier, as the ones that end in an onslaught can go on for a really long time and drain your very limited health.

1:24:55 When you finish a path, you're sent back to Cerberus where you can shop, try a different path, or, if you found the Satyrsac, feed Cerberus. I bring you rats. The first path you take will always end in the big room, but after that first one, any one of the paths you take can lead to the Satyrsac, and it allows you to skip the final big room fight on that path, even if it was supposed to be a mini boss. There's also a fountain that will refill your health when you find the sac, fortunately, too. Oh, bless. After you find it, you can keep building your power down the other paths, if you so choose, or you can just feed the sac to Cerberus. But once you feed Cerberus, those sewer paths become closed off.

1:25:37 Oh, so you have to get it while you can get it. Got it. Yeah. After you feed Cerberus, he leaves and the door is open to you. He got his rats, he's out. Yeah, I'm so glad they don't make you fight Cerberus. No, he's a good boy. You're like, yo, I don't want to fight Cerberus. You're given the prompt, go out, and the golden white door before you opens, as you say, I did it. Oh. Light shines through, and you take your first steps out of the underworld. Wow, literally into the light. That's so funny. You see a big snowy field before you, and having lived in lava land your whole life, it's fucking cold for you.

1:26:19 Us moving from Los Angeles to Denver. Right. And you can see steam coming off your breath. There's a big lake just beyond the snow, and the full moon shines in its still water. You take in your surroundings like you're Jack Skellington in Christmas Town. And just like Jack, you see a big man dressed all in red and white. No, wait, shut the fuck up. Standing on the edge of the lake, you say, Oh, of course, as you recognize your father. It wasn't Santa Claus. I genuinely was holding out hope you'd get to fight Santa.

1:27:00 No, but your dad does look a lot like him. God damn it. Hades says he never cared for the way the air up here moves. He prefers the stillness of the air in the underworld. Your dad caught you sneaking out, and he is pissed. Have your parents ever caught you sneaking out? Not once. Hell yeah. Yeah, they never did, and I admitted it to him like maybe the day after when I would do it. Oh, really? I waited until I moved out to tell them all the dumb shit I did. But yeah, they never caught me sneaking out. You tell him that you really like the way the Breeze feels. You're also impressed because he busted out the Helm of Darkness just for you.

1:27:41 The Helm of Darkness? Hades says it should have never come to this. He was a good, kind parent. No, he wasn't. He had zero communication with you and instead sent all of his employees to parent you. Come on, dude, you're not a good parent. Well, your antics and attempts to escape have forced his hand. And since none of his servants could stop you, he has to do it himself. Oh no, now he's forced to parent his son. Jesus Christ, Hades. You rip into him because you've died so many times to get here, and you only died because his crybaby ass kept sending his servants to kill you instead.

1:28:24 Imagine how many games would be solved with one emotional conversation of just like, hey, here are my goals. Here's what I'm trying to do. Can you respect that? Great. Move on. What the fuck, Hades? Yeah, this isn't good parenting. This is being an asshole. Entirely. Hades pulls up, but did you really die? You're here now, aren't you? That motherfucker. Gods kill each other. That's just what we do for fun. The worst thing that happens is you go for a swim in the River Styx. He's here to give you a swimming lesson and send you back home. That's the darkest shit.

1:29:04 The fight with Hades is pure metaphor for a daddy issues relationship. Oh, I bet. You lash out at each other. He disappears only to show up suddenly and fuck your day up. Oh my god. You throw things at each other. He constantly mocks you, bringing in others and making them attack you as well. Oh, the narcissism. Hades is also extraordinarily strong. Oh, I bet. Yeah, hitting you twice as hard as the most difficult shade you've encountered. So the difficulty level getting up to this battle is wild. Oh, this is a fucking huge battle. He's also faster than anyone you've seen. But you keep at it, even if you have to die a dozen times and make it all the way back here, you do it.

1:29:49 Again, this fight is pure daddy issues, and that includes finally getting one up on your father. Yeah. Taking his health to zero and watching him fall to one knee as you finally beat him. And if you've ever been here in real life, then you likely know what comes next. Because a father will only let you think you beat them. Oh, Jesus Christ. I have a great relationship with my dad. I genuinely don't know what's coming next. Hades' health refills, and we go into round two of the fight. Oh, shit. Yeah, that wasn't even his final form. Shut up. Turns out, dad was holding out on you the first round.

1:30:30 Now he's even stronger and faster, and has attacks you haven't seen anyone in the game use before. What an ass kicker. Including losing his temper to the point, he shoots lasers in a way that is impossible to avoid unless you duck behind cover. This is some My Dad Can Kick Your Dad's Ass shit on a whole other level. Or, if you realize that rage issues can be solved in more ways than one, you can move towards Hades, and stand on top of him, effectively hugging him, and you won't get hurt when he uses these attacks. Unfortunately, a hug isn't going to cure this issue alone. Therapy will. And you still need to drop him to zero health.

1:31:11 When you do, he falls to both knees, and asks you how, and then tells you to go, get out of here, out of his sight. You tell him, that's exactly what you're going to do. But before you do, Hades' anger vanishes, and he says, wait, before you go, if you do find her, will you tell her that Cerberus is doing very well for me? Oh. You tell him, you don't know him shit. Hell yeah. And that if he wants a favor out of you, he needs to answer, why did Persephone leave in the first place? Before he can answer, the screen turns black the way it does when you die.

1:31:51 But instead of your body being all you can see, Hades is the only one we can see. He says the words, there is no escape, and he sinks into the blood beneath him. Ugh. We get a banner across the screen saying, Hades vanquished. As you say goodbye, father, you get a screen showing your stats for the escape. Telling you how long it took, the boons you acquired, what you used, all those fun stats. The screen goes away, and we're still in the snowy field. Ahead, there's an archway, light shining through it despite it being dark where we are. You pass through it and enter Greece.

1:32:35 You're high atop a mountain looking down on the ocean and the Greek islands below. It's unlike anything you've seen. And you say a very Peter Pan style phrase. Beyond the frozen overlook, await the first glimpse of the sun to your left, then onward through the cold. As you walk through this mountain's path, you start to see grass peeking out through the snow. And the sun is shining ahead, melting more of the ice. You shiver and cough, not used to the cold air, but continue forward. You eventually stop and say, no way, it can't be. You run forward, and the snow is completely gone.

1:33:16 It's lush and green, and you pass through an ivy-covered archway, where you enter a bustling and fruitful garden. There's fruits, vegetables and flowers everywhere. In the center of this garden of color and smells is a woman with light hair wearing muted beige linen clothing. She asks who you are. Nobody comes out this way, and this is private property. You show zero chill and open with, I think you're Persephone, and if you are, I think I might be your son. Oh my god, zero to sixty. Yeah. Zagreus, calm down. She snaps immediately and tells you to get the fuck out of here or she will make you get the fuck out of here.

1:34:02 Oh shit, she said get off my property. You take this anger as a sign that she is at least Persephone. I assume I'm right. And tell her you'll leave if she just explains why she left in the first place. You never even knew she existed until recently, and you want to know why this was all hidden from you. She says that you died almost the moment you were born. Your ankles of flame? They went out, and everyone told her that meant you were dead. So she ran in her grief. But here you stand, alive, and your ankles of flame burning bright. You're shocked because nobody told you that you had a complicated birth even.

1:34:45 And you realize that she didn't even know you were still alive when she left. She's blown away because Hades even kept the name Zagreus that she picked out for you. We get a screen that says, Sometime later. So Persephone is the goddess of the harvest. Oh, that's why she's gardening. Right. She was born of the goddess Demeter and a mortal, a human farmer. Does that make her a demigod? No, she still gets the status of full god because she was born on Mount Olympus. Only takes a drop. In her rebellious youth, she left Mount Olympus and secretly made her way to the Underworld, where she met a cute boy named Hades.

1:35:26 Is this her emo phase? Yeah. Screw you, dad. I'm going dark. They fell in love. She got pregnant, and when she thought she lost her child shortly after his birth, she ran from the Underworld, destroyed by grief. Oh. The scene comes back to Zagreus, finishing off the tale of defeating his father, and that he wanted her to know that Cerberus is doing well, which she's very happy to hear. But she wants to know more about your journey and discovery of the truth, but then she gets concerned as she looks at you. You're coughing still, and now you're sweating. She realizes, you don't belong in the mortal world, and there's nothing you can do about it.

1:36:06 You belong in the Underworld. Your body can't survive here. Your body's like rejecting this plane of mortal world. Yeah, and you're like, why are you kicking me out? And she says, I'm not. Nature is. This is a crime against nature, babe. You can't leave the Underworld any more than Hades can. The same would happen to him out here, which is why she came here in the first place. To get away from everyone? Yeah. Oh, honey. She thought that seeing him would bring back all the pain of having lost her son. She's thrilled to know you lived, but now she has to watch you die. You tell her that now that you know where she is, you can come back here.

1:36:47 Maybe Hades will even just let you now that you've found her. She tells you to tell him that she demands it. She also wants to know why nobody bothered to come here to let her know that you were alive this whole time. Hades always knew she hated the way Olympians lied and cheated on one another all the fucking time. And that's why she left Mount Olympus. She's like, you're all disgusting. She's pissed that Hades would do that to her, knowing how she felt. You tell her that you'll be back, however long it takes. And the river Styx takes you under. And you awaken back in the waiting pool of blood in the house of Hades. Because beating Hades isn't the end of the game.

1:37:29 If anything, it's only the beginning. Holy shit, death is only the beginning. Because now you have new questions that need answering. And you've met a bunch of gods and demigods on your journey. Even worse, Hades says he doesn't remember you beating him. What are you talking about? Hades is such a dick. He's a gaslighter, isn't he? Yeah, he's just the most toxic narcissist asshole. Yeah, you never saw your mother. Now shut the fuck up and get out of his sight. Oh my god, I have paperwork to do. Get out of here. You tell him fine. If we can't talk about this here, you'll have to meet him up top and talk about it there. Hell yeah. As you talk to your friends, you tell them about escaping and finding your mother, and they're all so excited and happy for you.

1:38:15 But they're also happy for themselves, because it's giving them hope that things that they thought were impossible might be possible now. Because like our friend Henry, Zagreus is able to break his cycle. Which is why Hades was publicly denying you beat him. He doesn't want people to realize that it's possible to defy him and escape. He's doing like ground control, like, nope, nope, everything's fine. You cannot leave the underworld. Shut up, Zagreus. But there's some that aren't so happy, like Megira. She says that you escaping is going to make Hades pissed at all the people that helped you escape or fail to stop you from escaping. True. You find out how he's going to do that when you next enter the room with Skelly.

1:38:55 There's now a skull above the gateway that sends you back to Tartarus to begin your escape. Once you try to walk through it, you get a message. Hades has added something called a Pact of Punishment to the Underworld. Pact of Punishment? If you want more rewards and better power-ups, you need to add punishments to make the escape more difficult. So there's things like take 25% more damage, have less health, zone bosses are stronger. There are actually 14 different possible punishments. Each one also has higher levels of difficulty. But the rewards are better, so there's a trade-off. It's really just there to keep the difficulty rating increasing while you play through the game, trying to get you back to your mom.

1:39:40 On these attempts, we get the ability to unlock some more story with the people we've met along the way. We inform Orpheus and Eurydice that you know both of them and pass notes between the two. Eurydice is still a little bitter at Orpheus for getting her stuck here, but once she finds out Orpheus is a slave, she feels bad for him and starts to miss him. We also start to pass notes between Patroclus and Achilles. But Patroclus is worried that Achilles has turned into the rest of the people that he hates in Elysium anyway. He's so pessimistic, this poor baby. Yeah, he thinks Achilles is just going to be another big dumb jock warrior. Because while they died on the same battlefield, Patroclus died really early in the battle, like weeks earlier than Achilles.

1:40:27 Oh, shit. So he knows Achilles killed a bunch of people in that battle, killing so many that someone had to research how to kill Achilles in order to stop his bloodlust. And like, how do you hit someone with an arrow in the heel? That takes a lot of tries. Yeah, exactly. And then there's poor old Sisyphus and Boldy. He doesn't have a love other than Boldy. He just doesn't like being tortured by the furies. He sees that you and Magira seem to get along and asks if you could maybe talk to her into easing up on him. And this is when Meg reveals to you that there's a contract on each of these gift givers.

1:41:08 She's under orders to torture and annoy Sisyphus, just like there's a contract keeping Orpheus and Eurydice apart. Same with Achilles and Patroclus. All of their misery is because Hades made contracts requiring all of it to take place. Hades is a licensing lawyer. And he's an asshole one at that. I love that they really packed in every bad aspect of a person into Hades. Into Hades, right? You know? It's giving corporate trauma. Of course, all of these conversations are happening during and in between escape attempts. And eventually, you'll make it to Hades again, and you can have that chat he owes you.

1:41:49 He says that you know what happens when you go to Greece, and yet you still persist on escaping. You tell him that if he would just answer all your questions, you would have no reason to leave. You tell him that Persephone wants to know some things too. But he says he's going to have to save his breath for the fight that you're about to have. And even after killing him, he still won't say shit, so you go on. Oh my god, he's such a prick. If you manage to get to Persephone, she tells you more about her current life and the events that led to her both arriving in and escaping from the underworld. You ask if Hades was abusive at all, and she says not in the slightest. He was stubborn sometimes, but he was nothing but kind and loving towards her.

1:42:31 Ugh. Her pregnancy was difficult, and Hades and Nyx told her that a child born of a half-human won't ever survive in the underworld, even if the other half is God. He's only a quarter-human. Yeah. So when you were born dead, she ran. You die again, and you have new questions to ask Hades. Like, why did you lie to both of you about any of this? What was the purpose in doing that? You return to House of Hades, and on the returns where you killed Hades, he's not in his throne when you get back. When he beats you, he's not usually there either. Nyx often is, but she has a whole these lips are sealed kind of contract she can't break in regards to your origin story, so she's not much help.

1:43:17 She's under NDA. Yeah. What's funny, though, is Hypnos also has no record of how you died when you either get killed by or get past Hades. That's like his whole deal is logging it. Yeah, and he asks you, but you don't tell him anything, and he starts marking it off as natural causes. Another fun thing that happens after you first defeat of Hades is the next time you encounter the Lernaean Bone Hydra, you realize you just keep calling it Bone Hydra, and that maybe if he had a proper name, he wouldn't be so grumpy. You have no sense of identity, man. You can be your own Hydra. So you tell the Hydra that you're just going to call him Lerny from now on. This is not calm Lerny at all. No, Lerny is just like, now Lerny is angry, fuck you.

1:44:01 Yeah, and when you defeat it, instead of getting a banner saying, Hydra vanquished, you get one saying Lerny vanquished. That's very cute, I like that a lot. Yeah, and the Hydra is Lerny for the rest of the game. Hades eventually starts to realize, you won't stop until you get some answers. So he starts to provide some in the hopes he can get you to stop. He tells you that he didn't lie. He genuinely believed that you would die at birth. And when your ankle fire went out, he figured it meant you were dead. Plus, it was prophesied that his heir would die. And there he was with a dead son. Yeah. Nyx was the one who actually saved your life and got you to wake up. Since your mother had run off and Nyx had given you life, they referred to her as your mother.

1:44:48 Oh, I get that. When you tell this to Persephone, she's shocked because it was Nyx that facilitated her escape from the underworld. Nyx is up to some shit. She kept Persephone hidden on her journey, allowing her to escape undetected. But it was well after that that she revived you. Okay, so she didn't know that she's not doing too much shady shit. She's like, I'm so sorry. Let's get you out of here. This isn't gonna be fun for you. You just popped out, a stillborn, no fun. Let's get you not old home, but a new home. Gets you out, comes back home. Oh, I think I can save the baby. Shit. Right. And then Hades put her under contract.

1:45:28 Then he's like, I need you to sign an NDA. He comes in while she's holding the baby with paperwork and a pen and is like, can you put the baby down? I have something for you. You ask Persephone if she would have come back as she had known. She says she would have gladly waited through hell to see her only son. Oh, honey. You ask what if Hades wouldn't want her waiting through hell? What if he wanted something else for her? But you die again before you can elaborate. When you next speak to Hades, you ask about the contracts on everyone throughout the underworld, wondering why he has so many on them. He says that he's pushed so many, he doesn't know what you're talking about.

1:46:11 Be more specific. I have a lot of people under NDA. But if you're so concerned, then why don't you just end their contracts? You're the prince of the underworld. You have that power. You just need to find them. This opens up one of the two locked rooms we discovered on our first trip out of House of Hades. It's the room where everyone's contracts are kept. And there's millions of them, written on scrolls stacked as high as the eye can see. So it's not as simple as just grabbing it and ending it. You have to ask a bunch of people questions until you find out where each one is kept before you can terminate it. This will take place over several escape attempts too, requiring Nectar and Ambrosia to loosen their lips.

1:46:55 And you find out that Hades actually has reason for keeping Persephone in the dark about you. It has to do with the Olympian gods and the fact that they think she's dead. Hades says if they were to find her, it would be disastrous, as they would be pissed to find out she's been hiding from them all these years. Oh, so they would be like, they would not treat her well if they find out that she's just out there in the world. Yeah, any disruption, any rumbling of something going on in the underworld would draw eyes, and that could reveal her existence to them. In hearing this, you start to realize Hades still cares about and is protecting Persephone. He's still a bad parent, but he was trying to keep it all under wraps to keep her safe.

1:47:39 And he's like, if we ruffle up feathers, they're going to start looking, and we can't let them bring the fury of the gods, literally, on my girl. Right. On your next visit, you tell her this, and she just simply doesn't believe it. He's a powerful god. He could easily come find her and tell her what was going on. She says there's no possible way he gives one flying fuck about her, because when she left, she never heard from him. No scouting party, nothing until you showed up, telling her that her whole life is a lie. On the next visit, you tell her that the Olympians have been helping you, but that they think it's so you can come visit them.

1:48:19 And yeah, and I was like an olive branch of like, hey, long lost cousin, what's up? Borrow some water. I am Poseidon, your uncle. So she freaks out, worried that you've led them to her. She's like, well, shit, now they're going to watch you, and you've been here like, what, five, six times? Come on, buddy. Yeah, you assure her that they seem to have no clue she's still alive, and you die and return, and she tells you about how she grew up looking at paintings of the gorgeous Hades, and she saw him as kind of a celebrity crush. Like the bad boy? Oh. Yeah, she heard his siblings tell all sorts of terrible stories about him, and while they thought it made him sound bad, to her, he sounded so fucking cool.

1:49:05 I love the idea of a star fucker with the gods, you know? But based on how they felt about him, they'd be convinced that Hades seduced her and took her to the Underworld, when in fact, she went after him. The drama. If they were to find out, she thinks there would be war between the Underworld and Mount Olympus, which is why they can't find out she's alive. That's the only reason for the secrecy. He's just trying to prevent a war. He never cared about Persephone. He was just trying to protect his kingdom. You die once again, with a mission to find proof that Hades loves her and wants her to be safe and isn't just trying to prevent a war.

1:49:50 With love on your mind, you also set about absolving the contracts of your friends. You find the contract keeping Orpheus enslaved, and you absolve it. This gives Orpheus the freedom to go anywhere in the Underworld he wants. And the next time we make it to Eurydice's place, in Asphodel, we can see them reunited. Oh! Singing together in perfect, beautiful harmony. Wait, I didn't think this would be so romantic. It's all about love in the end. It really is. They're so grateful for you reuniting them, and Orpheus even teaches you to play the harp over time as well. Oh, that's cool, because he's inspired again.

1:50:32 He's like, I have the fire in me. I'm here, and the fact that he hasn't sung for so long, and he sees he gets his girl back, and they're just harmonizing. Oh, it's beautiful. When you return to the house, Orpheus is still there on occasion, but the reason being Eurydice just really enjoys her home that she's built for herself. And there's no returning to Earth again anyway for either of them. Yeah. And now Orpheus sees this as a job, and you can hear him sing when you enter the House of Hades, since he once again has a reason to sing. This is so beautiful. What the fuck? You can also absolve the contract that keeps Sisyphus bound and tormented. The Fury Sisters are no longer required to harass him, and they leave him alone.

1:51:17 He also no longer has to push Boldy up the hill, but Sisyphus has grown quite attached to Boldy. Well, you spend so much time with someone. Yeah, he couldn't imagine leaving Boldy. It's like, look at that face. I'm not walking away. Yeah, so he stays with Boldy, because at least now, he's not getting harassed any longer. Finally, there's Achilles and Patroclus. It's mostly the same for them. The contract is destroyed, and they can reunite. Achilles goes to visit Patroclus, but he's still a cranky fuck. It's kind of Bill and Frank from The Last of Us, the TV show version. Oh, I love that! But Achilles still feels a need to help you, because now you're finding out so much about your past and your life.

1:52:00 One god I've really left out is Nyx. Being the woman who you thought was your mother your whole life, you're still really close with her. Yeah, and you know what? Her heart was always in the right place, from what it sounds like, you know? She was like, I didn't push this baby out, but I'm fucking here from day one. I will be there for you. Like, her girl for Stephanie had to get out. She's like, I'll sneak you out. Like, that is a ride or die ass bitch. Bully, and she just had a contract that was preventing her from revealing too much. Yeah, she's like, I'm under NDA with your dad, man. Like, I can't do this. And even still, she often trickles you as much information as she can get away with. She's trying her best for the loopholes and shit. Yeah, and these lead you to question Hades or Persephone and get you, like, the real answers.

1:52:45 So the things Nyx has been telling you kind of get reiterated and then developed in your conversations with Hades and Persephone, so it can get a little redundant. However, one thing you find out is that she has not seen her technical parent chaos in centuries, so you manage to help her reunite with him as well. You still need to get proof that Hades loves Persephone and that all of this isn't just an attempt to prevent war. But it's kind of hard to find proof of something like that, and on your next visit, Persephone tells you that it's just too dangerous. She no longer wants you to visit her. This potential war is far more dangerous than you realize. So she's like, I love you, but it's not worth it anymore.

1:53:28 Like, you're putting all of us in danger. Yeah, the Olympians killed their own parents and sprinkled the pieces of their body parts across the lava rivers of Asphodel. Holy shit. Imagine what they can do to Hades and to her. She knows Hades is smart, and that if he thinks she needs to stay hidden, then he's probably right. You lose it on her, because after all you've been through, after all the deaths and dealings you've had to go through, she wants you to just give up and never return. All because she's worried something might happen. So you tell her, stop being stubborn and stupid.

1:54:09 Come back to the underworld with you. The ink is calling you both. Sorry, wrong game. The River Styx is calling you both. Hades can keep you safer there than he can here. Right? Like, it feels like the Olympians would have more visibility into Greece than they would in the underworld. Come on, Mom. Yeah, they just don't know to look at Greece. That's the only reason she's safe there. Yeah, they fully think she's dead so they haven't gone looking. Oh my God. But she still doesn't believe that Hades gives a shit about her and that the only thing he cares about is preventing this war, which she agrees is the only thing any of you should be worrying about. She said, my ex is a politician, not a romantic.

1:54:50 Let's be practical here. As you die, she tells you that she does truly love you and that she never wants to see you again. Oh, fuck! Goodbye, Zagreus. And you once again get taken by the river sticks. You tell Nyx what she said about not ever returning, and she says that her reasoning is honestly pretty legit. She then asks, what do you plan on doing? And you tell her, you're going back anyway. Nyx says, good. Oh, Nyx is a romantic. So you fight your way to Hades once more. Ever since the first time you beat him, he just taunts you when you engage him. No real development, just taunts.

1:55:32 But on this attempt, he has something to say. He calls Persephone his queen, commanding reverence, awe and fear. She wasn't just a prize to be won. She was truly the queen of the underworld. She wasn't just a groupie, she was my ride or die. And he loved her for it. He has never treated you well because he resents you for making her leave. Oh, fuck. The fact you suffered is the proof he offers as his love for Persephone. That's a cop-out, but okay. Oh my god. And then you once again fight to the death. When you return to Persephone, she's like, what the fuck, dude?

1:56:14 I told you to stay away. Listen to me. I like it here. I have a life here, and I'm happy. Your father and I aren't together anymore. You need to accept that. But you insist that Hades still loves her and that the three of you can actually be together, happy and in the underworld. Because neither you nor Hades can survive here in Greece the way she can, thanks to her human form. She tells you to stop telling her that Hades loves her. You have no way of actually knowing that, and it's just mean to imply otherwise. Why are you trying so hard to put something so broken back together? You promise her that you'll find the proof. You'll show her Hades still loves her and that you can have your family together.

1:56:58 And she says, oh, my poor dear boy, as you die once more. It's got to be so hard for her, too. She's put this whole life behind her, and now every three days, her son comes back and then hangs out for 45 minutes and then dies in her garden. Her garden probably looks amazing with the fertilizer, but the trauma is not worth it. You return to the house of Hades, and you have an idea. The final locked door that we haven't entered yet is your father's bedchambers. Having helped Achilles reunite with Patroclus, he helps you break into your father's room. You get in there, and you search his belongings.

1:57:40 Finally, you find the proof you were looking for. You find the royal portrait of Persephone, dressed all in red, black and white, the colors of the house of Hades. All these years, centuries really, Hades still keeps her picture next to his bed, so she's the last thing he sees before sleeping every night. You fight your father, telling him you finally know the truth, that he loves Persephone, and that you're gonna tell her. I'm gonna tell. So he fights you again, and he dies as you return to Greece to see your mother. You tell her about the portrait by his bedside. She's confused. Why would he have it out after all these years?

1:58:20 And you tell her that she's being obtuse. It never left his bedside. She finally realizes the truth. Hades really does still love her. So you ask her for the first time if she ever loved him in return. That is an important thing. You may have wanted to ask that earlier. I agree, right? That feels like a pretty baseline thing to ask, mom. It was ancient Greek. It was still pretty man dominated. Yeah, but he's trying to like parent trap them back together in his own like death way. Like, come on, buddy. Well, fortunately, she says yes. She really did love him. He gave her the freedom she always wanted. Let her pursue her own hobbies, have her own friends.

1:59:03 He let me garden. It was great. He was respectful and kind to her, and honestly, a perfect partner. Terrible dad, but great boyfriend. You tell her it's time. She needs to come visit, at least to see how Cerberus is doing. Yeah, don't forget about the dog. She needs to put all these issues aside. Besides, the Olympians have been helping you. They like you, and you're sure you can convince them to be cool about all this, even if they do find out. He's like, it's family. We'll deal with the in-laws, like Hades will put on a tie, it'll be fine. But she says there's no way she'd be welcome there. She's a queen who abandoned her kingdom after all.

1:59:44 You die once again, begging her to reconsider. You confront Hades at his desk. You lay out what you know, which is mostly everything by this point. He's pissed at you for uncovering the truth to the questions he kept telling you to stop chasing. And you're rifled through his shit. You have no idea the danger you're putting the underworld into. You ask Nyx about what she saw when Hades and Persephone were together. She says that Hades was so different when she was around. He was kinder, softer, and Nyx saw the best in him during that time. We're still. Hades knew he was better when she was around. You set off again to confront and kill your dad, and seek out your mother for more answers.

2:00:26 By now, you've defeated Hades nine times. When you approach him, he's feeling quite defeated. You ask why he never did anything to save his family. Why did he let her go? He says that yes, he loved her, still does, and that he's only ever wanted to keep her safe by keeping her hidden. But you're so fucking persistent, and honestly, quite good at beating him now. So go, just fucking go to her. He doesn't even try to fight you? He doesn't even fight you. But understand, if the Olympians find out and bring their wrath down upon her, nothing will stop Hades from killing you the way he killed his parents, permanently.

2:01:09 And Hades lets you pass without fighting. You arrive at Persephone's cottage, and when you get there, she's standing with a big suitcase at her feet. She's thrilled to see you, and you ask, what's up with the bag? She just tells you that she was hoping she could surprise you, but oh well. She's coming back to the Underworld. And she's intending on setting out quite shortly. But now that you're here, maybe you can just come back with her instead of her having to watch you die for the tenth time in front of her. Also, what was her plan? Was she just going to run in front of a bowl or something and like unalive herself to get back down to man's? Well, you also agree, but wonder what she means. How are you going to return if not by dying?

2:01:51 She says she happens to know a guy. Oh? You look over to the side of Persephone's cottage, and you can see a river that runs alongside it. Standing at its side is Karen, the Stygian boatman. Oh. The two of you hop on the boat, and you start to feel good, like you're not about to die. Oh. Persephone explains that while this river is water, it leads straight into the river Styx, so you're no longer in the mortal realm, technically. Karen begins to paddle the boat like a Venetian gondolier. Persephone says, it's best if the two of you just sit back and enjoy the ride, like a couple of souls off to their final resting place.

2:02:33 Music begins to play, and you go, wait, isn't this an Orpheus song? Orpheus and Eurydice begin to sing, as the words, Supergiant Games, fills the left side of the screen. And the credits roll. The credits keep rolling, and the music keeps playing, as Karen roads you through the different zones of the underworld. Down through Elysium, back into Asphodel, and finally, arriving in Tartarus. At the door with your father's face, where you began every escape attempt. The credits and music end, and you tell Persephone that it's pretty embarrassing, but you don't know how to get back in through this door.

2:03:18 I've never had to go this way. I'm so sorry, mom. I know I grew up here. No idea what to do. And she's like, you know I'm the queen, right? She checks him immediately. So she just tells the door to open, and it does. You walk into the garden of House of Hades, an area that was not accessible before. Oh, because it was for a garden. You hear the bark of a dog, and Persephone runs over to see her favorite good boy Cerberus. Standing next to Cerberus is Hades. He says hi, but she only has eyes for Cerberus. Well, when you get an excited dog, like you can't look at anything else when they're like jumping on you and excited and wagging.

2:04:02 I get it. Finally, he apologizes for everything. Persephone says, that's great, but she's not the only one he owes an apology to. Girl. Hades doesn't offer any more apologies, but wonders why she agreed to return. If her mother Demeter finds out she's here, well, have you ever heard the phrase, when hell freezes over? Persephone says, of course she knows what will happen, but she has some ideas, and she'll need some help and cooperation from both Hades and you. Or she can just go back to Greece and go back into hiding. Of course Hades wants her to stay, so he hears her out.

2:04:42 But first, he still owes an apology, which he finally gives to you. Okay, that's growth, dad. A true, honest apology from the heart, with no excuses and without asking for forgiveness on your part. You're still pissed at how he handled everything, saying he didn't have to be a dick on top of lying to you. Right? But whatever, he's fucking Hades, so it just kind of comes with the territory that he's not a nice guy. That's fair. At least now you understand why he did it. But now what? You've tried escaping so many times, you kind of like it and don't really want to stop. This is just fun now. Hades says that your many attempts have actually revealed a bunch of flaws in the security system here.

2:05:24 He asks if you wouldn't mind continuing to test it using the Packs of Punishment to increase the security measures and difficulty and then try and escape again. Persephone says that if you're going up anyway, would you mind tending to a garden in Greece before heading back? Plus, if you keep trying to escape, the Olympians won't get suspicious because you stop trying. You ask if Hades will still be there, trying to stop you too. And he says of course, we have to keep up appearances, so expect him to come at you hard. That's funny. The screen fades away, and we come back to a watercolor painting. It depicts Cerberus, Hades, Persephone and Zagreus standing together as a loving family.

2:06:08 The narrator chimes in, saying that the family would go on to rule for eternity in relative harmony, with Mount Olympus never discovering what truly happened. And the screen fades to black, officially ending the main storyline of the game. That's fucking great. Except it's not actually over. Because now you have a job to do as head of security for the underworld. So my dad's the head of the underworld, my mom's the goddess of gardening, slash the queen of the underworld, and I run security. And also now that you did the impossible and got your divorced parents back together, you think you can do anything. So you want to get Mount Olympus back on your side too.

2:06:49 What's that parent trap ego? This part takes a lot longer than even the main portion of the story, so I'm just going to break it down really fast. You have to max out your friendship with every Olympian god, offering nectar and ambrosia to get them to like you. Once you're BFFs with all of them, you throw a party, and everyone from Mount Olympus comes down and has a great time and are all so excited to see Persephone alive and well. They love meeting you, and after the party they continue helping you escape, knowing that it's just your job now. And everyone, genuinely, lives happily forever after. Until humans switch to monotheism anyway.

2:07:29 That was fucking amazing. And that was Hades. Holy shit. It's a love story. It's a fucking love story, right? How the fuck was that a love story? It's a love story and a soap opera and a drama and an action and a comedy. It is all the things wrapped up in one. It's everything. I mean, this is why they call those mythology stories epics, right? Like this was fucking epic. Oh, I loved that. This game is not just a great story. It's so much fucking fun to play. Yeah, I love the music and I love the art and all the vocal performances are so perfectly horny.

2:08:12 Right? Oh, so true. This is the horniest game I think we've played in a long time. We play a lot of horny games. You know, these video game creators, they like to see some love come together. It's true, right? I love, you know, you found your way, you went the distance, you went from zero to hero. So beautiful. Oh, stop bringing Hercules into this. I've held off for so fucking long. Don't come for me. I showed restraint, motherfucker. That's fair. You really did. Well, if you enjoyed that Goombas, please make sure you've liked and subscribed to our show.

2:08:52 We are still going strong for season seven. We got so much more coming. Yeah, and if you do like and subscribe, it does help us reach other people, and we'd love to grow the show because this is so much fun, and we really enjoy doing it. If you want to see other episodes that we've done, you can check out our website. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. And that also has links to our Patreon, where we have some more hidden episodes. Like we mentioned, Donkey Kong is up there. I have a very kind of like spooky one coming up for this season that I'm really excited for. You do. You've done Pokemon Go on there. We've done Tetris. We have all sorts of really fun, very different versions of this show. Yeah, they're kind of games that maybe don't fit the mold for what the traditional format is, but they're all really, really fun.

2:09:39 Totally. And as a thank you for all the people that sign up for our Patreon, we just want to give a quick little shout out to everybody a part of our Goomba gang. So we have Trevor, Molly, Brian, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, Ellen, and Tijen. Thank you so much for your support. It helps us make this show, and we are very grateful. Yes, thank you so much. And until next time Goombas, this is Tom and Andrea reminding you... Go to hell. Don't skip the cutscenes. And believe in love.