“In the short run, we plan to deploy at least a couple of relatively small patches to improve parts of the game where we can think of short-term improvements,” Greg Kasavin says.
Hades 2 feels kind of like the original Hades seen through a mirror, darkly. You liked killing your dad? Get ready to kill your granddad next, only this time you’ll be descending into the underworld rather than escaping up through it. The god who oversees the hub you return to between runs will now be the first boss rather than the last. Instead of trying to kill Hades, you’ll be trying to save him. And instead of playing his son, you’ll be playing his daughter. That daughter, Melinoë, has heterochromia just like her brother, the first game’s protagonist Zagreus, only her eye colors are flipped—another mirroring.
Even the way she controls is a complementary reversal of her brother, favoring range over close quarters and careful positioning over frantic dashing. “Melinoë’s upbringing is very different from that of Zagreus, as she’s trained extensively as a witch, sorceress, necromancer, and assassin,” Greg Kasavin, creative director on Hades 2, explains. “Where Zagreus is prone to impulsiveness, Melinoë can be more calculating, even ruthless. Her moveset is designed to reflect that, and we want for players to navigate the various challenges of Hades 2 from her point of view. So when it comes to battle, if Zagreus broadly encapsulates fighter/barbarian-style archetypes, then Melinoë broadly encapsulates caster/assassin-style archetypes, capable of powerful screen-clearing abilities that reward the player for using them at just the right times.”
The specifics of how Melinoë plays were arrived at over several years of iteration, and are still being refined in early access with the first patch tweaking her dash and sprint. But, Kasavin says, “the focus on Melinoë and her witchcraft was there from the start. In developing our first-ever sequel, we had to think carefully about what we felt truly defined a Hades game.
