Supergiant Games, the studio behind hugely successful indie titles like Bastion and Transistor, has made waves recently with the surprise release of Hades, out of early access. In the process of the game's explosive release, Creative Director Greg Kasavin spoke with Game Rant about his role at Supergiant Games, as well as the development of Hades from before and after it had already been in player hands two years ago.
Many of the following questions were written before the surprise launch of Hades on PC and Switch, with v1.0 officially taking the game out of Early Access. However, Kasavin does reveal a number of key aspects of the title's development, and developer insights into the opportunities allowed thanks to Early Access letting developers build the game alongside the community.
GR: Holding the title of Writing & Design at Supergiant, can you elaborate on your role in crafting the world players explore in Hades?
A: My title at Supergiant is creative director, and at the start of a project my job revolves around helping identify and formulate what sort of game we're going to make. Questions range from what theme will it have to what will it be called, and so on. We are highly collaborative at Supergiant so our games don't just come from any one person on team, and a big part of my job is synthesizing the team's ideas through a cohesive-feeling story and world that's built around those ideas. Then, once we know what we're doing (more or less!), a big part of my job is writing and narrative design. I write our characters and ultimately integrate all the story content into our games. I also work closely with Darren Korb our composer and audio director not just on all the voiceover but on integrating his wonderful music and sound effects into the experience, ultimately to try and get it to feel a certain way.
GR: Coming from a gaming journalism background, what was the transition from writing about games to writing for games like?
A: I was fortunate that my job at GameSpot involved not just managing an editorial time and reviewing a lot of games myself, but working on the web site itself in a cross-disciplinary way. Since my job involved collaborating with programmers and artists as well as other writers, that helped prepare me to make the leap into game development, something I'd always wanted to do since I was a little kid. My background as a game critic, meanwhile, meant I could always come up with references for different types of features or ideas. It's very rare that ideas are completely new, and it's important to study examples of games that have already explored ideas you're thinking about as a developer.
GR: Each Supergiant game has a different style and sensibility. Can you talk a little bit about the process of deciding what the next game is going to be? Is the process ever influenced by the previous game(s)?
A: Each game we've made at Supergiant has been heavily informed by the last game we made, ever since our first game, Bastion. It's very important to us to pursue an idea that we're inherently excited to explore, gameplay-wise, aesthetically, and thematically. We love creating worlds and characters in our games, and value creating experiences that don't quite remind us of games we've already played before. But, overall, we've started each project on different terms than the last, so we don't have a single way of doing things. Hades was unique among our games in that we planned it more up front, something we've never done before. With Hades, we identified that we wanted to make an Early Access game first and foremost, to see what we could build in partnership with our community. The rogue-like dungeon crawler format and the Greek myth theme flowed from that idea, emerging as ingredients we're really excited about.
GR: What Weapon Aspect is your favorite to pick up and dive into the Underworld with?
A: Oof, this is like asking me to pick a favorite child! The Weapon Aspects system is one of my favorite parts of the whole game in how these different transformations dramatically affect my playstyle and look really distinct as well. If I'm going to pick one just offhand, I'll go with the Aspect of Zeus for Aegis, Shield of Chaos. Normally the Shield can be quickly boomerang-thrown, but the Aspect of Zeus creates this slow-moving whirling dervish of a lighting storm. You can learn to place it and recall it when needed, adding complex new considerations during battle.
GR: What do you hope to be the biggest takeaway that players will resonate most with when it comes to what you’ve contributed to the development of Hades?
A: I hope that Hades opens players' eyes to just how much untapped storytelling potential there is in the rogue-like genre. More than that, I hope we have done justice to the inspiring source material behind Hades. While no prior knowledge of or experience with Greek myth is expected let alone required to enjoy the game, maybe it will make some players out there want to learn more.
GR: Has the current COVID pandemic affected development of Hades in any way, such as lockdowns and quarantines causing minor or major delays?
A: At Supergiant, we've all been working remotely since early March. Overall, we made this transition pretty easily, as just about all of us were already set up for remote work, and we tended to work from home at least one day a week anyway. We're very fortunate that the pandemic was not more disruptive to our day-to-day operations, and I think in some way this good fortune spurred us to want to do our best even more than usual, given the situation we found ourselves in.
GR: Are there any unique difficulties that come with developing a game in this genre, such as the pacing of the story and introduction of bosses, that wasn’t as prevalent for Supergiant’s previous titles?
A: Development of this game was filled with unique challenges for our team! We've never created a game in Early Access before, and that profoundly affected many aspects of how we worked. The rogue-like structure was also very new for us. Our previous games are for the most part quite tightly scripted, and we would pore over every detail in each scene. With Hades, we needed to embrace the randomness integral to this style of game, and accept that this game was going to be so big that none of us would ever see everything possible that can happen in it. That shift of mindset was scary and exciting! I think we found a good middle ground between that rogue-like sense of randomness and the narrative-driven, crafted feel of our past games.
GR: On the topic of bosses, are there any new boss fights that you can give fans some hints at an upcoming encounter that isn’t currently available in the early access?
A: We added a hidden boss fight relatively late in development, and our v1.0 launch version includes the 'Extreme Measures' version of the final boss fight! It's optional but the most challenging fight in the whole game. Extreme Measures is one of the difficulty-increasing Conditions of our Pact of Punishment system, and it transforms every boss fight quite dramatically, often adding new story events in addition to restructuring the gameplay.
GR: Similar to never-before-seen bosses, can fans expect to see more Weapons Aspects on release that they might not be familiar with from the current early access build yet?
A: Our v1.0 launch version includes one final hidden Aspect, for the Twin Fists of Malphon. I really like this Aspect, as it totally transforms the look and feel of the Twin Fists into something more savage-looking. I don't want to give away too much about it, though!
GR: Are there plans to port Hades to any other consoles besides Nintendo Switch in the future? Next-gen plans?
A: We've launched v1.0 of Hades only on Nintendo Switch, and PC and Mac via Steam and the Epic Games Store. We'll be considering opportunities to bring the game to additional platforms down the line. Thank you for your interest!
GR: Will there be any Switch or PC exclusive content that might incentivize players to go for one platform over another?
A: We wanted to make the full experience of the game available on all platforms, and held nothing back. I personally don't always like the experience of having to choose platform versions of games based on exclusive content in those versions, as rather than feeling like a bonus, it more feels like a punishment, like something is being held back. There are cases where it does make sense, though we didn't think it was the right approach for Hades at launch.
GR: While Supergiant doesn’t exactly have a history of releasing DLC, will there be post-launch support that could include additional content coming to Hades after the game releases?
A: We put everything we've got into v1.0 of Hades! As always around our game launches or Major Updates, we'll be monitoring this launch closely to ensure it's as problem-free as possible for all players, deploying patches as needed to address any issues. Once we're sure things are in a good spot, our small team will be taking a break to recharge, and plan what's next. Looking further ahead to 2021 and beyond, we'll be excited to say more about what's in store for us just as soon as we're ready.
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Hades is available now for PC and Switch.