I don’t really understand what the issue is. Don’t use it if you don’t want to. I am completely in love with the atmosphere and characters, but I suck at games. I am 7 hours in and have only made it to the third world. I am getting frustrated with it, but I still have a ton of stuff to unlock apparently, so I am seeing how it goes. I plan on turning on god-mode at some point just so I can see how it plays out.
There are literally a dozen other places on the forum where we’ve talked about it, but I’ll try to explain. As I’ve said before, it’s a matter of how designers tune their games. When they leave it up to me to determine the calculus of difficulty, progression, risk, reward, and so forth, they’re opting out of a significant part of the game design process. I don’t want a button without any context to magically make the game easier any more than I want a button to instantly jump to the 100% completion endgame. Supergiant’s “god mode” is a poorly implemented feature, especially given how careful they are with all the other design elements. There are ways to build variable difficulty into a game design, and Hades includes several of those! Too bad they decided to undermine it by saying, “enh, whatever, here’s a button so you take less damage, you figure it out…”.
Why not turn it on now? What’s stopping you? Do you enjoy taking extra damage? :)
-Tom
I can’t tell if this is a joke, but there’s fishing? Actually, never mind. One of the reasons I stayed out of the other thread was because I really enjoyed discovering stuff as the game introduced it. If there’s fishing, I don’t want to know yet!
-Tom
Because I am enjoying the challenge now. I am having fun and it seems like there is so much stuff to unlock that it might help overcome my frustration. It’s worked so far.
Meg seemed impossible at one point, now she’s easy. Every time I get frustrated with the game, I seem to overpower what was causing the frustration. I assume at some point that will change, and I will hit god-mode, but for now, it’s fun.
Tom talking about the pacing reminds me about my infinite quest to find a game that really connects to my brain. In the 2000’s I was into all the flash Tower Defense games because it felt like it’s the answer, at least for me. You have a phase of planning and building, usually, there’s no hurry. Then there’s a cathartic action and you’re not supposed to plan a lot in this phase, you mostly follow the plan. You get intense moments of action combined with moments of clarity and contemplation. You can say it’s similar to RTS but in StarCraft or Age of Empires you’re supposed to switch between those modes all the time, your brain lights up all at once. It might be very stressful and I think this is why people love 10 minutes truce options in RTS turning it into a game with 2 distinct phases.
So Hades is completely different from TD games or anything like that. But for me the pacing is great not because there’s no downtime but because of this loop of intense action and planning. It is there on two levels. First you have talking and planning before the run versus the run itself. Then every room might explode with action but then almost always gives you a choice or two: which boon to take, which reward to aim at next. It’s brilliant. It really works for me massaging my brain in all the different places. I love Slay the Spire but that game is all planning, choosing which card I add to the deck as a reward for the encounter is a complex calculation that is not unlike thinking which card to play during the encounter itself.
Also I’m offended by Tom saying drunk uncle is bad. He’s great. He’s a cool uncle. Everyone needs an uncle like that.
It’s fascinating to see Tom getting slowly out of his love affair with Hades in an article explaining why it could have been so good!
I too find the whole thing about God mode confusing.
Can you combine Heat with God mode? If so, that’s so dumb. If not, well, I guess everything is alright with the world again.
I have been finding a lot of rooms lately without a boon choice, i.e. with just one exit. I don’t even know why that’s in the game.
Heat is a separate mechanics from God mode. Heat is not harder mode as much as it is a next dungeon you fight through. Hard to explain. You use it not to make the game harder but to progress. You only get boss rewards once per used weapon per heat level. So you want to raise heat but in a smart way, and combine debuffs with your strong sides. E.g. if you use a build with a lot of weak attacks you won’t even notice raising heat by adding 1 shield to every enemy. If you’re going to use Mercury’s boon (requires you to finish fights fast) you can raise heat by adding a time limit.
What they probably should have done is integrating God mode into the story so that it’s better explained. Maybe someone who the main character hates presents this option in a mocking way.
I generally agree with you on this, but I’ve been playing Control and really enjoy how they allow the player to tune its difficulty. If you find the energy regeneration mechanic annoying and want to toss bookshelves at mutant wageslaves all day long, you can just do that.
A couple of people have been talking about this indirectly, above, but basically the variable difficulty / rewards that you’re looking for is Heat Levels, which comes after you’ve beaten the boss for the first time. In order to get more premium currency (ew), you need to increase the heat level - you can only get each boss reward once at each heat level. So the better “loot” (i.e. strenghtening and unlocking weapons) is gated behind heat level, just via a premium currency metaphor rather than a drop rate metaphor (it’s possible to get premium currency by trading up the cheap currencies, but it’s extraordinarily slow).
I believe you can see all the story content without ever going above heat level 0, but it would require a huge number of nearly identical runs, so it’s an exercise for the reader whether it would continue to be fun that way. The non-story content (i.e. side quests) does require premium currencies, so while it’s theoretically possible via heat level 0, I think it would be prohibitively slow to earn enough to trade up. Even this is accounted for somewhat: when re-running on a heat level you’ve already beaten, you get a reward, just a worse one (the baseline currency - Darkness). And that currency is better used to buy meta-progression upgrades that would allow you to more easily beat a higher heat level instead of plowing directly into a premium currency.
There’s something to be said for the way the premium currency metaphor contributes to pacing as well (it breadcrumbs you to tick up the difficulty each time you beat the boss), if you want to extend the meta-game pacing analysis. It definitely also contributes to the “one more run / room / turn” feeling.
I’d love to see an in-depth design conversation about the choice to use the premium currency metaphor, because it’s an interesting one that works and doesn’t feel exploitative, but it likely wouldn’t have existed if F2P games didn’t introduce the concept (see also: Xenoblade Chronicles 2).
God Mode is better thought of as an accessibility option than as a difficulty management curve.
Gasps, Greek monocle drops.
The fact that God Mode is condescension-free is its greatest strength. As noted, God Mode should be thought of as an accessibility option.
It would be nice if it was indicated anywhere in the game at all though. As it is, if you don’t poke around in the options menu, it’s easy to not even know it exists. A less mocking approach might be that it’s narrativized as simply drawing strength from your time in the blood pool, or something.
You still need to explain that it’s an easy mode toggle and not the intended way to play. As in it’s not just one of the power-ups.
I’m on my first play through, still haven’t made it to the final boss (I just met Theseus for the first time and got my ass kicked), and there’s definitely been at least one in game mention of God Mode. So it’s in there. But it was subtle.
What did they say? I don’t remember that.
Man, Eff that “intended way to play” noise. Next you’re going to tell me that I’m not only cheating the game, I’m cheating myself.
It’s not like it’s there by accident. If it’s in the game, then it’s “intended”.
https://twitter.com/SupergiantGames/status/1205592342108889088
Korean language is also in the game. You don’t want to accidentally activate it and think that it’s a game about learning different language.
Again, there are power-ups you get throughout the game. There’s a special mode that allows you to ignore the challenge and enjoy the story and easier game. Nothing wrong with it playing however you want. But if I play the game where my character is important I want the game to be clear if it’s intended like in Planescape Torment or I have accidentally activated a special mode that removes all the balancing effort devs had put into a game to make it a fun challenge.
Or, it’s another tuning option to make sure that it’s a fun challenge.
I think they were pretty thoughtful about how to implement it without overly impacting the game’s balance. The interplay between the weapon animations, the boon effects, the enemies: those are all intact. You just have some extra leeway in how accurately you have to execute.
Plus, especially in a game like this, with different upgrades and heat levels and weapon powerups, there’s no single sacrosanct “balance” to speak of.