Thanatos is the best encounter in all of Hades

Play over time Hades becomes a ritual – there is a chance to move through the underworld and defeat the same enemies over and over again. You start to expect things to work out a certain way, especially after hours of playtime. If the game suddenly darkens to the sound of a distant call, it feels ominous.

You’ve never seen it before, and at this point, you’ve probably put many hours into the game. What is happening? And then he appears: death incarnated, the sieve in hand. Thanatos. Ag kak, you might think. Who is this? Do I have to fight with him? I’m not prepared for that! But just as you are mentally preparing for a whooping cough, he strikes you with a surprising piece of dialogue.

“You’re gone without saying goodbye to me,” he says. ‘I think you knew I would catch up with you sooner or later, did you? Is there no escape to death? ”

I came to Hades late, so by the time I met Thanatos, I was already exposed to a lot of the shipping and trailer art on social media. I took Thanatos’ reproach as the words of a hurried lover who was angry that Zagreus, the protagonist, was trying to leave him behind. Spicy!

The creative director of Supergiant Games, Greg Kasavin, told Polygon that the dialogue was not meant for the two to have an existing romantic relationship before the events of the game, but it could develop that way over time. Zagreus, Kasavin said in a telephone interview, “did not have many friends” except for Thanatos when he was growing up. But Zagreus’ escape efforts are a “catalyst for growing feelings,” he said.

But no matter how you interpret the introduction, it’s exciting. Despite only a few rules, you have the feeling that there are history there, and Zagreus has some reason to feel guilty.

“A good story is one that makes you think, much more than there is in the story itself,” Kasavin says. Subtext in this case is more powerful than the actual text. But Thanatos is not only memorable due to a few rules. It is what happens next that really closes the deal. When you meet a new character in the field, get ready to fight. Except in this case, Thanatos appears, chastises you for being a while, and then challenge yourself to a competition. No other encounter in the game works this way.

Technically, he is there to help you defeat the wave of enemies that your father Hades is sending to you. But the game also keeps track of how many enemies Zagreus kills against Thanatos. And as the battle begins, the game feels high – Thanatos is an animal.

‘He acts just like the classic 9,999 Final Fantasy [damage]Kasavin said. Worse, it can be an effect area that makes enemies simply disappear. Keeping up with the god of death is no easy thing. Sometimes you do. And other times Thanatos sweeps the floor with Zagreus.

Whatever happens, the dynamics between the two remain juicy and charged. You want to beat this guy, but also, maybe you want to kiss this guy. There is something inherently hot and cheeky about trying to show death itself.

Thanatos, Kasavin said, was one of the earliest characters they put into the game, and one of the characters who changed the least during development. Part of what made him exciting, he said, was that there was little existence in the existing myth about Thanatos, which left the team on Supergiant fertile ground to build on. What we do know is that Thanatos is supposed to be “a ‘peaceful death’ ‘, which is why the team tapped voice actor Chris Saphire to portray a more’ soft ‘version of the grim reaper.

To meet him, the player must reach Elysium, the world of champions, which is one of the later parts of Hades. The other prerequisite is to beat Meg the Fury enough that her sisters also start appearing. The idea, Kasavin said, is that Meg has failed enough times in her work for Hades to invoke reinforcements so that the word of Zagreus’ escape attempts reaches Thanatos. But there is also only a 50% chance that Thanatos will appear during a run, which means that some fans may spend a lot of time before meeting him. While this may be frustrating, the scarcity is deliberate.

“From the point of view of the game, the thing that was really exciting was the idea that this character could just pop in on you at any time,” Kasavin said. ‘Because you normally go from room to room with the game structure and you know what to expect, right? Because you choose your reward. ‘

“But with a rogue game,” he continued later in the conversation, “you want there to be a variety, you do not want it to be too predictable.” Kasavin said the team watched the second Lord of the Rings Movie, The two towers, which features a competition between Gimli and Legolas, as inspiration for the encounter with Thanatos.

Whatever the outcome of the battle, Thanatos will say something and then disappear. He can show up again during other runs, but there is never a guarantee. Part of the design choice comes from Supergiant’s wider effort to portray characters who have lives outside the protagonist’s life. But it’s also just an effective device that leaves fans wondering.

“We comfortably gave him his teleport-away-in-a-moment ability so he could just leave a bit and hang conversations,” Kasavin said. The player wants more, because Thanatos makes you feel like there are ‘unfinished business with him’ at all times.

So it’s no surprise that Zagreus and Thanatos are the most popular couple in the fandom. Hell, I want to go so far as to say that Thanatos was one of the most memorable encounters in a video game. No small achievement, given how quickly Thanatos instills a sense of allure and mysticism Hades.

“I had the suspicion that players would be attached to him,” Kasavin said.