'Pyre' as Building Block, and 'Pyre' Alone
A few people (including me) have said that you can see the building blocks of Hades in Supergiant'sprevious games. Bastion shares its clear the room combat playstyle. Transistor combined failure in play with unlocking new lore, in tying both lore and your health to your weapon configurations. Pyre introduced truly continuing with the story through failure, and arcs that could only be experienced with multiple playthroughs.
To that last point. Visual-novel-slash-sports-game Pyre focuses on a series of Rites that, when the stars are aligned just right, send a nominated person back to the overworld. You can only nominate the most experienced members of your team. This means early on it’s difficult not to send away cherished characters who you’ve spent a lot of time with. And then you just don’t get to experience the rest of their story! They’re gone, permanently.
I can see why people see this mechanic as a proto-Hades. You can only fully see a character’s arc by replaying the game and making a different choice about who to nominate (or fail your Rite). Similarly, you can only advance character arcs in Hades by playing multiple runs, which necessitates multiple deaths. I can also see why it frustrates people: a single run of a roguelike like Hades can be half an hour, and while Pyre isn’t long, most people don’t replay single player campaigns in the same way.
Here’s why it interests me: They satisfy different narrative purposes. Hades is about cycles - both in its literal gameplay, and in the themes of the myths it draws on. Progression and failure happen in a loop, but they don’t truly stop you. In Pyre, big, permanent change is coming, in the Downlands and the overworld. Its own cycles are being disrupted, and the permanence of arcs prematurely ending is both a reflection of and a reaction to this disruption.
I am forever interested in stories that don’t necessarily give me what I want, but satisfy their own narrative purposes.
Oh, Also
This picture links out to a cat video. Because it’s originally hosted on tumblr and I cannot embed it.
But the video is very, very good. (Sound required.)
Ruth Cassidy is a writer and self-described velcro cyborg who, when not writing about video games, is probably being emotional about musicals, mountains, or cats. Has had some bylines, in some places.
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