Hades & The Gods (Story & Theme Discussion) 

- Xenophanes - “The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own."

Super Bunnyhop became a mythology channel so progressively I didn't even noticed the change

George is just looking for videogame excuses to talk about Ancient Greece at this point.

One last thing: "The Greeks didn't believe their gods were just the gods of Greece" is not right. The Greeks certainly believed that there more gods than just theirs, and they generally thought that their origin story was the right one, but that said, they thought the gods of other people were real, and that the Greek gods, while capable of acting against other peoples, were not "their" gods too. Sometimes they thought one god must have different aspects or faces, and thence we got Zeus-Ammon or the idea that Mars and Ares were the same god (they're not, they're quite different), and this line of thinking eventually brought to the Platonic, Stoic and Neoplatonic belief that the Gods were all aspects of one divine essence which acted in different guises (the Nous, the Pleroma, whatever) - But at that point, they no longer believed in Athena or Zeus or Hermes as such. Anyway, Christ and Mithras were about to crash the party, so we'll never know.

Huh. I always interpreted Athena in that game as being bronze, like made of bronze. Works with the iconography.

So now that I've played Hades, I've come to the conclusion that we, the players, are Sisyphus, and Zagreus is our boulder

"The Struggle itself towards the height is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy" Albert Camus

Fun fact: when the Romans came into contact with the Germanic tribes the God they coopted as the equivalent of Mercury was mfing Odin of all things.

he really called us 'shamelessly horny', and yeah fair enough

Another on-brand Greek history analysis from George follow those passions king!

The Ceasar section I disagree with being all about gods. He was essentially painting a PR Picture to those back in Rome that the peoples of Gaul were just like us. This was being done because as we all know Ceasar spent give or take a decade marching around Gaul and slowly forming it into a new province of the Empire. When he called gods mercury and venus he was looking at what gods they had and converted them across. So the Gaulic people never had a Mercury but would have had a god kinda sorta similar. Since we have no actual evidence as to what these people believed and because Gaul itself waant unified in even a tiny way its been argued and id agree that actually alll the different parts may have had all their own versions of all the gods that did their own wee thing. I adore ancient history and by mentioning the bauld adulterous whore himself you more or less made me write this.

You know, their skin tones are so ashen I thought Ares and Athena were supposed to be dead-body gray as opposed to black. Maybe I'm just lucky and so whatever misguided controversy that spawned passed by!

Zagreus also fit another Camus quote : "T rebel, therefore I exist"

I knew he'd be on this, he's such a mark for Greece

That history degree really paying off

The way I’ve dealt with existentialism is to remember that there’ll be bad times, but spring always comes. The play might be the same, but an actor gives his best every night to enrich other people’s lives.

"To keep going, we must imagine ourselves happy" - George Weidman, 2020

Seeing the deep dive youve been making of how deeply the ancient worlds framework still is present only makes me wish for more imaginative fiction and even a reality where that same level of progression could have been experienced by other cultures with vastly different points of reference (incans, aztec, sub saharan africa)

Something that needs to be said about Hades is how excellent the quality of the game was even during Early Access. There were placeholder phantoms for characters whose designs were not yet decided or complete, but the game, the story, and the incredible themes of all the Gods and Goddesses present were already solid. The update schedule and the content that came with it was something to genuinely look forward to, whenever you finally hit the ceiling of what the game had to offer at the time. It honestly made the whole game more of a journey, rather than an endless Game as a Service disguised as an "Early Access," that so many companies seem to at least try to maintain. The roadmap of Hades has a clear, beginning, middle and end, which is a goddamn miracle in this industry these days. Supergiant is a stellar developer with a golden pedigree, at this point, and while I'm sure they're all looking forward to taking a break and their time to come up with their next project, I will most assuredly be here when it's ready.

"My fellow americans." ...B-but I'm german...

So, what you're saying/getting at; is that the ancient greek world was literally a giant collage of "why are we here? Just to suffer??"

Thanks for the vid. Always great.

I realized 3 minutes in this game was by supergiant and bought it immediately. No idea how I didn't hear they were making a new game!

Your video's have a kind of magic to them that makes me want to play every game you feature

They're supposed to look black? I honestly thought they were designed to look like carved stone. Like special god stone or something.

Can’t wait to come back and watch this once I finally escape.

Was afraid to watch this for fear of spoilers. But dang I'm glad I watched it anyway. Zero spoilers, a ton of fascinating background on the myths and culture that Hades is riffing on instead. Now I'm even more excited to play this game. This was super interesting. Super Bunnyhop history lessons are the best history lessons.

Thanks for the video, quality content as usual!

So there's an interesting tangential theme I noticed after beating the main story of Hades and progressing the relationships with all the characters through conversations and gifts. Through hard work and perseverance, you can change things for the better. In the case of Hades, you're usually fixing peoples relationships. So many characters seem consigned to their fate, firmly believing things can't change or that it isn't worth changing. It takes Zagreus talking to people on either side of the relationship (and fighting through the underworld to get there) for things to change. You can't ever change what happened and what people have experienced, but things can change for the better if both sides are willing to work for it. I can count at least seven relationships in the game where this is a thing. Whether or not this is true in real life is up for debate, but it's definitely something I noticed in the game.

Gosh dang you do good work

George, just wanted to say how much I love your content. Always been a huge fan.

Great topic, thank you George!

This is a amazing video. thank you.

Damn, now I gotta play this before watching

Cant watch this fully because i havent fully completed the story, but now im motivated to so i can watch more of your content. Thanks for the boost

I watched just a couple minutes of this video on its release and decided I wanted to try the game out first. After nearly two months of playing nothing but Hades and loving every second of it I think I can finally finish this video. Thanks George.

SuperBunnyhop videos that include real history are by far my favourites.

I've not heard a single complaint about black Gods in the game at all. I didn't even notice it, nor did I care, it's a good game, that's all that matters.

This gave me so much more to think about regarding these old “classical” bits of history that nobody bothered to tell me during school

I just realized that the war they were talking about during the game was the Trojan war

Best rouguelite ever. Supergiant have outdone themselves.

Amazing work as always George. Ancient history is so fascinating. Especially when you realize how much of it shaped the modern world.

Nice vid georgy!

looking through the catalogue and archive on /v/, 99% of the threads are overwhelmingly positive. where is this "controversy" supposed to have taken place?

Great video, m8! Hang in there

While i dont dislike you talking about greek mythology and existensialism, it seems that it has nothing to do with the game.

Good to hear your voice again, man.

Great commentary, really makes me want to try out the game.

Good job

Oi RU-vid this is like my favorite channel why didn’t you tell me this video came out

I missed you, George!

Nice one, George.

Hey man, just thought I'd let you know that I've been watching your videos for like, almost 7 years now and I just wanna say thanks for putting out consistently quality content. I truly hope your channel blows up and you get the recognition you deserve.

All your videos are so very interesting! Love the Camus quote, if you haven't I recommend most of his books, in France we often read them in schools. They are a bit grim but deeply interesting and well written!

I just started playing this game and I didn’t expect to like this much. There’s so much effort put into it and you can’t tell by watching footage of the game, you need to play it for at least an hour to start to see it. I have been waiting for more people to make videosbon it because its influence in youtube is limited atm.

As someone who also went on a long crazy bike tour, you convinced me play Death Stranding (which I adored). As someone who is legit getting a Myth of Sisyphus tattoo... You've convinced me to play Hades.

Athena and Ares' coloration seemed to evoke the dark tones used in Greek pottery and so forth. Eurydice scans more as a black-coded character to me, and she's half a tree.

I dunno if this was the intention but at 5:15 this style of pottery depicted men as black and women as white, pretty often. Not a race thing

Today is a good day The rabbit man uploads once more

Watchin a cheeky new Supper Bunny Op video during me lunch break noice innit

Thank you gorg

Put the ad in the middle maybe? i got chills at your ending line about imagining ourselves happy and i was hoping to sit and wallow in my own self-reflection for a brief moment but before the music had even shifted I was being sold a product. I get that that's youtube, make that money son, but there's gotta be a better place to put these sponsorships. You're making great art my friend, keep it up.

Dammit, I'm having trouble beating a run and I'm gonna have to go do that right now to watch your video

The Smithsonian article mentions that 3/4 of the hand prints were probably female and that the method used to determine this had a 60% accuracy. This doesn't actually mean that they were _painted_ by women, just that the hands depicted were 3/4 x 0.6 female. Your way of phrasing it is disingenuous.

another great deep dive well beyond the game. Not knowing what insights George brings is all the more the reason to watch.

Wow. What an impressive quote “we must imagine ourselves happy”! Who coined it? Was it you, Bunnyhop? That’s cool.

Really cool to see you channel your reading and current history fascination into these videos. This is a great overview of greek culture! (From someone with a degree in classics here) Ton’s of luck to have a big budget game about the greek bronze age release shortly before this one, so you could get this all out in chronological order. Good stuff!

Well done. Thanks for tieing it all together

It's bizarre. About 10 minutes ago I just realized I hadn't seen a video of yours show up in my notifications in forever, wondering if you were even still around. And I found out my notifications were set to 'Personalized', whatever that means, and changed it. And voila, minutes later.

I never thought of greek mythology as proto existentialism but that makes perfect sense and it is fucking genius. Excellent piece.

You're so smart George

Here in Greece we have a saying for when things are going or have gone to shit, which roughly translates 'Zeus is fucking again'. For example: -2020 sucks, worst year ever -Yeah, Zeus is fucking again

jsyk george you are the greatest content creator on youtube

I’m not American.

What music do you use in the background?

I've missed you!

Hey did you research all this incredibly interesting info about greek mythology before or after you played this game? Also is this a good game for binding of Isaac fans? Oh and as someone who’s read the Odyssey, is the Iliad or any other ancient greek texts worth reading?

Hiiiii! Hope things are going well man

There has been literally no controversy that Athena and Ares have black skin, I'm not sure where you got that from. They're gods; they can look however they wish. BTW, they have dark skin but their facial features are very caucasian. It's like they are a photo negative or carved of dark stone. It makes them more otherworldly

I wasn’t expecting a Camus reference. But hot damn did it hit me like a boulder going back down a hill.

Brilliant as ever, thank you for this

Is there a place where you share your text sources, too? Really interested in the whole mythology-culture thing myself.

I can’t afford to buy this game under quarantine, but from footage I’ve watched, I love that Sisyphus IS happy; he seems like a cheerful and kind guy.

We will make it through. Right.

Man, 2016 really is the gift that just keeps on giving

11:48 "So wait, is Greek Theology just Proto-Existentialism?" "It always was" Also, I know a ton of this is more the historical themes of struggle, self-realization and possibly improvement, if not simply self-acceptance of fate, very loosely analagous to the Rogue-like nature of Hades, but I kinda wanna know what George actually thought about the game itself

damn ol' Gorg has been reading Camus, I'm impressed

Yea the boys

Boy, I caught it early this time.

I don't mind them showing the gods as ethnically diverse, my complaint is that they chose the wrong gods. For example, Artemis was a god that the Greeks likely adopted from "Libyan" peoples, so it is fair to assume she would have African features. Athena, though, was probably as white as sliced bread. That said, I do like the shapeshifting explanation to why they appear the way they do.

So I guess he liked the game?

I have to watch your videos several times to catch all the little ... insights you drop. Thank you for what you do.

I almost missed this video because the thumbnail had a black background that kinda blends with dark mode and only found it by chance in my recommendeds because of the font you always use.

You don't need to even explain why a couple of the gods have darker complexions. It's all stylized artistic expression. The designers made what they felt looked good for the design, and thats all.

Ha, joke's on you Bunnyman, I don't have lockdown depression, I was depressed way before the quarantine started.

If you wanna keep talking about Mythology, talk about the La-Mulana games! Those are good :D

I love this video, and the turn of your interest to Greek Mythology. I think you missed a chance to mention Orpheus in your essay. If I'm not mistaken, Orpheus was the God of Poetry and Songs to the Greeks, although several accounts said that he existed in the flesh (with Plato saying otherwise). Orpheus could be a predecessor to Sisyphus and Achilles. His misery, his own eternal recurrence, is written in a subtle way, as if to coincide with Eurydice's scant appearance in the myth's earlier form (her only spoken dialouge is a goodbye to Orpheus as she's taken back into the Underworld). In Persona 3 Portable, his story is retold. This time, he, as the persona of the main character, looks forward to Nyx, the mother of Thanatos, Hypnos, and Erebus; Death, Sleep, and Darkness respectively. The MC reunites with the Eurydice with Nyx, as death is associated with women and mothers more than men, as the state before life in this world is the womb, the warm Chaos of a universe. Dying to Nyx is a return to the embrace of his love. This might sound menacing, but the game builds it as a positive thing. Despite its exploitative imagery of suicide the game delivers an endearing and hopeful message of trying to live to the fullest even so. Also. I'd like to hear your opinion on Nietzche's The Birth of Tragedy. Similar to the sentiment of your essay, Nietszche assumed in that book that the Greeks had struck a balance between the beauty of the world and the tragedy of living in it; what makes the world tragic is its beauty. Thus a poetics that affirms suffering at the face of an indifferent world. How the gods stood more like impersonable forces of nature despite resembling man's form. This is echoed by Albert Camus in one of his essays (Summer on Algiers? I can't remember).

Game of the year, tbh

interesting video! and yes. yes we will. somehow.

Not only is sisyphus happy, he's best friends with the Boulder 😀