The Art of Hades II with Supergiant Games' Jen Zee | Interview 

I hate you lmao took me a minute to get the joke

Ace Attorney ahhh name

My teacher fr2

Everybody has already forgotten about Mei Lenial 😢

Haelian heree! My fav Hades streamer/player/creator haha shot out!

I first encountered her art when she was making items and site art for Gaia Online. I'm happy she's come so far since then.

That's why Asphodel feels so different when Chronos sends you there, even though it looks exactly the same, even down to the enemies.

I tried the first game again after playing the new one no stop, and it feels so unpolished compared to the new one, although when I played the first one I found it completely beautiful, the second one just raised the bar to Selene

@@Bards.98exactly!!

That news is honestly both super surprising to me as a huge fan of both Hades, and also not at all surprising as a fan of Supergiant Games since literally Bastion. They have never been a studio for lazy choices and it shines through game after game.

​@@freshFerdinand I thought it was solely because Hades 2 was more zoomed in

I think she'd be fine with it. She has said she was onboard with the initial idea of depicting all the gods of the first Hades naked.

@@belindaluna2067oh what we have lost 😔

nah. it's not from the game. the editor spent way too much time trying to find tracks in a digital library that felt like they matched the tone of the ones in the game. i bet a comment like this made it all worth it though.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you!

Omg I just noticed 😭

The engine is in 2D, which limits lighting and perspective features, but all the gameplay art is pre-rendered sprites that use 3D models. Technically the game could've been made without these models but it saved a lot of time/repetition with the 8-directional movement.

@@ir-dan8524 you're awesome. Thank you.

This was why you could only pet one of Cerberus' heads.

@@belindaluna2067 You can only pet one because the rest don't like it

​@@ir-dan8524that's canonical justification to cover engine's shortcoming. Many games do this. Hades have too

@@marciasouzabavaro2877 It's blatantly obvious that the recent changes in the gaming industry are being forcefully driven by a DEI agenda. This isn't about personal preference; it's a clear-cut fact. There's a bizarre wave of people who, without question, label any critique of these changes as 'hate.' But let's call it what it is: a purely agenda-driven move that does nothing to enhance the game. It panders to a microscopic minority, and despite the billions of dollars invested in these initiatives, they repeatedly fail because what they're pushing isn't in line with the natural interests of the broader gaming community. This isn't progress; it's a distraction from what gamers actually want. Funny enough, a few media outlets posted the same kind of article at the same time. They synchronized their watches courtesy of BlackRock and Vanguard ESG directives. It's not a coincidence; it's a coordinated effort to push this agenda from the top down. And nothing screams 'god-like being' like being in a wheelchair, right? It's laughable. The absurdity of these forced representations, which are supposed to be empowering, only serve to highlight the disconnect between these so-called progressives and the actual interests of the gaming community.

The game’s still in early access, plenty of characters’ art isn’t finished yet with some even being placeholders or a coarse doodle. If other characters are gonna have sprites closer in terms of detailing to what Melinoe has, it’s gonna be a massive upgrade over Hades 1 imo. Also, it’s a completely different aesthetic and a different context from the first game, it’s more melancholic and slower by design, hence the different posing and impressions on characters’ faces.

@@dunadan1995 they drew fully finished art as placeholders? That's fucking stupid. This isn't placeholder art.

@@MateriaGirl no, the art for Narcissus, Charon and Selene(dismounted in the Crossroads) are literally placeholders - as in the people in cloaks, the same placeholders that were in Hades 1’s early access. And arts for Hades, Icarus, Cerce and Medea are rough sketches of their complete future art. Some of the other art is less detailed than usual too - new Artemis sprite looks scruffy, and plenty of NPC’s with extensive dialogue don’t have more than one sprite yet, which is bound to change - all the people important to the plot had more than one sprite in Hades 1 to make them seem more expressive(Meg, Than, Hades, Dusa, Nyx, Persephone). And if you remember the early access for the first game - arts for plenty of characters changed for the full release from how they were in Early Access too - more details and polish was added for the full release.

⁠@@dunadan1995 Sure on one hand it’s an early access “game”… but they’re charging money for it NOW so it’s still fair to criticize its current state. Especially when a lot of buzz around the game was “yeah, it’s technically early access but it’s basically completely done”. You’d think with how successful the first one was, they wouldn’t need to do a paid early access again.

​@@mrshmuga9 Nobody forces you to play the early access version though. The cost of the game is lowered compared to the full release for a reason and the reason is that the game is unfinished and the devs need feedback. Hence the 3 long-ass patches that they've released since the intial EA version came out that have like half of the changes based on audience feedback. Please wait for the full release if you can't deal with the fact that the game isn't really finished just yet. That being said, they didn't release the first Hades in early access because they couldn't release the game in a complete state either, they EA'd it to get as much feedback and balance the game as much as humanly possible so that it'd become the best version of what it could be - which is what happened, and which is why Hades was so well recieved when it actually launched. Also, why'd you put "game" in quotations? The actual *gameplay* itself is pretty much done, what we don't have yet is one biom, one weapon, some visuals and the story beats(also some Gods are rumored to be added later as well, but that's just speculation). The EA version of the first Hades had 4 weapons with no aspects, initially looked like actual ass with pretty much all of the in-game art changing by the time it released and also ended the run after beating Hydra in the second biome. Hades 2 is a goddamn goldmine of content by comparison with its 5 weapons, 6 biomes including the final boss, keepsakes, aspects for existing weapons, the Fear mechanic(aka the Heat mechanic that wasn't introduced until launch in the first game) etc. In terms of gameplay Hades 2 already has pretty much everything that was beloved in Hades 1, they're just testing out all of the new stuff. I've personally played this game for 50 hours already and enjoyed it immensely.

They’re called the Greek gods because they were worshiped by the Greeks, not because they themselves were ethnically Greek. Also who the hell cares it’s a fucking video game.

+they aren't 1 to 1 exact replicas of the Greek gods, they are inspired by them to create characters for a story the Hades team came up with.

do you want to bitch and moan about ares, athena, dionysus, and patroclus from the first game as well? just for having a darker skin tone in their designs? or is it just hestia you're mad about because she isn't conventionally attractive enough

Race swapped who exactly? The burnt face of Hestia, the literal goddess of fire? Or maybe a very specifically Ancient Egypt inspired Chronos? Or maybe having literal Greek gods with some tan is completely unreasonable and anything other than completely white rendition is offensive to your refined tastes? What, you’re gonna complain that making Hephaestus crippled is woke too? Look at more anime girl №36942 Hestia art and GTFO.

​@@dunadan1995except they did. They did complained about the fact that Hephastus is crippled because of the "wokes"