🔥 Hades Poster UK — Zagreus & the Underworld on Your Wall

Supergiant Games · 2020 · Zagreus · Greek Mythology · GOTY 2020 — confirmed at 98types from £3

Hades is the finest roguelike ever made and one of the most critically acclaimed indie games in history. Developed by Supergiant Games (Pyre, Bastion, Transistor) and released in Early Access in December 2018 before its full launch in September 2020, Hades received 93/100 on Metacritic, won Game of the Year from The Game Awards 2020 beating Among Us and The Last of Us Part II, and became the first roguelike to win a Hugo Award for Best Game. The Hades poster at 98types is a confirmed individual product on 260gsm museum-grade archival matte paper. From £3, buy 3 get 1 free, same-day dispatch from Market Hall, Camden Lock Place, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8AL.

🔥 The Game — Escaping the Underworld

Hades is set in the Underworld of Greek mythology and follows Zagreus, the son of Hades, attempting to escape his father's realm to reach the surface and his mother Persephone. Each escape attempt is a run through the game's procedurally generated chambers, fighting shades and monsters with the aid of boons from the Olympian gods — Athena, Ares, Poseidon, Zeus, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysus, Apollo and Demeter each grant combat powers that modify Zagreus's weapons and abilities.

What distinguishes Hades from every other roguelike is its integration of the genre's run-and-die structure with a genuine ongoing narrative. Every death returns Zagreus to the House of Hades. Every return advances character relationships: conversations with Hypnos, Nyx, Achilles (who serves as Zagreus's martial trainer), Megaera (the Fury boss of the first chamber, who has a complex emotional relationship with Zagreus), the housekeeping staff, and eventually Hades himself. The narrative does not pause for the gameplay; the gameplay is the narrative.

The Characters — Greek Mythology Rendered as People

Zagreus: The prince of the Underworld, half-god and entirely frustrated. His motivation to escape is partly about finding his mother and partly about asserting his own identity in a realm entirely structured around his father's authority. He is generous, sardonic and occasionally reckless, and the player's repeated failures to escape become emotionally meaningful because of the consistency of his response to each death: frustration, then determination, then back through the Tartarus again.

The Gods of Olympus: Athena (wise, supportive), Ares (aggressive, battle-hungry), Aphrodite (warm, occasionally manipulative), Zeus (paternal, occasionally thunderous), Dionysus (enthusiastically drunk), Poseidon (oceanic, powerful), Hermes (fast, commercial, the messenger), Artemis (precise, solitary), Apollo and Demeter. Each is rendered with enough character to feel like a genuine relationship rather than a power-up dispensary.

Achilles and Patroclus: The treatment of Achilles and Patroclus in Hades — whose relationship, separated by death, is the game's most emotionally resonant secondary questline — is the most sensitive and accurate rendering of the Iliad's most significant relationship in any video game.

🔥 Hades II — The Sequel (2024)

Hades II entered Early Access in May 2024, starring Melinoe — the daughter of Hades and Persephone and Zagreus's sister — as the protagonist. The sequel adds the Titan Chronos as the primary antagonist, a new surface world as the primary setting for exploration, and an entirely new roster of Olympian boon-givers. It received praise in Early Access that exceeded the original's. The Hades poster at 98types represents the original 2020 game in the complete visual identity of the Underworld.

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