Hades 2 has been in early access for a year now, and while the game was functional and had most of the gameplay elements that will ship in the final game, many of those features initially sported placeholder art. Sometimes, that artwork was a rough draft of the design, but other times, Hades 2 relied on a generic, green-hooded character who stood in for the god in question. For most of this stretch, the self-obsessed character of myth, Narcissus, was shown in Hades 2 with this mysterious artwork. But as of Tuesday’s big Unseen update, Narcissus has a real appearance. And…Supergiant is really going for it, huh?
The indie studio has historically leaned into the erotic aspects of Greek myth in an effort to best capture the culture that would come up with the concept of, say, a party god. There’s also no way around the fact that many of the stories revolve around sex; Zeus alone has an alarming rap sheet.
In the first game, this often meant sultry voice performances for major characters, some of which the player could romance. The actors were given directions that included the words “mischievous” and “suggestive.” The recordings were so intimate, you could trace the rasp of a character’s voice.
Then there was the soundtrack. It was as if every pluck of the Turkish lute placed you in the audience of a storyteller so grand, that performance must have helped cement the stories we now know and love. Characterizations of gods were also written in a charged way that made it obvious everyone had a history with one another, and some of that unfinished business might’ve not been entirely platonic. Players could be forgiven for forgetting they weren’t playing a romance game in between combat encounters.
Hades 2 doubled down on its carnal tendencies by allowing players to essentially take characters out on dates, including an entire bath house sequence where everyone is dressed down and soaking. Dionysus wears a thong now. That this series would come up with a hot version of Narcissus is expected. That he would look like a twink who is actively getting in position still stands out as a bold choice.
“okay but if i was narcissus and i looked like this? i’d never stop looking at myself either,” one X user says.
The Narcissus change stands alongside a few other character revisions, like Prometheus, who is less clean cut and now actively bleeding from the mouth. The next round of fan art that spurts from this will be inspired, I’m sure.
I’m psyched to see the direction Supergiant took this in, but part of me enjoyed the enigma of the placeholder art. It was weirdly fitting; here’s this man who is so deeply beautiful, us mere mortals aren’t allowed to rest our gaze on him. We can only imagine what he looks like, and our conceptualization will probably fall short. The only person who can see Narcissus actively dies in the process.