every day i think about how bad the ending of hades was. just totally refusing to take the slightest risk on story and gameplay and so ending on an unintentionally and extremely dissonantly bleak and soul-crushing note
the entire game is about trying to escape hell–it’s a roguelite, and the fact that you try, die, and try again but 1% stronger, is pretty crucial to the themes, right. that’s zagreus’ arc, right, relentless perseverance in service of this goal.
then the ending is that he reconciles with his dad and decides he doesn’t care that he’s trapped in hell forever. which is in and of itself i think pretty bleak but what pushes it over the edge for me is that he ends up working as, like, a white hat hell escaper, to help hades make hell harder to escape. which obviously is just a cheap narrative handwave for letting players continue playing indefinitely but it’s also just truly profoundly bleak, right, you spend the whole game fighting to escape this oppressive prison and then the ending is ‘actually, the oppressive prison is great, and i’m going to help make sure nobody else can escape either’
