Failure is Death, and Death is Progress: The use of repetition/replayability and narrative progression in Hades
When I first played this game, I was on the lookout for new, interesting games to play — I had purchased my Nintendo Switch a little earlier, and was still living in the post-purchase high. Enter Hades, a game that won awards for its narrative, that everyone was talking about, that seemed easy enough for me — a non-gamer looking to play — to enjoy.
The next few months were addictive; I played and replayed this game. I had also begun studying at UCL at the time, and one of my submissions loomed over the horizon. I was given the open-ended topic of writing about popular and visual cultures, and my eyes turned to Hades. It’s popular and visual!
I wrote an essay exploring the themes of ludology and narrative within the game, and the two concepts coming together to create a narrative that is born through repetition/replayability. Analysing debates around narrative and interactivity, I argue that Hades provides a sense of agency despite its linear narrativity, through its game mechanics.
Hades, developed by Supergiant Games, was released in September 2020, following an early access¹ Early access is a funding model where consumers can play a game during the pre-release development cycles. The rogue-lite game features Zagreus, son of Hades, and his multiple attempts to crawl out of Hell and escape his father’s clutches. The game takes an early narrative twist when Zagreus discovers that his mother, Persephone, resides outside of Hell; Zagreus’s escape attempts now have a clearer goal — to meet his mother. Hades is a remarkable feat of narrative gaming — being the first game to win several BAFTAs and a Hugo Award for “Best Video Game” in 2021 (Barshop, 2021), a new categorical addition that redefines the boundaries of narrative and literature and is widely regarded as being one of the most popular indie games of the year.
A brief history of video games
Like the theory put forward by Gunning (1990), where early cinema is exhibitionist and the spectator is invited to marvel at the feat of technology; so too, were early games playing with technology. One of the earliest games developed was in 1958, Higinbotham’s tennis simulation² titled Tennis for Two, and didn’t receive popular acclaim until Pong was released nearly a decade later (Ivory, 2016). Another game, OXO, a tic-tac-toe simulation developed by Douglas’ work at Cambridge University, was released in the same year. These early games were simple, with few moving parts and were often simulations of existing games or sports.
However, an argument can be made for Spacewar! being the first video game — a game that used digital computing hardware, one that began the wave of video games and spawned imitations into coin-operated arcades in the United States (Ivory, 2016). It was also the first game to be adapted for commercialization.
The first story games were text-based adventure games that were played on mainframe computers, with graphic games entering the fray by the end of the 1970’s. By the 1990’s, real-time strategy games were developed, and narrative games slowly entered the fray, with indie games rising in popularity within the past decade. The first narrative game is Donkey Kong, released in 1981 — albeit one with a very basic narrative. In the early 2000s, contemporary game narratives, like Skyrim or Legend of Zelda, combined game mechanics and narratives, creating vast fictional worlds that gave players full access to the gameworld (Stone, 2019).
Currently, narrative video games are not part of the most popular genres of games; the most popular genre is the ‘open-world’ game³ (Most Popular Gaming Genres for 2022), though there are some standalone narrative games that are well-received — for example, BioShock⁴ has sold more than 37 million copies, and Hades sold 700,000 copies during its early access period and sold another 300,000 copies upon its full release in 2020.
Debates around narratives within video games
It’s difficult to settle on a singular definition for narratives within video games, due to the sheer range of games that exist. Scholars have attempted to define narratives within video games, be it Jesper Juul (2005) who sees narratives to provide context, having no real function within the game, or Fullerton (2008), Pearce (2004), or Zimmerman (2004) who see narrative as a structural or experiential quality of the video game. The term ‘narrative’ itself is ill-defined and structurally loose; one person’s “narrative” can be another’s definition of “level design” (Koenitz, 2018). Narratologists and scholars tend to use the barebones definition of narrative, as a sequence of events, bringing in questions of linearity, narratorship, and agency in various discussions.
Ludology vs Narrative
One key debate within game studies is that of ludology⁵ and narrative, of a dichotomy between dynamic, rule-based games and unchangeable storylines (Koenitz, 2018). This debate has been in discussion since early game studies scholarship. The debate revolves around video games and whether games — like other media — are a seat for narratives, or whether game mechanics take centre-stage, with narratives serving a more ornamental purpose. Aarseth (2012) describes this debate as a conflation of two distinct debates; one which is design-oriented and focuses on the potential and failings of game-based narratives, and the other on whether games can be stories. Ludologists here emphasise the crucial aspects of mechanics within games, and to avoid reducing games down to their ‘narratives’ (Aarseth, 2012).
The dichotomy of ‘ludo’ and ‘narrative’ points to a misunderstanding within game design, with regards to user agency and immersion (Roth, Nuenen & Koenitz, 2018). Often, player dissatisfaction occurs due to ‘ludonarrative dissonance’, where the gameplay and the narrative misalign — a misunderstanding between the ludic elements of the game and the overarching narrative, a term that Hocking (2007) introduces.
Most games are defined as ‘ludonarratives’ — an intersection of ludic elements with narrative elements (Hocking, 2007), and scholars argue that players understand video game space and their own movements via narrative comprehension and use the overlaying narrative to understand the events they trigger and encounter (Nitsche, 2008).
Narrative versus Interactivity
Narratologist Marie-Laure Ryan tackles the problem of tying in a key aspect of video games — interactivity — with narrative, which is said to be immutable, and out of the hands of the reader/spectator. With video games, however, an unparalleled sense of agency is bestowed onto the player, who now plays an active role in the outcome. This has resulted in two major changes — spectator theory becomes difficult to apply when it comes to video games because of the assumption that the spectator is passive (Tratner, 2008), and that narratives themselves must become far more flexible, to allow the player to have a level of autonomy that video games demand. Ryan labels it the ‘interactive paradox’ (Ryan, 2009) — the challenge of integrating user input, which is unpredictable, and comes from the bottom, with narrative, a structure that presupposes a top-down design.
The more interactive a game is, the less of a structured narrative the game will have, because granting player agency allows the player to move away from any set narratives and explore the game world the way they choose to. Ryan categorises different types of narratives within video games as the narrative game, or the playable story. In a narrative game, the narrative is subordinate to the player’s actions, whereas in a playable story, the player’s actions serve the narrative. She refers to Roger Caillois’ (1961) categorization of games, where he divides it into ludus and paidia⁶.
An example of a narrative game is Mortal Kombat⁷,where players are given free reign over character choices, and the narrative has almost no effect on the gameplay or the game’s progression. There is a clear winner and loser, and the story exists purely to entice players into the game world. A playable story, on the other hand, is far more flexible, and follows a more paidia-like structure — and The Sims⁸ is a prime example. This game gives free reign to players to create their own narratives, through their own choices — and they are in total control of that gameworld.
Ryan then proposes a ‘poetics of interactive narrativity’ (2009), looking at three key features — a natural interface, the integration of user action within the story, and the dynamic creation of the story. The natural interface revolves around the physicality of the video game — the goal is to be able to stage physical actions that change the physical world, and verbal actions that affect and motivate inhabitants of that world (Ryan, 2009). The natural interface also includes the console/device itself — though there are consoles (like VR headsets) that involve full-body participation, most video games rely on keyboards, controllers, or other hand-held devices to manipulate the player’s virtual body or objects within the game.
Looking at user action within a particular story, a video game must be able to create a narrative out of the user’s choices — one method of doing this is to work with a plot that emphasises physical actions. To enhance the narrative aspect of the game, cut-scenes⁹can be introduced. However, cut scenes that are too long can slow the game down, making the transition between cut-scene and combat awkward and dissonant.
Digital interactive narrative systems either must have a fixed narrative structure, or be able to compute the user’s actions in real-time and amend the fictional world accordingly, allowing natural narratives to develop. The Sims illustrate the latter approach, where users can generate their own narratives and the system is able to respond to their changing actions in real-time, allowing users to create an infinite number of stories. A game like BioShock, on the other hand, can be replayed a limited number of times — the story is fixed, and once you play through it, the narrative is through. Applying these poetics to a game like Hades raises interesting questions around replayability, dynamic narrative creation, and user input — and how Hades challenges certain aspects of Ryan’s poetics to include replayability within a fixed narrative, utilising game mechanics to do so.
Narrative Theory and Repetition
The use of repetition within narratives is common; mimesis, itself, is a matter of repetition. All storytelling can be seen as repetitive; be it formal or semantic (Lessard and Levison, 2013).
There are numerous theories and typologies proposed about repetition with narrative, with Jakobson (1960) referring to repetition as the poetic function of language, Tannen (1989) pointing to the use of repetition in oral discourse, and Tsur (2008) arguing about the use of repetition and its poetic effects — amongst other scholars who have worked on these phenomena.
Looking at repetition from a formal lens, ‘icastic’ repetitions are a reproduction of the natural world, and ‘fantastic’ repetitions reproduce ‘phantasms’, by constructing images that aren’t true to real life but are beautiful, in their own way (Orr, 1996). Studying repetition within narratives is within the scope of this essay because of the use of repetition within the video game structure.
Due to the elements of interactivity, repetition within video games is translated to replayability. I argue that this translates to replayability within video games because no playthrough is the same, despite all formal elements being the same throughout the run. Player movements, choices, and decisions can affect each playthrough, and player agency imbues differences through each formal repeat/replay of the game.
Hades as a Narrative Game
Game mechanics within a narrative
Though the game is narratively dense, and the player’s actions do serve the narrative, the game is also highly structured and does have a clear winner, and a clear loser. What makes the game stand out is the use of failure in narrative progression — it is necessary to fail, to move forward.
In the game’s structure, the entire narrative is gradually unlocked, and it is after you defeat the final boss (Hades himself) ten times that the game truly ends — with a cutscene, and the credits roll across the screen. Of course, you’re welcome to continue playing the game -even though the main story is complete, it is possible to continue building upon the relationships established with all characters and continue revealing threads of a dense narrative. The game is remarkable because of its rich narrative in a structure that doesn’t typically promote narrative progression, and Hades works with strict game mechanics to provide a story that’s layered, analytical, and deeply satisfying to uncover.
Interactive storytelling pushes the boundaries of what a narrative is typically understood to be, reworking the relationship between author and reader (or in this case, player), and granting a level of agency and control to the player/reader that has the potential to change the very structure of the narrative.
Hades and Repetition/Replayability
Repetition and Narrative Progression
Hades is defined as a ‘roguelike’ — a game that is like Rogue, a dungeon-crawler game first created in 1980 by students from the University of California Santa Cruz. The game is simple — players travel through randomised dungeons, with randomised items, weapons, and object positions. Rogue had the then-unique feature of ‘permadeath’¹⁰. The dungeon-crawler game was borne out of video game adaptations of Dungeons and Dragons, the popular 1970s role-playing game, relying entirely on the imagination and on communal playgroups.
Hades being a roguelike forces certain parameters to be set into the mechanics of the game — for example, with permadeath, the player/character ( Zagreus) is forced to return to Hell over and over again, starting anew with each death. Another example is that of Olympian (and other) boons¹¹— with each death, they’re washed away, and each run restarts anew.
Zagreus being immortal explains his continual attempts; the river Styx is used to wash away all Olympian boons, and the randomised dungeon crawl is refitted to become the levels of Hell. What Hades does is deeply personal narrative out of a well-established, decades-old game mechanic, and to work narrativity into replayability/repetition¹².
Looking at the poetics of interactivity proposed by Marie-Laure Ryan (2009), Hades integrates user action within the story using repetition — with gameplay depending on how many escape attempts (successful or unsuccessful) are made, the player is encouraged to try repeatedly, to further the narrative. For example, one of the earlier plot twists — the discovery that Zagreus’ birth mother is not Nyx, but Persephone — is triggered after the tenth escape attempt.
Though the bulk of narrative progression is depicted via cutscenes, the story dynamically emerges via gameplay. One of the reasons for the game’s success is the sheer wealth of dialogue that’s in the game — from core scenes like the one above to smaller quips that Zagreus and others say, a seemingly infinite number of witty one-liners from NPCs (non-playing characters) to Zagreus himself.
Though the game mechanics are simple — to break through every randomised dungeon room, destroy enemies, and collect the reward at the end — the narrative is layered through it, resulting in narrative progression led by failure. However, there is an instance of ludonarrative dissonance at the end of the first run — despite being able to crawl out of Hell and fight every enemy, including Hades himself — Zagreus meets Persephone but dies quickly, as he cannot survive outside of Hell.
Despite this, further playthroughs show the ludonarrative harmony of this structure — multiple trips to the surface result in multiple conversations with Persephone, and by the tenth meeting (which means ten full run-throughs of the game, with the game’s difficulty increasing after each run), Persephone agrees to return to Hell, and restore the familial structure. Though the game ends here, there are side quests, opportunities to uncover deeper relationships, and bonus rooms to encourage players to return to the game.
Repetition and player agency
Agency within video games is difficult to define, with scholars and players conflating interactivity with co-authorship. Though a game is interactive, it’s impossible to co-author most narrative games, as the narrative is set in stone (so to speak) by designers, programmers, and engineers — reworking the game’s code is inaccessible to most. In most narrative action-adventure games, agency is conflated with interactivity. In her book Hamlet on the Holodeck, Murray (1997) defined video game agency as a sense of control that players experience due to the computers’ immediate and consistent response to specific input, and the experience of witnessing ‘meaningful action’ and the direct result of choices.
In this way, agency is a by-product of interactivity and is inherent to the video game form. In the same vein, Alec Charles (2009) borrows a term from Roland Barthes, describing video games as faux-scriptable text — a text that provides users with an illusion of meaning, appearing to satisfy the desire for agency, but in reality, diluting that desire. Harrell and Zhu (2009) describe agency within a narrative context, bringing into focus the player and the system when considering questions of agency. Tanenbaum and Gupta (2019) propose the understanding of agency as a ‘commitment to meaning’, introducing semantic understanding and communication as a key role in the player’s agency. Game mechanics can influence the narrative and bolster a player’s sense of control and agency; from customisation within linear narratives, game mechanics also provide agency when it’s perceived to be linked to a player’s narrative impact, resulting in ludonarrative harmony (Carstendottir et al., 2021).
One key factor in a player’s agency is the type of decision that players can make and the meaning that resides behind such decisions — not just in working with game mechanics, but in progressing the narrative. Rather than providing a theoretical, objective sense of agency, the consequences of player actions play a heavy role in player decisions (Thue et al., 2010).
Hades offers players a sense of agency via its game mechanics, working with a fixed narrative structure to encourage a natural narrative development, entirely predicated on the player’s commitment to progression despite repeated failure.
Within each run, agency is limited to the choice of weapon, the form each weapon can take, and the sequence of rooms the player goes through. These greatly determine whether the player will make it out of Hell or not, granting significant narrative weight and agency to these decisions. The player can control the interactions, i.e., determine whether to speak to various NPCs and build the full picture from conversations, or simply play the game, without interacting with other characters. Some cut-scenes are inevitable — conversations at the end of the run with Hades and Persephone are unavoidable and carry the bulk of information. However, interactions with Nyx, Zagreus’s foster mother, or Achilles, Zagreus’s trainer, are optional, and carry significant narrative weight. The choice to further these relationships — via conversations and gifts that can be collected — determine the narrative; Zagreus is able to uncover, and repair, his relationship with Nyx, discover the extent of his father’s exhaustions — and affections — towards Zagreus, and the House of Hades, through other characters as well. By choosing pathways with each run, players exercise a sense of agency proposed by Thue et al. (2018) with their decisions. A successful run uncovers the deeper story between Hades and Persephone; 10 successful runs results in a reunited family, with the following cutscene closing the game in a happy ending.
Unsuccessful runs, too, progress the narrative, with side characters. Certain conversations occur with Hades at his desk in the main hall, which means that progress occurs with failure. Having 10 perfect runs from the very start will result in a game that’s half-complete, but 50 unsuccessful runs, with 10 successful ones, will unlock a much larger chunk of the narrative.
Bringing into question agency and co-authorship, Stang (2019) argues that players can exercise true agency and influence the narrative and creation of the game due to the concept of early access and beta testing — a system where games are released early to some of the public, where users can then report on the game and suggest feature changes. A practice that’s increasingly common in the tech and video-game industries, it’s agency that’s unheard of in other forms of media. With Hades, player agency — one that every player experiences with the final version of the game — is felt through replayability.
Conclusion
With repetition comes a renewal of themes, concepts, and forms — be it refrains, or forms of gameplay. Hades undeniably works within the strict parameters of the roguelike to create a narrative that rivals some of the best story games that have been produced. Working within a field that’s ever-shifting, Hades brings an incredibly rich narrative to a field that’s known for challenging narrativity. By using its game mechanics to its advantage, Hades creates an experience that’s ludonarratively harmonious, ensuring that players continually return to the game — after all, that’s what games are for.
Footnotes:
[1]: Early access is a funding model where consumers can play a game during the pre-release development cycles. Developers can then use these funds to further build the game, and early players can provide feedback.
[2]: A later refinement of the term video game to ‘simulation’ is to provide a distinction from narratives (Frasca, 2003) — a debate that is discussed in a later section.
[3]: An open-world game provides an entire virtual world that players can freely explore, as opposed to structured games with set objectives that must be completed. Though there is a main story, there is no compulsion to complete it; players can simply explore the world, go on side-quests, and even work on objectives in any random order.
[4]: BioShock is a first-person shooter game published by 2K Games. The game imagines a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, post-capitalist world, incorporating concepts by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ayn Rand, amongst others.
[5]: Ludology is the study of games, and with regards to video games, the mechanics of the game.
[6]: Roger Caillois is a French literary critic and sociologist, and he proposed these terms in his seminal work, Man, Play, and Games (1961), on the sociology of play and games. According to this work, ludus comprises of structured, rule-based activities, whereas paidia refers to spontaneous activities — though the two are not mutually exclusive.
[7]: Mortal Kombat is a series of games initially developed in 1992. The science fantasy-themed fighting game has a range of characters, and a simple objective — to fight other characters, and win.
[8]: The Sims is a sandbox game developed by Electronic Arts, first released in 2000. The game has no set goals whatsoever, and players can create virtual characters, known as Sims, and build an entire virtual life.
[9]: Cut-scenes are film clips that are inserted in between gameplay (or before the game starts/after the game ends) to provide narrative clarity and structure. They can range from providing a weak narrative overlay, to enhancing ludic elements within the game and ensuring that the game is ludonarratively harmonious.
[10]: When players die during a run, all progress is wiped out — including items held, paths forged, and enemies killed.
[11]: Zagreus’ Olympian kin can provide boons (power-ups, and advantages) to Zagreus, though they can’t converse with him. Other mythical characters in the Underworld, like Sisyphus or Patroclus, can converse with Zagreus, and provide health, or other advantages. This also serves a narrative purpose, where the player can uncover more information about Zagreus’ family.
[12]: I use the term interchangeably because of the game’s structure — the repetitive aspects of the narrative come from the game’s need for replayability, and the game’s replayability encourages narrative progression that can only be seen through repetition.
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