It's a Different World

Like, ok. If you look at Hades 1 character design, characters associated with the House of Hades (or work for Hades) wear gold and have his sigil somewhere on them. Even Alecto, who does not like or respect Hades wear gold and the sigil. I'd even say Alecto and Tis wearing less gold than others could represent how they don't really care about Hades that much, they are just there for their jobs.

Nyx on the other hand does not wear Hades' sigil. There is dialogue about Nyx and Hades's partnership, and Hades even calls the underworld ''their realm''. They see eachother as equals (Nyx says Hades serves the realm responsibly so she doesn't mind his attitude.) But she is responsible for maintaining the house and is a key member of it, so she wears a lot of gold.

She also has a crown like Persephone does, suggesting that she's something close to Persephone authority wise.

You'll also notice that most characters have their necks covered! Why is that? Well, in most business settings in the real world, people wear ties and high collars. In such media you'll see them unbutonning their collars or taking off their ties in more relaxed contexts.

You'll also notice that most olympians don't wear gorgets, or when they do wear something on their necks it's more ''relaxed'')This suggests that the underworld gods are more uptight and disciplined. This has exceptions but it's generally a thing. (Moros literally has a part on his gorget that would stab him in the sternum if he bent over slightly lmao)

On the topic of cultural differences between Olympus and the Underworld, Olympians have british accents and don't wear pants. Underworld gods do wear pants. (Ancient Greeks didn't wear pants bc they thought it was ''barbaric'' a simple google search says.)

Also a characters neck/chest being covered can suggest that they are closed off to others. Thanatos and Hades are more closed off to others, even though their chest is partially open, but Hades compansates for it with the angle of his portrait and facial hair covering his expression, while Thanatos compansates for this with his hood and the hair falling on his face.

Zagreus never, ever wears a gorget. He's rather free spirited and doesn't care about his position as the prince that much. He's relaxed and rebellious, so it makes sense.

Persephone also changes clothes between Hades 1 and 2. In the first game Persephone had just returned to her duties as the Underworld's queen, so she REALLY had to look the part to make her position clear. Notice the skulls, the color, how many accessories she has, etc.

But in Hades 2 her design changes again. She's wearing a more relaxed, comfortable dress with less accessories and gemstones. Her hair is looser. She feels more secure in her position. (Or i'm reading too deep into it and this is her postpartum look idk.)

Hades is also more relaxed in Hades 2! He goes through a lot, between getting his wife back, somewhat making up with his son, having a second kid, failing to protect said kid and years of solitary confinement. It humbles him a lot, he sounds a lot gentler and isn't as loud when he speaks. His clothes are looser, less bright and have less gemstones. Also the angle of his portrait is now at eye level with the player.

You'll also notice how his hair is messier. In Hades 1, his hair is always slicked back, but now he's let go of his need to control everything he lets his hair be messier, maybe even taking after Persephone and Zagreus. The colors are less intense too.

To return to our original point, Zagreus' design.

First of all, his outfit is also a little more muted color wise than the first game. He's less intense. In Hades 1 Zag never wears his fathers sigil and wears very little gold and no gemstones. His outfit is more casual than the other members of the house. It's a clear rejection of Hades' ideals.

He still has a lot of design affinity with hades though, because they are more similar than they both like to think. Especially when you consider Hades' new dialogue about his relationship with Chronos.

He wears a lot more gold, and oh look, he even wears a very similar belt to Hades 1 dades WITH GEMSTONES. He even wears a cape despite making fun of his fathers cape in the first game. The cape has Hades' sigil on the back too lol. In one of the ''rememberance events'' in the first game, Hades says ''You may mock these gemstones but for mortals gemstones are more valuable than their very lives'', so apparently Zag also made fun of that too. HOW THE TURN TABLES. Idk this all suggests to me that their relationship improved really significantly after the first games ending. Though his neck is still completely uncovered bc he's not uptight, at all.

I'd also like to think that now that he has Hades' spear and a more regal look he'll do the ''Murder the ever loving shit out of attempted escapees on the surface'' thing. Apparently Hades just handed Gigaros to him no questions asked when he asked if he could have it. The reason? ''He has a lot of bad memories attached to it.'' (Aka killing his son a bunch of times.) Hades also has a lot of bad memories associated with Varatha, the spear he used to slay Chronos. That's the reason he discarded it after the war with the titans ended.

Throughout all of Hades 2's development there was one single thing in my head: They can't just kill Chronos. Hades is about a dysfunctional family coming together after a lot of struggling. The first game did that by making you beat up your own dad over and over again, not because there wasn't any other way to settle your differences, but because neither of the characters involved knew how to use those ways.

Zagreus and Hades are polar opposites in terms of personality. Zagreus is the nicest man alive; he's rude but also humble to a fault, he's a golden retriever who also loves to bite back playfully, he's a bundle of contradictions that Hades simply does not know how to navigate. Hades, on the other hand, is simple. He's pragmatic, he's set in his ways, and he hates being questioned. Being questioned means he's not in control, and he needs to be.

The last run you make before credits roll doesn't end in a fight, it ends with Hades finally admitting the error in his ways-- being a straight arrow isn't always the best way to handle things, and his family deserves his flexibility. He has good reasons to believe the things he believes in, but that doesn't mean they're perfect, and it doesn't mean he's perfect for believing in them. Zagreus sees through his attempts at making the world make sense and understands that all his dad is really doing is refusing to engage a third option: apologizing and being a better family man.

So Hades 2 makes Melinoë be like her father, while Zagreus is clearly more like his mother. Melinoë is a child of war much like Hades was, and her trauma manifested in many the same ways that it manifested in her father. She's pragmatic to fault, she can't see ways out of predicaments that don't involve her own abilities, she can't see a day beyond her mission because in her head, she is her work, she is her mission.

She's openly more cruel to her enemies than Zagreus ever was, she doesn't like admitting she's changing to anyone but Hecate, and, ultimately, she's a hammer who sees her generational trauma as a nail. She never had any opportunity to engage with the world without it being in those terms.

That is not to say Melinoë is a bad person-- she is a wonderful person stuck in the role of an executioner. She can't let mercy get in the way of her duty, and she can't imagine a world where she doesn't kill Time and whoever else he puts in her way as the ultimate solution to all her problems.

So it is then very funny that she has to ask Zagreus for help with that one. Zagreus. She asks fucking Zagreus to give up on someone.

Because, like, if the roles were reserved; if Melinoë was the first child and Zagreus had been the one to grow up under the siege of Chronos, then the story would have been over very fast. First of all he would never have been a wizard-- lol, lmao even, bro can barely read a book without sleeping, but also Melinoë would never have hesitated. If Zagreus had been the one to reach out to the past and ask her to kill Chronos, she'd say "Sure, right now?" and be done with it.

But Zag would never just kill someone without trying to appeal to their better nature. His entire thing as god of blood is to believe in the strength of bonds, to believe that conflict only exists as long as two parties keep attacking. He understands that, sure, if the other side doesn't want to stop, then you do what you gotta do, but ever since the first time he spoke to Melinoë, he asks her straight: have you asked granddad nicely?

And of course she hasn't, because that'd be stupid. The person Chronos was would never stop. He too was the result (and the primary source of) a dysfunctional family life that taught him never to assume the best out of anyone he sired. Chronos doesn't understand the concept of a loving family, it has quite literally never applied to him. It was always about power, about making a world, about Fate telling him he's going to be destroyed by his own blood.

When Zagreus comes to tell him to stop and actually talk to his god damn son for a single moment of his life, this is genuinely the first time anyone talks to Chronos like a person. Yes, under threat of annihilation, but these are still Greek gods, that's how they talk, that's how they relate.

And it fucking works! That's the thing Zagreus lives his life based on, that's the only thing that got him to change how the House of Hades operates, that's why he did all of those grueling Sisyphean tasks, spent all that Darkness and gemstones, talked to so many people-- it's because love works, bonds are strong, people can relax and stop attacking each other as long as they believe they won't be attacked as soon as their guard drops. And this singular, naive, kinda stupid way to see a very complex world with very complicated, aeons-long grudges that shape reality, changed Time itself.

After a scant few years of a loving (well, as loving as Hades can be) family, Chronos physically cannot handle living in a world where he is the loveless monster he used to be. He begs Hecate and then Melinoë for death because any second where they look at him like he's a problem is a second too long of pain he has never felt before.

To be given a chance to be a grandfather, to watch with his own son and his daughter-in-law the next generation growing and not making the mistakes he made, to see that his way was wrong and that he could have always had this, but chose not to-- to go through all of that and then to have that taken away is so, so much worse than anything the Gods could have done to him in anger. The presence of love changed him in a way that the absence of love is now unacceptable.

And that's that Zagreus difference. Obviously Melinoë is the winner here: it was her plan, her story, her effort and her struggles. But the fact she never got to meet her brother for real is what actually saved the world. Because if she could have spent a day with Zagreus, she would have known there is no timeline where Zagreus kills Chronos without giving him a second chance first. And her plan just didn't account for that.

So, yeah, the ending's good, actually. Granddad apologized for letting the dog out into the street and is trying to be a little less rude. Hades 2 is about a family member who's way too stressed finally asking for help fixing the family, and setting up an intervention that actually works alongside someone who in fact has done this before, and is more than happy showing how it can be done without shooting granddad in the face. If he can help it, I mean.

Yeah, it's too clean, and it's a bit sudden-- that's a consequence of the type of game Hades is. Characters speak in paragraphs and nothing really happens to those models, it is what it is. And it is, ultimately, a way to keep playing to 100%, because you can't just kill Chronos and Typhon forever, that's not how that works.

But also, more than anything, it's a game based on the hope that hey, your dad or your mom or any other family member who's turned into/always was an asshole and really hurt your family? They don't get a pass to do that, but there is a person inside there, and something could make them better people. They do have to want it, and you shouldn't forgive just about anyone, but if they would just stop attacking-- if they would just stop being massive pieces of shit for one god damn second, then maybe something could turn their empathy for their family back on. And then we could stop fighting over the dinner table about politics or whatever the fuck.

And that hope has become... a lot harder to take in stride over the past few years, admittedly. Even writing it down makes it sound stupid. But fuck, man. Sometimes it's good to see something like that happening to characters I care about. Real life is really complicated, but I'm glad Zagreus was the voice of reason and figured out a way that everyone can be in the same room again, even if some of them never will allow Chronos that chance at redemption.

I do feel like the ending removes a bit too much of Melinoë's agency as far as how it all transpires, but I also feel like not doing so would make Melinoë have to change too drastically. She hates Chronos as much as he hates everything and the post-game is about her healing from that, too. A messier ending would have maybe been more interesting, but seeing these characters interact in this state is a lot more fun than it would be if they were talking about the horrible costs of war that took them to a bittersweet finale.