It's Pretty Gay Here

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.