There Is No Escape: Theatricality in Hades

Nick Junius Max Kreminski Michael Mateas

University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California, USA Santa Cruz, California, USA Santa Cruz, California, USA
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
ABSTRACT In our view, liveness and co-presence of the audience in the
To date, the theatricality of videogames has been examined primar- same physical space as the performers are certainly part of what
ily through the lens of performance, a perspective that centers the makes theater unique. But we contend that, independent of live
liveness of theater and identifies the player with the role of the performance, theater is also characterized by its production process.
actor. However, another key facet of theatricality—the process of The processes of theater are built upon the creation of a ritual to tell
continuous reflective reinterpretation that characterizes theatrical a particular story in a particular way [6]—a ritual that is necessarily
production—has received less attention, despite its apparent applica- repeated by the actors both prior to (in rehearsal) and during (in
bility to the cyclical nature of many games. We conduct a reading performance) the run of a play. It is on the construction of meaning
of the narrative roguelike videogame Hades that emphasizes this through the theatrical ritual, and the continual reinterpretation of a
reinterpretive process, and find that Hades is essentially structured play’s meaning that this process implies, that we focus here.
around a sort of “diegetic backstage” that deliberately invites the With this in mind, we define theatricality as a property of creative
player into the process of dramatic reinterpretation—leveraging works that repeatedly reinterpret and recontextualize a partially
the power of computation to prompt reflection on the game’s core fixed performance over a period of time, in such a way that this
themes and repeated remotivation of the game’s core gameplay. continual recontextualization is at least partially exposed to the
Our reading suggests that videogames, by shortening the reinter- audience. This stands in contrast to most established definitions of
pretive loop that characterizes theatrical production and enabling theatricality, which tend to focus on what does and does not happen
players to experience many iterations of this loop within the com- on stage during a single performance of a play. From a playwriting
fort of their own home, can unlock a form of the pleasure that the perspective, a script is theatrical insofar as it orchestrates the live
members of a theater production derive from gradually bringing performance of character action [24]. Meanwhile, from a dramatur-
an initially flawed and disharmonious production into harmony. gical perspective, theatricality “takes advantage of those qualities
of the theater that no other medium can reproduce” to highlight
CCS CONCEPTS and support, through performance, the moments of change defined
within the script [6]. Under either of these conventional definitions,
• Applied computing → Computer games.
for something to be theatrical, it must be performed live and in
KEYWORDS front of an audience.
We argue, however, that a key aspect of theatricality—which
game studies, theatricality, interactive drama, narrative design these conventional definitions overlook—is the continual reworking
ACM Reference Format: of a play’s meaning that takes place between the pre-production and
Nick Junius, Max Kreminski, and Michael Mateas. 2021. There Is No Escape: production staff during the theatrical production process. From this
Theatricality in Hades. In The 16th International Conference on the Foun- perspective, much of the work of theatricality takes place between
dations of Digital Games (FDG) 2021 (FDG’21), August 3–6, 2021, Montreal,
performances and over the course of multiple performances; what
QC, Canada. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/
happens off stage, or on stage in the absence of a full audience,
3472538.3472561
must also be considered.
1 INTRODUCTION By de-emphasizing the need for live performance on stage, we
seek to instead call attention to an aspect of theater practice that
One ongoing strand of work in game studies seeks to advance our often goes under-discussed when theater is used as a lens to analyze
collective understanding of how videogames make meaning by videogames: the work and pleasure of reinterpreting and recontex-
analyzing what games share with theater. Many of these analyses tualizing a narrative over the course of interaction. This interaction
have centered on the importance of live performance as a shared can be a more traditional production of a script or, as we argue
feature between both media. In these analyses, the player of the in this paper, a mode of audience interaction with an interactive
videogame is identified with the actors in a theatrical performance. narrative beyond changing the story structure or performing a role.
But is this the only way to understand videogames as theatrical? Videogames, which frequently adopt a cyclic narrative structure,
seem especially prone to exhibiting this form of theatricality. How-
ever, not all videogames are created equal in this regard: though
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International all games are subject to a degree of external theatricality imposed
4.0 License.
on them by repeated play in varying real-world contexts1 , some
FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada
1 As discussed in Mitchell et al’s work on replay, for instance [17]. For example, playing
© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8422-3/21/08. Freespace 2 [32] in the United States when it was released in 1999 and in 2019 highlight
https://doi.org/10.1145/3472538.3472561 very different aspects of its thematic priorities.
FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada Nick Junius, Max Kreminski, and Michael Mateas

games also make use of internal theatricality. These games delib- the story with a much more rapid-fire shifting of character perspec-
erately present and re-present a core experience to the player in a tives. Events foundational to Nier: Automata’s plot were written as
gradually evolving way, allowing the player to sample repeatedly a stage play in 2015 by Yoko Taro, the game’s director, [21, 33] with
from the story volume [7] of possible playthroughs of the core newer versions slightly changing characters and events [20], fore-
experience and refine their understanding of the game’s meaning shadowing the eventual game being built upon recontextualization
through reflection on the variations they have seen. of its narrative structure and environments. The game’s focus on
To better understand how this internal form of theatricality slowly recontextualizing character roles is at its most condensed
operates in games, we perform a close, dramaturgical read of the in the form of the PODs, small rectangular floating robots with
internally theatrical videogame Hades [29]. By adopting a view of arms that accompany the player characters. They begin the game
theater that focuses on the theatrical production process, we gain as rather innocuous communications-and-utility devices, later be-
insight into how meaning-making strategies from theater beyond coming justification for why resources are shared across characters,
the use of live performance may operate in games. Additionally, facilitating much of the perspective switching that makes up the
this new perspective allows us to better understand the process latter parts of Nier: Automata’s narrative, and finally becoming
of reinterpretation and recontextualization internal to the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-esque [25] characters making sure
experience of a theatrical game. the two protagonists do not cross each others’ paths until the end
Hades is an isometric narrative roguelike game released by Su- of the game.
pergiant Games in 2020. The player controls Zagreus, a son of Pathologic [8, 9], a survival-horror game originally released in
Hades, as he attempts to escape the underworld using a selection of 2005 and remastered in 2015 by Ice-Pick Lodge, opens in a theater.
mythical weapons and boons granted by the Olympians. Like many Its three playable characters first discuss their approaches to deal-
roguelikes, Hades exhibits a cyclic structure and a process-oriented ing with the plague infesting a town, then set off and spend the
(rather than a results-oriented) gameplay focus: the player repeat- next twelve days investigating its source. While the game’s systems
edly tries, fails, and tries again to escape from the underworld, offer a fairly detailed economy and player state simulations, it is
hopefully gaining ground on each successive playthrough as they incredibly forward about how artificial everything is. Each in-game
acquire the skills needed to make further progress. Hades, however, day ends with a brief theatrical performance foreshadowing future
goes further than other roguelikes in its embrace of theatricality. Its events, though how much these plays make sense is heavily influ-
narrative meta-progression revolves primarily around a sequence enced by which characters have been played up to that point. The
of major recontextualizations of the core gameplay, and the player’s choice of playable characters determines the player’s relationship
motivation to keep playing is tied in part to this evolving narrative to the town, most importantly whether or not they are an outsider,
context. The structure of Hades, both in its narrative and its usage drastically changing which parts of the town’s culture they are
of procedural elements, draws on theatricality as we have defined privy to as well as the general arc of the plot they are participating
it. At a high level, the structure of an individual escape attempt in. This includes the answer to the source of the plague. Whether
remains completely fixed from one attempt to the next—but the the town or the strange structure on its outskirts are the root cause
context and meaning of these escape attempts is shifted dramati- depends on whose perspective the events were seen from. Even
cally by two major turning points in the narrative metaprogression, though each of the three playable characters’ stories exist in paral-
and more subtly by the player’s choice of gear, short-term goals, lel, whichever the player chooses has their perspective ascended to
and recent interactions with characters in the House of Hades prior the reality of the plot.
to the start of each attempt. As the game’s main narrative unfolds, VA-11 Hall-A [26], a visual novel bar-tending game released
what begins as a story about family drama eventually becomes a in 2016 by Sukeban Games, may not have the direct, explicitly
story about the cast of a play discussing their thoughts on the show acknowledged theatrical influence of Nier: Automata and Pathologic,
they are performing every night. With this shift in narrative focus, but its structure is built around routine in much the same way that
Hades repeatedly changes its answer to the production question of Hades’s is built around performance. Every day for Jill, the player
“why this play at this time” [6]. character, begins with her arriving at the titular bar before it opens,
In this paper we use our definition of theatricality to examine queuing up the day’s music before both halves of her shift start,
how Hades’s design is informed by theatrical practice, as well as how and ends with her relaxing in her apartment and potentially buying
theatricality fits within the broader relationship between computa- something for decoration. Even on the day the bar is shut down
tion and theater. However, while Hades is the focus of this paper, it during an eruption of police violence, the flow of the day remains
is far from the first videogame to use this form of theatricality. the same as the context of other characters visiting the bar shifts
towards finding a safe place off of the street and not just somewhere
to relax. While the routine VA-11 Hall-A establishes can be a source
of comfort, once Gabriella, Jill’s ex’s sister, starts coming to the
2 OTHER THEATRICAL VIDEOGAMES bar, the routine becomes a source of anxiety until Jill can no longer
Nier: Automata [19], an action RPG released in 2017 by Platinum avoid having a painful conversation with her.2
Games, makes extensive use of theatricality. In Routes A and B,
the player first experiences the events of a protracted war between
machines and androids from two different characters’ perspectives.
Then, from the third playthrough onward, the game turns the idea 2 VA-11Hall-A’s presentation of a comfortable routine being upended by personal
of repeatedly replaying the same events on its head and continues drama is almost the direct inverse of Hades’s narrative recontextualization.
There Is No Escape: Theatricality in Hades FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada

This selection of games serves to illustrate that some videogames those processes and furthermore, should be a collective act, similar
(including Nier: Automata and Pathologic) have deliberately posi- to the Levins’ characterization of actors’ adjustments must be made
tioned themselves in conversation with theater, while even games in partnership with the other actors involved [15].
that do not explicitly invoke theatrical influences can still use the- While Junius et al. point out Zeami’s focus on the audience expe-
atrically cyclic narrative structures to realize their aesthetic goals. rience as one of the reasons for inclusion in their theoretical basis
In each of these games, repeated re-expression of the same narrative for a game interface [12], they only briefly touch on what he says
skeleton while varying some aspects of its content or presentation about a Nō performance’s need to react to an audience’s energy
is essential to the creation of the intended player experience. Hades level while staying within the necessary theatrical structure [22].
strikes something of a balance between having overtly theatrical Zeami uses the example of nobles arriving late to a show as one
inspiration and the slightly more common style recontextualiza- of the ways an audience’s energy can become out of tune with the
tion that comes from familiarity with a location or routine in a production. He goes on to describe the delicate navigation neces-
videogame. After Hades’s credits roll, its characters do talk about sary to repair this disconnect and notes that there simultaneously
putting on a show for the other gods, but there is nothing quite must be a change in the performances to accommodate this while
so forward as the Greek chorus-style POD interruptions in Nier: not allowing the show to slide all the way backwards into its initial
Automata or the literal theater in Pathologic. That said, the game’s state. This understanding of the audience and performers’ sym-
usage of the House of Hades and the other realms of the underworld biotic relationship is in contrast to the more the more commonly
are reminiscent of a theater’s layout, discussed in more detail in cited theatrical practices in computation show little concern for
section 5. the audience by comparison. Zeami’s discussion of altering a per-
formance in response to the audience provides another potential
3 RELATED WORK avenue forward for interactive storytelling in treating players as
someone to be in conversation with about details that exist within
Theatrically influenced analyses of videogames have tended to fo-
the larger game structure, fitting in with Brenda Laurel’s view of
cus either on the player’s role in shaping the narrative structure of
the user of a computational interface as existing somewhere be-
an interactive story [14, 16, 18] or in their performance and partici-
tween an actor and a member of the audience. In fact Hades’s Pact
pation within an experience [12, 30, 31]. Even when the way games
of Punishment, a difficulty customization interface introduced after
can recontextualize themselves has been discussed [1, 13], the fo-
the first successful escape, is a vehicle for doing much of the kind of
cus has been on the phenomenon present in the games themselves
performance adjustments within a structure as discussed by Zeami,
rather than on the act of recontextualization and reinterpretation
Bogart and Landau3 , and Stanislavsky.4
the games are performing.
3.2 Time, Structure, and Distance
3.1 Performance Both Aytemiz et al. [1] and Kleinman et al. [13] are, at a high level,
The common ground between our approach to theatricality and concerned with analyzing how games use time as an avenue of
the work emphasizing performance that Tanenbaum [30, 31] and expression. When discussing changes in systems, Aytemiz et al. are
Junius et al. [12] have done lies with the understanding that rein- primarily concerned with understanding how games can use these
terpretation and recontextualization are integral components of changes in a way endemic to the form and aid other designers in
the theater production process as a whole [6] to avoid performance taking inspiration from the patterns observed in their case studies.
becoming an act of pure reproduction [15, 22]. Something that the Kleinman et al. build a taxonomy of rewind mechanics and are
above papers gloss over concerning Stanislavsky’s work is the im- primarily concerned with understanding the affordances for both
portance of an actor’s ability to recontextualize themselves within designer and player different approaches provide. Our work in
any given performance, even if the role and the production itself this paper is also about how games can use time as a storytelling
remain the same, these are an actor’s adjustments [15]. Both Tanen- tool, as a way of building a context for players which can then
baum et al. [31] and Junius et al. [12] focus more on the mechanics be altered to give new perspectives on the narrative or even the
and emotional side of actor’s adjustments being a part of a perfor- entire game’s structure and encourage reinterpretation through
mance. While they discuss the collective nature of the way these recontextualizaiton.
adjustments function on stage to an extent, they do not take the While Ben Samuel’s usage of Brecht’s approach to theater mostly
perspective that these adjustments are interpretive work as much focuses on shared authorship, his general discussion of those ideas
as performative. relative to computation [23] are relevant to our own application
The Viewpoints as described by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau of theatrical ideas to videogames, particularly using the alienation
have largely been used in computational system design to help effect to further explain the workings of the theater or a game.
mediate performance with a computer [10, 11] while one of the When describing the general function of a learning-play, as apposed
more subtle goals of the practice are ignored: collectively, as a the- to more traditional Aristotelian plays, Brecht says “the learning-
atrical production, being able to explore the question of “what is play is essentially dynamic; its task is to show the world as it
[the production]?” [3]. In other words, how does the production’s changes (and also how it may be changed)” [4], a sentiment our
understanding of what they are making change along with the col-
3 Even if the Viewpoints approach, when compared to other theatrical methods, deem-
lective context of that production? While the Viewpoints is largely
phasizes the text associated with a production.
focused on the rehearsal and training process, there is an under- 4 Other Supergiant games [27, 28] have had highly customizable in-game difficulty
standing that interpretation and reinterpretation are integral to systems, but these were not foregrounded in the same way as in Hades.
FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada Nick Junius, Max Kreminski, and Michael Mateas

definition of theatricality shares. We can even go so far as to say world. In fact, there are two key turning points at which the game
that the alienation Brecht discusses is a common element of the significantly recontextualizes its initial promise: upon Zagreus’s
games we reference in this paper as being theatrical, from the end first successful escape and upon his tenth. When we first meet
credits marking Hades’s shift from family drama to performing for Zagreus, his anger is directed at his father and the fact that he is
the Olympians to Nier: Automata’s eventual constant perspective not allowed outside of the underworld. Finally defeating his father
changes to VA-11 Hall-A’s occasional conversations outside of the and meeting his mother, Persephone, for the first time reveals that
bar featuring dramatically different interfaces. Hades (both the game and the character) was right: Zagreus cannot
Brecht’s usage of alienation, and by extension the changes in leave, not because his father has forbidden him from departing,
context we are discussing in games, falls under the umbrella of but because a still greater force binds him permanently to the
changes in aesthetic distance, how emotionally or critically engaged underworld. Here, Zagreus acquires a new motivation for his escape
a person is with a piece of media [6]. Generally speaking, calling attempts: each successful attempt gives him an opportunity to
attention to the artifice of an experience will increase the aesthetic talk to his father, who only seems willing to say anything after
distance (and push a person to engage more critically) and powerful being bested in combat, and his mother, who can only reveal so
emotional moments and other methods of inviting suspension of much in their brief time together. After besting his father for the
disbelief will decrease the aesthetic distance (and push a person to tenth time, Zagreus is able to convince Persephone to return to the
engage more emotionally) [6]. Junius et al. describe the shifts in underworld, but introduces a new problem in the process. Through
perspective (in their terms between the acting and editing levels their brief conversations, it is revealed that the gods of Olympus do
of interaction), even within a singular character’s perspective, as not know where Persephone is—and should they learn of her life in
an inherently Brechtian move [12]. Not all changes in aesthetic the underworld, they would exercise their wrath on the House of
distance or usage of Brechtian alienation will result in the full Hades. There is, however, a solution for this problem: to keep the
theatrical recontextualization we discuss in this paper but the games Olympians, who have been assisting Zagreus in his escape attempts,
that engage with the part of theatricality we discuss in this paper from realizing anything is wrong, Zagreus must continue to attempt
use extreme swings in aesthetic distance to prepare their players escape as he always has and put on a show for his audience. Hades
for the eventual recontextualization of their narratives. keeps its promise: the player is stuck in the same loop they have
Aristotle, in his definition of what makes a whole and complete been in since starting the game, only now, rather than attempting
play makes an important distinction between the story of a tragedy to escape for his own self-interest, Zagreus is doing so to allow the
and its plot [2]. The story can include events taking place outside process of his family’s healing to continue.
of a play, for example Zagreus’s mother’s departure from the un-
derworld in Hades or the initial war with the Machines in Nier:
Automata, whereas the plot is only made up of the events within
the play and their ordering. Also important to Aristotle is the idea 4.1 Starting a Save
that the playwright does not need to be responsible for creating Upon starting a new save file, Hades immediately drops the player
new stories but is instead only responsible for structuring a plot and into their first escape attempt. The player quickly surmises that Za-
making the play understandable to someone who has never expe- greus is in the underworld and attempting to leave, but no further
rienced the story before. It is through this view of playwriting we context is given. On this first “table read” of Hades’s core expe-
can further pry into what these theatrical games do and have some rience, Zagreus and the player muddle through as well as they
degree of harmony between Aristotle’s and Brecht’s views on the can, trying to learn the controls and contend with increasingly
purpose of theater: that these moments of recontextualization and dangerous enemies until they succumb to the cumulative effect
alienation in games are frequently facilitated by careful placement of many small failures. Jumping into group dynamics and feeling
of exposition about story events, in other words, playwriting. For around for something to latch onto is very much a part of the View-
example the revelation about why Zagreus’s mother is hiding from points training [3], and the cold opening of Hades implies a similar
the Olympians (story information) drives the performative context attitude towards experimentation and failure: what is ultimately
Hades takes on after its credits roll. important is growing an understanding of how everyone involved
Ultimately, the interpretive and contextual work done in theater in a production works together.
must be done, and, as Chemers says, “the question is merely how it It is only after this initial, inevitable failure that the player is
gets done, and by whom” [6]. Performance entails its own brand of allowed into the House of Hades—and to talk to other members
this as Stanislavsky, Bogart and Landau, and Zeami describe. We of the cast outside the context of an escape attempt. Many of the
argue that games can be a tool to bring players into this artistic game’s characters reside within the house, and most can be engaged
conversation, some even have. Hades takes this one step further and in conversation to learn more about the game’s world and back-
allows players to participate in some of the interpretive adjustments story, develop relationships, advance specific subplots, and acquire
in much the same way performers do. additional perspectives on the game’s major themes. These char-
acters’ remarks tend to complicate the player’s understanding of
the game world, and through entanglement with these characters,
4 THEATRICALITY IN HADES the player can acquire additional short-term narrative goals [5]
“There is no escape”, Hades promises the player when they first start (such as learning more about a particular character, or deepening
the game—and this promise holds long after the credits roll. This a particular relationship) that can help to shape the motivation of
is not to say, however, that nothing changes in the story or the each escape attempt.
There Is No Escape: Theatricality in Hades FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada

This is also where the player is allowed to start making longer their effective ranges, with the gauntlets having the shortest range,
term investments into their character. Hades offers two major out- and fastest attacks, and the bow the longest range, and slowest
lets for metaprogression. First is the Mirror of Night, a character attacks. Though the player is making this initial choice, the game
upgrade interface where the darkness resource (a room-clearing will offer its own alterations to the way weapons feel through the
reward) can be spent making Zagreus slightly more powerful, pro- two Daedalus hammers available per escape attempt. Each hammer
vided by Nyx (Zagreus’s supposed mother). And second is the house has up to three upgrade options which can be simple upgrades to
contractor, who can both make the House itself more pleasant (with the damage of certain moves to switching a move out entirely. For
various cosmetic upgrades) and alter the different areas in the under- example the gauntlets have an uppercut by default but this can be
world in small ways to make each area occasionally more forgiving. turned into a medium range projectile. Again, these upgrades put
Spending darkness on Zagreus to make him more powerful may the player and game in a conversation about how this particular
be a fairly standard videogame progression system in the abstract, escape feels, especially early in a playthrough when exactly what
but its placement within the house allows it to become a tool for each upgrade does is a mystery and, like making a major change in
theatricality as well. the middle of a performance [22], carries with it a degree of risk.
Due to Hades’s nature as a roguelike, these more permanent All of these elements within the house give it a similar feeling
upgrades can only be made outside of a run—yet the resources used to the green room and backstage of a theater, where the cast can
to perform these upgrades are collected during an escape attempt. celebrate or lament how the last performance went and then prepare
Every escape attempt allows the player to become slightly more to do it all over again.
familiar with the areas of the underworld and their denizens, and
this knowledge can be carried forward into the next run, much 4.2 A Successful Escape
the same way as rehearsal allows members of a production to The first successful escape attempt is much like the first off-book6
familiarize themselves with group dynamics and collectively make run-through of a production. The play as a whole remains a work in
interpretive decisions [3, 6, 15, 22]. We can then view the collection progress, but the core structure is now solidified enough to permit a
and spending of darkness in Hades as the game systems embodying freer form of experimentation with its presentation. In Hades’s case,
and solidifying this element of theatrical production, in a gesture reaching this milestone requires the player to successively defeat
to make every escape attempt carry some amount of growth. each area’s boss: Megaera the Fury (or one of her understudies)
The courtyard Zagreus passes through to begin an escape at- in Tartarus, the bone hydra in Asphodel, Theseus and Asterius
tempt functions much like a prop table, being home to the weapons in Elysium, and finally Hades on the surface. The first successful
and keepsakes that can aid Zagreus in his fight through the under- escape is also when the structure of the game is fully revealed to
world. Keepsakes are equippable items that grant small bonuses, the player. The three main underworld areas (Tartarus, Asphodel,
ranging from extra health or damage to a guarantee that a specific and Elysium) are generally between ten and twelve chambers long,
god’s boon will be the first one found in an area. They are obtained with a required mini-boss fight appearing toward the middle of
by giving gifts of nectar (another chamber reward) to any of the each area’s progression and one of the aforementioned boss fights
characters who can be spoken to. Only one may be used at a time, (followed by a brief respite) at the end. Unlike the previous three
though they can be swapped out between areas if the contractor has areas, which are linear successions of chambers, Styx is a hub
been paid to install the necessary infrastructure. These keepsakes branching off into five sequences of small rooms; one of these
can then be used to pull an escape attempt in certain directions. sequences offers an item that enables the player to proceed to the
One of the simpler strategic uses of keepsakes available early on in surface once acquired, while the others culminate in a mini-boss
the game is to select keepsakes belonging to the Olympians whose fight. However, the contents of each sequence are semi-randomized,
boons the player enjoys using, in order to make these boons more making it unclear to the player which sequence holds the item
reliably available. Keepsakes are one of Hades’s ways of allowing needed to continue. Additionally, the player is returned to the hub
the player to make adjustments to their escape attempt in the same after clearing each sequence of rooms—enabling them to delve back
way Stanislavsky describes [15], and importantly, the possibility of into the other sequences even after they obtain the item necessary
choosing different keepsakes reinforces the idea that the game and to reach the surface, if they so choose. At some point, however,
player share the responsibility of deciding how a given escape at- the player will inevitably either find the item or exhaust all the
tempt should feel. Even the simplest effects—like that of Cerberus’s rooms, at which point they have no choice left but to proceed to
collar, which gives up to an extra 50 health5 —can dramatically the surface—where the grueling fight with Hades waits.
change the flow of a run by allowing a player to prioritize rewards Upon his defeat of his father, Zagreus is greeted with a beautiful
other than health upgrades at certain points, potentially enabling sunset before managing to find Persephone, his mother, tending
the player to gather a much more powerful set of boons earlier in to her garden. Their reunion is brief, as it is revealed that Zagreus
the run. cannot survive on the surface for long, and he is dragged back down
The six weapons (sword, spear, shield, bow, gauntlets, and ma- to the House of Hades—but not before Persephone asks him to come
chine gun) in Hades have some of the most obvious and profound and visit her again. When he walks out of the pool of Styx this
effects on the way an escape attempt will feel. Much of the differ- time, Zagreus is given what passes for a congratulatory welcome
ence between the weapons lies in their move sets and by extension in the House. What accompanies this victory is a sizeable shift
in Zagreus’s motivations: rather than wanting to run away from
5 Keepsakes can be upgraded twice, with upgrades gated by how many rooms have
been cleared with the keepsake equipped. 6 When actors no longer need to reference the script during rehearsal.
FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada Nick Junius, Max Kreminski, and Michael Mateas

home, he is now primarily motivated by the desire to understand rather than a desparate desire to be free of the underworld. As we
what happened between Hades and Persephone that resulted in now know, escape is impossible.
their separation.
Also accompanying the victory is the Pact of Punishment placed 4.3 Reaching the Credits and the Performance
over the door through which Zagreus passes at the beginning of Persephone agreeing to return to the House of Hades is the sign
each escape attempt. This rather intricate difficulty adjustment sys- for the game’s credits to roll. While there are still tensions between
tem serves many purposes. The first is simply further emphasizing the family members, and especially between Hades and Zagreus,
the magnitude of Zagreus’s triumph over his father with a large, they have now come to something resembling an understanding.
angry scroll. Second, the Pact allows the acquisition of more rare There is another reason Persephone agrees to return and it is con-
upgrade materials: titan blood for upgrading and altering weapons, nected to the question of who each section of Hades views as its
diamonds for the more impactful and narratively important contrac- audience. The Olympian gods who have been helping Zagreus from
tor projects, and ambrosia for further deepening relationships with a distance all this time do not know where Persephone is and when
characters, rather than the sizeable darkness reward for repeatedly the player and Zagreus learn the details of how she came to be
defeating a boss. The catch is that, to continue earning these awards, in a relationship7 with Hades, this becomes a secret in dire need
the player must continuously increase the difficulty of the game of protecting. The solution: to convince the Olympians that noth-
after each successful escape with a weapon. With this system Hades ing has changed, Zagreus must indefinitely continue to attempt to
encourages players to gradually experiment with the difficulty to escape the underworld just as before. In this way, the Olympians
make escape attempts novel each time, while also making each become the audience of this (now very well-rehearsed) theatrical
successful escape at a new difficulty level carry the same player production.
and in-game progression that darkness was used for early on. The Who, then, was the audience for the other, pre-credits, version
Pact’s gradual, conversational attitude towards difficulty is, again, of the narrative? The player. We characterized the family drama
similar to members of a theater production encouraging each other as decreasing the aesthetic distance of the player and the game
to experiment and try new approaches within the structure of the because at this point, even with its highly cyclical nature, Hades is
show being rehearsed [3]. Finally, the Pact’s introduction marks the still telling a semi-traditional game story with an ending of some
point in Hades where all the pieces for the player and game to con- kind being foreshadowed. The player attempts to escape and is
verse about the nature of an escape attempt have been introduced, rewarded with more insight into Zagreus’s family drama or more
making the subsequent escape attempts (until the game’s credits conversations with the other members of the House of Hades, often
roll) analogous to a production finally getting to make use of the consoling him in his failure. The player as the audience for this
actual performance space rather than the facsimile from early in story in fact mirrors the way that the audience during rehearsals,
the process. and even to an extent during the actual performance, are the other
By the first successful escape, Zagreus and the player have likely members of a production [3, 22].
been able to build some amount of rapport with the other named There is also the matter of motivation for the performance be-
characters through occasional gifts of nectar, mirroring the ca- yond the credit roll: after all, the lure of further family drama no
maraderie built through the rehearsal process [3], though these longer exists. The Olympians, for all their help, do not dwell on the
relationships are far from settled. Megaera and Thanatos (if he’s details, and as a result, the reason for Zagreus’s very first escape at-
appeared) are still resentful of Zagreus’s attempts to leave, and tempt can once again become the basis for a show. The post-credits
even the more helpful characters (such as Nyx and Achilles) are performance for the Olympians’ benefit can then be characterized
only as open about their thoughts as they need to be. But these as highly polished, well-rehearsed versions of that initial clumsy
difficulties are relatively minor, and can generally be solved with attempt to simply run away from home to spite his father.
time and more conversations over nectar. The real problem, and Everything that has happened up to this point—the family drama,
why this portion of the game still feels like a rehearsal (in the the Pact of Punishment, growing closer to the cast—was all in
context of an endlessly repeatable experience), is that any further preparation for this play for the gods. By now Zagreus and the
conversation with Hades and Persephone requires Hades, and by player are comfortable, even happy to be in their roles, and adding
extension Megaera, the bone hydra, and Theseus and Asterius, to new challenges becomes part of the reason to keep performing.
be killed. Even then, the progress made during each conversation Increasing the game’s difficulty is no longer something in the way
with Zagreus’s parents is rather slow, and these conversations can of a potential new revelation, it is just a part of maintaining the
be few and far between depending on how well the repeated escape player’s interest and growth in the performance, much like the care
attempts are going. of the flower to which Zeami likens the art of acting [22].
This is also the part of the game where the performative nature Returning to the weapons and their relationship to the Pact of
of each run lessens a little. For now, there is a pressing problem to Punishment, there are three unlockable versions of each weapon.
deal with that both the player and Zagreus want to see resolved— Two are only tied to the amount of titan blood required, which can
and consequently, this is where the aesthetic distance between the be significant when upgrading the final levels of each. The final,
player and Zagreus is at its smallest. The player is comfortable secret version is only unlockable after certain named characters
enough in the role they’ve been given that they are no longer just
practicing the motions—and, as a result, they can now be caught up 7 InHades Persephone already wanted to leave Olympus and Zeus, in an attempt to
in the family drama. At this stage of the game, each escape attempt help his niece and show some gratitude towards Hades, sent Persephone to be Hades
is motivated primarily by the goal to learn more about the story, bride in secret.
There Is No Escape: Theatricality in Hades FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada

tell Zagreus a specific phrase and also costs a significant amount of future direction for deliberate theatricality in games. In the context
titan blood to unlock and upgrade, requiring time investment and of a conventional theatrical production, the process of reflective
skill to accumulate the necessary resources. Importantly, the game reinterpretation through which a production’s members continu-
also requires Zagreus to have working relationships with other cast ally revise their collective understanding of a play’s meaning and
members to fully open up the possibilities and variation present in purpose can span many weeks, months, or even years. Moreover,
each weapon, in a way reminiscent of the Viewpoints conception this process almost inevitably involves dozens or hundreds of par-
of collective growth during rehearsal and performance [3]. When ticipants in a wide range of roles. As such, participation in this
discussing performance goals for an actor, Zeami is quite adamant process is demanding and unapproachable. Obviously, a videogame
that an actor should seek to master all roles available and can only cannot recreate this process in its entirety—but, through game and
do so through practice and willingness to continuously grow [22], narrative design strategies like those used in Hades, games can
in much the same way that Hades hides the weapon versions behind provide players with a distilled form of some of the play-pleasures
an increasing number of runs all at increasing levels of difficulty. of reflective reinterpretation.
For Zagreus, as for the cast and crew of a long-running theatri-
cal production, there is no escape from the process of continual
5 CONCLUSION remotivation: no final resting point that brings all the elements of
Past discussions of theatricality in games have tended to emphasize the production into total, timeless harmony. Every run of Hades
the performance dimension of theater practice, with a particular fo- brings a slightly different context, a slightly different motivation,
cus on the liveness of performance. Though some aspects of Hades and slightly different obstacles that must be overcome. But for Za-
can certainly be understood through this lens, we find that what greus, as in theater, there is an eventual pleasure and harmony to
makes Hades stand out as a theatrical game instead lies in its pre- be found in the cyclic process of revision itself. The process, far
sentation through gameplay of a process of continual reflection on from being an obstacle to the realization of a final, “perfect” per-
the core themes of the plot, akin to the theater production process. formance, is the beating heart of theater as a medium: the reason
The first arc of Hades can be viewed as a facsimile of the rehearsal both we-the-audience and we-the-performers find it so persistently
process, providing players with a window into the gradual devel- compelling. There is no escape—yet in the end, one must imagine
opment of a shared understanding between the cast and crew (i.e., Zagreus happy.
the various characters) of what the play is about. Once the player
successfully escapes from Hades for the first time, the focus shifts
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
to an investigation of the central mystery in the game’s backstory:
what exactly happened between Hades and Persephone? Finally, Thank you to the Seabright Camerata for being there to bounce
once this uncertainty is resolved, the focus shifts again to the grad- ideas off of, and to Revolutionary Girl Utena for providing the many
ual revision of the play throughout its run for its new audience: the versions of “Absolute Destiny Apocalypse” that the bulk of this
Olympians, who must be simultaneously appeased and gradually paper was written to.
brought to a new understanding of past events through theater.
All throughout, the cast dynamics and other behind-the-scenes REFERENCES
aspects of the play continually shift and evolve. The player is en- [1] Batu Aytemiz, Nick Junius, and Nathan Altice. 2019. Exploring How Changes in
couraged to take on a slightly different gameplay goal for each run: Game Systems Generate Meaning. In DiGRA Conference.
[2] James Bierman. [n.d.]. Aristotle or Else. Retrieved January 7, 2019 from
sometimes to advance the main narrative, sometimes to advance a http://tragedy.ucsc.edu/
particular subplot, sometimes to complete a prophecy, sometimes to [3] Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. 2005. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to
acquire more resources, sometimes to overcome a self-imposed Pact Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group.
[4] Bertolt Brecht. 2014. Brecht on Theatre. Bloomsbury Publishing.
of Punishment challenge, and so on. A particularly ambitious, gru- [5] Rogelio E Cardona-Rivera, José P Zagal, and Michael S Debus. 2020. Narrative
eling and flawed run may be followed by a relatively safe “breather” goals in games: A novel nexus of story and gameplay. In International Conference
run at the player’s discretion, allowing players to deliberately nego- on the Foundations of Digital Games.
[6] Michael Chemers. 2010. Ghost Light. Sothern Illinois UP.
tiate how hard they want to push themselves on each performance. [7] Jason Grinblat. 2017. Emergent Narratives and Story Volumes. In Procedural
Yet despite the shifting context of each run, every run ultimately ex- Generation in Game Design, Tanya Short and Tarn Adams (Eds.). CRC Press.
[8] Ice-Pick Lodge. 2005. Pathologic.
hibits a relatively fixed overall shape as the player journeys through [9] Ice-Pick Lodge. 2015. Pathologic Classic HD.
the various regions of the underworld in an unchanging sequence. [10] Mikhail Jacob, Alexander Zook, and Brian Magerko. 2013. Viewpoints AI: Proce-
Notably, the narrative of Hades feels dynamic and responsive durally Representing and Reasoning about Gestures.
[11] Nick Junius. 2019. Puppitor: Building an Acting Interface for Videogames. Master’s
despite the lack of any branching structure. Dynamism is instead thesis. UC Santa Cruz.
achieved through the recombination of fixed elements within a [12] Nick Junius, Michael Mateas, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. 2019. Towards Expres-
fixed high-level structure, exposing a slightly different selection sive Input for Character Dialogue in Digital Games. In Proceedings of the 14th
International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games.
of dramatic elements to the player on each run. As in theatrical [13] Erica Kleinman, Elin Carstensdottir, and Magy Seif El-Nasr. 2018. Going forward
rehearsal, the player comes to understand the story volume of by going back: re-defining rewind mechanics in narrative games. In Proceedings
of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games.
the production as a whole via repeated sampling of individual [14] Brenda Laurel. 2013. Computers as Theater (2nd. ed.). Addison-Wesley Profes-
performances and reflection on how the different elements of the sional.
performance all hang together—or, in some cases, fail to do so. [15] Irina Levin and Igor Levin. 2002. The Stanislavsky Secret. Colorado: Meriwether
Publishing.
Through its identification of the play process with the process of [16] Michael Mateas. 2001. A preliminary poetics for interactive drama and games.
theatrical production, Hades demonstrates an intriguing potential Digital Creativity 12, 3 (2001), 140–152.
FDG’21, August 3–6, 2021, Montreal, QC, Canada Nick Junius, Max Kreminski, and Michael Mateas

[17] Alex Mitchell, Liting Kway, and Brandon Junhui Lee. 2020. Storygameness: un- [24] Sam Smiley and Norman A Bert. 2005. Playwriting: The structure of action. Yale
derstanding repeat experience and the desire for closure in storygames. DiGRA. University Press.
[18] Janet H Murray. 2017. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cy- [25] Tom Stoppard. 2007. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Grove/Atlantic,
berspace. MIT Press. Inc.
[19] Platinum Games. 2017. Nier: Automata. [26] Sukeban Games. 2016. VA-11 Hall-A.
[20] Rekka Alexiel. [n.d.]. YoRHa Stage Play Differences | Fire Sanctuary. Retrieved [27] Supergiant Games. 2011. Bastion.
January 26, 2021 from http://firesanctuary.com/yorha-stage-play-differences/ [28] Supergiant Games. 2014. Transistor.
[21] Rekka Alexiel. [n.d.]. YoRHa Stage Play, Ver 1.1 | Fire Sanctuary. Retrieved [29] Supergiant Games. 2020. Hades.
January 18, 2021 from http://firesanctuary.com/yorha-stage-play/ [30] Theresa Jean Tanenbaum. 2011. Being in the story: readerly pleasure, acting
[22] J Thomas Rimer, Masakazu Yamazaki, et al. 1984. On the Art of the Nō Drama: theory, and performing a role. In International Conference on Interactive Digital
The Major Treatises of Zeami; Translated by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu. Storytelling. Springer, 55–66.
Princeton University Press. [31] Theresa Jean Tanenbaum and Karen Tanenbaum. 2015. Empathy and Identity in
[23] Ben Samuel. 2016. Crafting Stories Through Play. Ph.D. Dissertation. University Digital Games: Towards a New Theory of Transformative Play. In FDG.
of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA. [32] Volition. 1998. Freespace 2.
[33] Yoko Taro. 2015. YoRHa Stage Play, Ver 1.1.