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<\/a><\/p>\nShe said the line! She did it!!<\/em><\/p>\n The other change is in how violent <\/i>it is. For someone who would slaughter thousands of undead spirits in a single run, Zagreus didn\u2019t have this drive<\/i>, this clarity of mind to wish for someone\u2019s permanent death. He just wanted to leave home. Like how Zagreus\u2019 words signalled a game about his relationship to his dad, we can see these words as a statement of intent. Hades 2<\/i> isn\u2019t satisfied with merely being a tight family drama. It wants to be about something bigger<\/i>. To that end, it has a protagonist dead set on killing someone we\u2019ve never met.<\/p>\n And someone she\u2019s never met. As with Hades<\/i>, you gain answers to your initial questions. You learn that Melino\u00eb was militantly raised from birth to perform this assassination in the war camp she calls home, by her foster mother Hecate. You learn that her family – including almost everyone you met in the first game – has been imprisoned by her estranged grandfather Chronos. He\u2019s laying siege to Olympus and sits on Hades\u2019 old throne. And you learn that Melino\u00eb\u2019s never interacted with anything outside this camp. She is sheltered to a tee.<\/p>\n Much of Melino\u00eb\u2019s interactions have her playing naive hall monitor to the rest of the cast: lecturing anyone who\u2019ll listen about the importance of following Hecate\u2019s rules, while expressing indignation at any hint that her higher ups (Hecate, the House of Hades, the Gods themselves) might have flaws. This feels rich: we\u2019re talking about the Greek Gods <\/i>here. Cursory knowledge of Zeus\u2019 messy sex life aside, we spent most of Hades<\/i> learning, precisely, what wasn\u2019t working within the House of Hades!. The naivety is often played for laughs: Melino\u00eb talks with such reverence over Hypnos (the incredibly irritating doorkeeper from the first game, here stuck in permanent slumber), and listens in awe as returning punching-bag Skelly spins a yarn of his great deeds as \u201cGeneral Schmelneus\u201d. Playing as Melino\u00eb means playing as a groomed holy warrior, one who exhibits some of the most irksome traits of a long-standing Kela bureaucrat. I just wanted to reach into the screen and shake her.<\/p>\n She does this a lot.<\/em><\/p>\n It is a strange sensation, embodying a character who fundamentally bothers<\/i> you. Unlike simply observing a flawed character in a book or a film, I feel some agency over Melino\u00eb\u2019s actions: choosing how <\/i>she achieves the goal I don\u2019t want her to do. But Hades 2<\/i> is a linear game, thus I don\u2019t have too many ways to express a formal complaint. I choose for Melino\u00eb to romance her chaotic foil Eris, in the vain hope that it makes her loosen up. I could stop playing: although as my esteemed colleague Berk discovered in his review,<\/a> this game is very hard to put down. Otherwise, I\u2019m stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Melino\u00eb to realise how she\u2019s been played. Surely the writers of the game about coming to terms with your parents aren\u2019t just going to have their protagonist commit senicide?<\/p>\n The rest of this review will contain spoilers for the ending (s) of Hades 2<\/i>. Stop here if you don\u2019t want that!<\/p>\n This Schmelneus lives to protect you, the reader from further spoilers. Remember to thank him.<\/em><\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t. Of course she doesn\u2019t., In the version of the game I played, each successful fight against Chronos ends with Melino\u00eb performing time travel magic to communicate, briefly, with a Zagreus from before she was born. These were my favourite parts of the game, in part due to how much I realised I\u2019d missed Zagreus, missed his wry cynicism and casual charm. These conversations provide the real pushback against Melino\u00eb\u2019s worldview, as she tries to convince Zagreus to assassinate Chronos in his time, while he expresses his reservations about killing a family member he\u2019s never met before.\u00a0 The fourth time you beat Chronos, it comes to a head: Zagreus refuses to comply with this plan, and takes (understandable) offence to Melino\u00eb\u2019s attempts to lecture him about his own father. As I watched a dejected Melino\u00eb respawn back at the camp, I\u2019d never been more motivated to play another run. This was it. The catharsis I craved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next time you beat Chronos, Melino\u00eb has changed her mind. She proposes that Zagreus instead try to befriend Chronos in his time, with killing as a backup plan. All the juicy angst, the moment of realisation I\u2019d craved, effectively happened off screen. I felt immeasurably cheated. She keeps Hecate in the dark over this ploy, and so by the time the final ending does roll, she gets to be one of the chorus of voices confronting Hecate (who\u2019s so close to finally killing Chronos herself). Melino\u00eb has her cake and eats it too, undoing years of conditioning in a clean hour-long gameplay session. This was deeply unsatisfying.<\/p>\n Now, I said \u201cin the version of the game I played<\/i>\u201d. For Hades 2<\/i>\u2019s ending was patched, due to mass outcry. I\u2019d only played the new version. In the original ending, it is Zagreus who acts alone, befriending Chronos without letting Melino\u00eb know<\/i>. The ending confrontation has both Melino\u00eb and Hecate confronting Zagreus and his father over what to do about a newly sympathetic Chronos. They argue that he\u2019s performed horrible deeds. Zagreus and Hades tell them to stop maintaining a cycle of familial violence. Conversation over. An interminable amount of time passes while Melino\u00eb helps the family (and good!Chronos) fix the house, and then when we next see her she\u2019s entirely forgiven them.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n