Once I performed Bastion in highschool, it was the primary time I felt that American video video games could possibly be artwork. Most video games I knew had been overtly involved with how effectively I may kill a dwelling being, or their colour palettes had been a dreadful mixture of brown and grey. Bastion stood out as a good looking dungeon crawler with an earworm of a soundtrack. I used to be equally rewarded once I purchased creator Supergiant Video games’ subsequent launch, Transistor. Its poignant imaginative and prescient of dystopia brought about me to cry in my faculty dorm until 5AM. I used to be heartbroken once I realized that neither of those video games would ever have sequels.
The builders have beforehand acknowledged in interviews that they didn’t need to make sequels for cash. “I don’t know if we’ll ever return to the world of [Bastion], although if we do will probably be at a time when the group needs to do this greater than the rest,” Supergiant author Greg Kasavin advised Eurogamer. “It might’t simply be a financially motivated choice as a result of that’s not how Bastion was created within the first place.”
“Supergiant doesn’t make sequels,” turned a salve for followers who had been hoping that their favourite video games would obtain extra love and a focus. Supergiant was higher than these crass studios who had been making “pointless” video games for cash. Making business artwork has at all times been about compromise. These builders appeared to be that uncommon group of creatives who had been above these petty mortal issues. Followers admired them for it and hoped that this rebellious streak would proceed for so long as the studio made video games.
Then Supergiant launched Hades in 2020, a roguelike that shattered the entire firm’s earlier gross sales information, hitting a million copies sold virtually instantly after it went from being in Early Entry to its full launch. It garnered common crucial acclaim (its Metacritic rating at present sits at a 93) and had the glitziest awards tour that any indie sport may hope for. It was undeniably probably the most profitable sport that the studio had ever launched, having redefined the roguelike style. Not solely was it a enjoyable and trendy sport—it additionally confirmed that American builders may discover mainstream success in two stigmatized genres: Visible novels and roguelikes. Past gaming, it’s the first online game to win a Hugo Award. Hades is the sterling star not simply of indie video games, however arguably of the artistic potential of all video video games.
Even so, the mythology of the no-sequel Supergiant remained pervasive. Lots of the most devoted followers merely didn’t suppose that such huge mainstream success would change the ethos of a studio that prized artistry over recognition or cash. So it got here as an utter shock to many (together with the Kotaku staffers who had been watching trailers on the workplace) when Hades II was introduced at The Sport Awards.
Most Hades followers were happy, whereas some Supergiant stans who additionally cherished the sport had been dismayed at what they noticed was a departure from the studio’s independent spirit. Each the gameplay and the story appeared much like Hades, which isn’t how the studio normally approaches sport design. Even the identify appeared to be an overt capitulation to the realities of promoting, as this tweet suggests. If the builders of the boldly authentic Pyre may capitulate to the lure of cash and success, then what hope was there for the remainder of the video games trade? Final evening was not only a celebration of Hades II. It was a mourning interval for followers who held Supergiant to unattainable requirements.
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Even the official FAQ for Hades II nods at this concern:
With every of our initiatives through the years, we’ve aimed to tackle a brand new problem that stretched our group’s creativity and taught us extra about tips on how to make video games properly collectively. One such problem we’ve lengthy thought of was to try to make a sequel that might someway re-capture the sense of marvel and delight of its predecessor. A few of our all-time favourite video games achieved this! The query is, can we?
The quote sheds some readability on Supergiant’s official stance on sequels. They’ll make sequels in the event that they discover the problem creatively satisfying sufficient. The sport undoubtedly appears and seems like the primary Hades, but it surely additionally doesn’t actually have a launch date but. Regardless of the impressions given off by the reveal trailer,, it’s solely attainable that the sport’s really feel might be very totally different from that of the primary sport, or that will probably be full of surprises and improvements we don’t see coming.
What if it’s not? What if the builders have merely settled on an IP that may reliably print cash? I believe that’s tremendous. It doesn’t imply that the builders won’t ever work on their very own authentic initiatives once more. Supergiant prides itself on being self-funded, and perhaps the monetary stability from Hades II will permit them to create one other new world. Each indie sport you’ve ever performed was formed by its monetary circumstances. Simply because builders didn’t promote what options obtained minimize for budgetary causes doesn’t imply that these cuts and compromises didn’t occur. Even the traditional Supergiant titles you liked had been at all times tainted by filthy lucre. That’s why they performed so properly and appeared so rattling good.
Kotaku reached out to Supergiant to ask if the success of Hades contributed to the choice to make a sequel, and didn’t obtain a response by the point of publication.
Supergiant Video games is held to a excessive customary due to the way it presents itself to the general public. The advertising copy is conversational, the group technique is closely reliant on word-of-mouth, and the studio is conscientious about limiting its public appearances. However the studio isn’t a band that fashioned out of somebody’s storage. Its co-founders had been veteran builders at EA, and Bastion was published by the entertainment giant Warner Bros. Connections and cash had been at all times a core a part of what made Supergiant’ video games so profitable. Does it diminish the creative accomplishments of these video games? Completely not.
But it surely’s vital to be clear-eyed about what it truly means to be an “unbiased studio.” It means present in a risky area the place builders don’t know if their employer will exist in a couple of years. It means making concessions and pretending that each one of them had been intentional. It means carrying the burden of gaming’s creative soul even in case you by no means requested for it within the first place. And I simply don’t suppose it’s affordable to carry a studio to inflexible expectations based mostly on how one developer felt about their video games in 2012. Ten years have handed, and the gaming trade is considerably totally different from the way it was then. Supergiant doesn’t have to hold the artistic torch. There are such a lot of fascinating and distinctive video games made by scrappy studios that you simply’ve by no means heard of. It’s time that we tried to find a few of them as an alternative of holding Supergiant to fanciful expectations.
An indie studio unbeholden to the fabric circumstances of the trade doesn’t exist. So I’m not mourning what Supergiant Video games may have been. I’m completely happy that I had a chance to play a sport like Transistor in any respect. It was at all times a miracle that Supergiant obtained to be what it was for so long as it did. Some studios appear to provide extra miracles than others. I’m simply hoping that Hades II continues to be one among them.