Overview
Hades is a fast-paced satisfying action RPG game. It distinguishes with its roguelike dungeon gameplay, rich interactions with every character, a remarkable display of non-linear story progression, and narrative exposition. Hades is a formidable experience that impeccably harmonizes its gameplay and narrative structure with its rogue-lite foundation.
There is so much to talk about one of the best games in 2020, I break down Hades’ addictive gameplay loop into three levels. The core gameplay loop, which means what you do all the time, is its satisfying fluid combat system. The middle gameplay loop is the blessing system by Olympian gods in the game, which offers plenty of space to forge fun strategies. The outer gameplay loop is its robust upgrade system and layered implementation of residual narrative exposition, which make each escape attempt feels significant and purposeful.
In this article, I will only focus on the core combat system, trying to figure out how Hades achieve these fast-paced, fluid, and satisfying player’s experience. I will try to break down the blessing system and narrative structure in the following article.
Melee Combat System Breakdown
Every unique game experience does not result from one single design or one element, it usually comes from the mixture of different elements in this game. For example, when we talk about improving the impact feeling of a game, it will involve animations, camera work, special effects, sound effects. When it regards Hades, I want to use three keywords to describe the general feeling of its combat: fluid, fast-paced, satisfying. And in the following passage, I will analyze how Supergiant Games bring those great player experiences from different aspects in the game.
Fluid
One of the most remarkable features in Hades is the dash. We can first look at player inputs. Besides the basic movement, the player has five basic abilities: attack, special attack, cast, dash. If we look at the player’s state machine, we can find that most of the state can transfer to dash state flexibly and the player can cancel many recovery animations by using a dash.
If we simplify this finite state machine into a simple form. We can find two important features for this game.
1. A low priority of the stunned state.
Only when you are attacked in the walking and idle states, you may enter the stunned state. During most of the player’s control, it will not be interrupted by damage, reducing the sense of blocking during the game.
2. A high priority of dash state.
The dash state is only lower than the death level, which means that no conditions can block the dash action, ensuring that the player can always dash smoothly regardless of whether the player is being attacked, or multi-key misoperation. At the same time, the dash in the level design can almost surpass all obstacles. This unimpeded movement is also an important component of the fluid combat experience.
Fast-Paced
So, what is exactly the meaning of fast-paced? The core gameplay loop can be defined as an OODA Loop, which refers to the decision cycle of observing, orient, decide, and act. In action game combat system, it works like this: player observe the level and enemies, think and make strategic decision, perform a melee attack or dash, enjoy the reward. Fast-paced combat means that the whole loop goes faster than other action games. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are typical fast-paced action games.
To speed up the whole loop, the game should change the war situation faster, eliminate irrelevant factors to help the player make a decision faster, and ensure player character animation timeline and cooldown short enough to allow the player to use multiple moves in a fast interval.
In a non-boss level, Hades set a suitable number of enemies at a different location. And those AI have their own finite state machine to control their movement, which means that it’s totally possible that several enemies strike simultaneously. And all-important anticipation frames have been hugely exaggerated on enemies. When an enemy is about to strike, there will be a gleaming white visual effect on the enemy to notice the player.
When it regards to the boss levels, it always makes the player feel boring if there is the only boss in this level, which usually means the combat information provided is not enough and the player only has to focus on boss movement to defeat the boss. So, we can see that Hades adopt different strategies to solve this problem. The simplest way is that granted the boss with summoning skills, all the bosses in Hades have the summon skill to ensure there is not only one enemy that can attack the player except for the third boss level, since the third boss level has two bosses in the same level.
I want to introduce a concept – attack windows, which indicate the time interval that players can attack enemies safely. Hades place enough enemies and traps to break into many pieces of small attack windows and dodge windows. Between these windows, the player will change between offense and defense repeatedly at high speed, which also contributes to the overall fast-paced game experience.
Impact Feel
Animation
At last, I want to talk about the most important issue of the action game – impact. To properly provide this feeling, action game developers spend huge amounts of time on art, animation, and sound to really sell the impact of every attack you make.
In Hades, 6 weapons with 24 different forms provide the player with a differentiated player experience. For example, when we break down frames of blade attack, we can see that there are 5 frames wind-up, 11 frames contact, 41 frames recovery. Even though it seems that recovery animation lasts for too long, but this can be canceled by both dash or movement. The animation of the blade has stopped at a keyframe of swinging for a long time to give the player a sense of power.
If we look at twin fists, fists animation has more continuous frames instead of stopping at a keyframe for several frames, which makes its animation look more fluid but not that powerful.
But I want to mention that the cast animation looks not consistent with the movement of ammo. When we look at the animation of casting, there will be an obvious retreat, which reminds the player of recoil in actions like shooting and firing. However, the flight speed and trajectory of ammo look so slow and weak, which results in a sense of disobedience in this action. I think the straighter trajectory shows more speed and power and can fit with casting better.
Even though enemies stun animation is also an important part of the impact, we won’t discuss this in this article.
Visual Effect
In Hades, besides the basic attack effects, after the character obtains different blessings, there will be various colorful attack effects, such as the blue wave repulsion effect representing the sea, the green represents the critical hit effect of the hunting goddess, and so on.
I also posted this article on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HadesTheGame/comments/pweevi/hades_melee_combat_system_breakdown/
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