Supergiant Games, developer of the beloved roguelike Hades, has shared statistics on the overwhelming amount of distinct voice lines present in the game. After an extended Early Access period, the game was released in September to rave reviews. It was among the most-nominated titles at the Game Awards this year, and even got a nomination for Game of the Year, an award it ultimately lost to The Last Of Us Part II.
One of the qualities that helped Hades stand out was its storyline. Roguelikes are traditionally light on story, a consequence of their very nature as roguelikes. It's not easy to craft a consistently compelling narrative when the game is designed around the main character frequently dying and having to start the whole game over. Thanks to the unique nature of Hades' setting and characters, though, it was able to deliver a very engaging storyline full of memorable characters, moments, and even romance options.
But since the length of a full playthrough is still largely dependent on how many times the player has to restart, Supergiant still had a lot of time to fill when writing the game's dialogue. Fans were surprised by how skillfully the developer rose to the occasion, providing a seemingly endless amount of dialogue lines for characters to share between runs. Supergiant Games responded to this praise on Twitter, showing off an infographic it had assembled just to discuss the voice lines in Hades. The graph shows that Hades contains a whopping 21,020 voice lines spanning 305,433 words. This counts not only dialogue between characters but voiceover observations made by the protagonist Zagreus during his quest. As the infographic shows, these lines make Zagreus the most vociferous character in the game, with 8500 voice lines all to himself. The title character Hades is the runner up with 1600.
This level of dedication and effort is just one of the many reasons why Hades is such a popular game. The game has been played and enjoyed even by celebrities like Mara Wilson of Matilda fame; in fact, she loves it so much that she's already beaten it multiple times. Supergiant has a reputation for beloved indie titles like this, but with Hades, it's really outdone itself.
2020 has been a good year for indie games. Titles like Fall Guys, Among Us, and Phasmophobia have taken off online as engaging and entertaining ways for people to get together during COVID-19 lockdown. And Hades has dominated as a revolutionary take on the roguelike dungeon-crawler. It's good to see Supergiant getting the respect it deserves for putting this title together, and if these stats are anything to go off of, that respect was very hard-earned.
Source: Supergiant Games