Breathing Life into Greek Myth: The Dialogue of 'Hades'

In this 2021 GDC session, Supergiant Games’ Darren Korb and Greg Kasavin break down how an independent studio with fewer than 20 employees managed to release a fully voiced video game with more than 22,000 lines of dialogue-during a global pandemic.
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[@TalkerDudeMan]

13:08 One of the first things i really noticed about with Zagreus was that he was soft-spoken and polite to almost everyone except Hades. Even Sisyphus, a shade he has no reason to respect or be kind to, he calls sir. It was really endearing.

[@abhijitchilukuri5090]

Agreed. Except Zagreus progressively becomes less soft spoken towards Theseus and I really enjoyed that haha!

[@JosephAlanMeador]

What an incredible game, one of the best ever made in my opinion. I had no idea Zagreus was voiced by the sound designer, most impressive.

[@verified_tinker1818]

The ludicrous thing is that both Zagreus and Skelly were voiced by the same guy!

[@JosephAlanMeador]

@@verified_tinker1818 Seriously! I never would have guessed, they sound completely different

[@Cypeq]

And Orpheus... Most amazing ballad in gaming.

[@JosephAlanMeador]

@@Cypeq Ah, the song of Orpheus... I haven't gotten far enough in game perhaps, but does his wife Eurydice get mentioned at all? Anyways Orpheus is an intriguing character. I love the way Neil Gaiman weaves him into his Sandman comics.

[@Cypeq]

@@JosephAlanMeador push on it's quite magical when you do meet her.

[@fawfulmark2]

GDC talk about how they made the dialogue for Hades? Yup, instant click.

[@kyleradue5588]

You believe in Bouldy, and Bouldy believes in you.

[@cereusfox]

LOL THE FISH PART I COULDN'T STOP REPLAYING IT THE WAY YOU CAN HEAR GREG'S SOUNDING MORE AND MORE INCREDULOUS

[@dauphinkivol5555]

My personnal top 3 about this wonderful game : -Megera's voice -Destroying Theseus in dozens of creative ways -Bouldy

[@meruvanagasaisreebalaji9751]

I haven't played Hades yet, but after listening to Megara's voice i think i'm gonna start

[@TylerJMacDonald]

@@meruvanagasaisreebalaji9751 you won't regret it. Avalon Penrose has a tiktok where she talks in Meg's voice, so, you know. There's that

[@BrightBlueInk]

I will say, as someone who played from about a month after early access launch to 1.0, they really did an impressive job making those Yeti Snowballs sound good. Part of this might be because I played EA on PC (with headphones) and launch on Switch (usually handheld, not always on good headphones), but even then, without just remembering how early I heard the line, I don't think I could tell you what was recorded in the studio VS what was recorded at the actor's home. Great job Supergiant!

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

I assume they left out the Blood Sacrifice step of sound mixing, because there's no way in hell they managed to get booth-quality finals out of a default-quality mic without dark magic involved.

[@jonathanjollimore7156]

Very cool roguelike and coming back to talk to everyone is really enjoyable so those restarts feel rewarding

[@bradyfractal6653]

You guys are such a gift to humanity. The fact that you take the time to share so much of your amazing studio is invaluable ❤

[@Ashtarte3D]

Darren Korb continues to be my favorite living composer. Which says a fucking lot given how many amazing composers are out there, especially working in videogames like Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda, Shoji Meguro, Keiichi Okabe, Austin Wintory, Martin O'Donnell and so many more. As much as I listen to those other composers and adore their work Korb continues to be the one to impress me the most.

[@jjstarrprod]

Funny you'd mention Wintory, coz he actually helped a bit on some of the OST of Hades. Which is not to throw a shade to Darren, he's truly magnificent ! But having the 2 of them team up really was a godsent boon !

[@Red_PlaysYT]

Working on 100%ing Hades right now such a perfect time to release this video :D

[@Raymander97]

Good luck if you're trying for the 'unseen one' rank lol

[@B_Skizzle]

@@Raymander97 Yep, it’s a helluva grind. I’ve played at least 1-2 hours a week since launch and I’m only at rank 38 out of 50.

[@Raymander97]

@@B_Skizzle I stopped at one of the Overseer ranks ( gamma or delta, I think) the darkness drop value should rise with heat just like it did when it was early access, it's silly to be running for hours and just get 10-20 darkness a pop when you need a ridiculous number for the next level :/

[@RglMrn]

Incredible job. Thanks a lot for the talk!

[@Cypeq]

Supergiant is one of my favourite game developers I discovered supergiant late... Actually played 2 of their games without associating them with the studio. Then I played hades and i was shocked how great it was. I'm like who are those people, this is best game in the genre and one of the best overall, everything was checking very good and exceptional boxes. And then i see it, bastion, transistor... OMG games i really liked. Those guys consistently were able to deliver very good game one after another, never missing a mark. So far Hades is their Magnum opus, but by no means it should cast a shadow on the other ones. They always deliver on art, story telling, voice overs, music and gameplay. They make smaller scope games with such a love for the craft and quality of them just shows it. Thank you supergiant keep doing what you do!

[@Dylen]

Amazing talk about one of my favorite games ever. Seriously would drop everything to go work with you guys.

[@mercurymorning1]

This is so great to get an insight into this process! I’m so intrigued how it worked re: acting scenes, I take it everyone is voicing their lines separately & I wonder how they made the dialogue match up so perfectly so that the characters sound like they’re actually reacting to each other, when they may not have heard the other actor’s performance? I wonder if they ever had to go back and re record lines if it sounds too weird, or if they ever had two actors in the booth at the same time. I suppose in the game there aren’t so many long “scenes” so maybe they didn’t encounter this problem

[@Inogat]

so how do you make a video game where the characters have a lot of dialog options and voice lines and it never feels repetitive? You record and write and implement a hellish ton of them!!! This is crazy but also the greatest.

[@Gingrnut]

Loving this presentation so far, as soon as I started Hades I was impressed with the dialogue, and after eventually diving into the credits was very impressed with Darren as Zag. However, as a British person, it’s very funny to describe the voice Darren is doing for Zag as British, because it’s really not. It reads mostly to me as a slightly soft Aussie accent, and I’m surprised Darren is American, because it sounds very authentically Australian. I suppose some of the inflections are British, but maybe in a middle class, educated at Oxford expat Australian kind of way. Anyway, fascinating to get this kind of background on the writing & voices.

[@therupoe]

Had no idea Logan was the voice of the announcer in Pyre! That's crazy!

[@KaizenWebDev]

Truly in love with this game, thanks for sharing this awesome video with us. As a side note, what are some other good games that are similar besides other games from the same company as i've already delved into those and honestly find hades still to be a step or two above all of those. Please LMK!

[@djvortix]

Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Darkest Dungeon, Enter the Gungeon and maybe Metroid Dread (not a direct roguelike but challenging).

[@B_Skizzle]

I haven’t gotten a chance to play it myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard Returnal scratches the same itch as Hades.

[@RaptieFeathers]

The biggest problem I have with Hades is that it's kind of ruined every other roguelite game for me. I'll play them and inevitably think, "I wish this had [thing was in Hades]" The closest is probably Beacon and Dreamscaper.

[@soirema]

Depends why you play Hades. Do you like the gameplay, story or art?

[@sneakBeats1]

Really helpful, interesting stuff here, cheers guys!

[@holdmybrickplease3151]

The constant praise for Logan is so sweet considering the history and obviously he deserves all of it

[@xTobsecretx]

Sweet that Greg gave a shoutout to PeopleMakeGames’ video on Hades’ dialogue system

[@MilkJugA_]

Supergiant must be a really good company to work for

[@johnbrooke6867]

Great game! Would love a sequel but will probably enjoy anything else these developers feel inspired to make. A good lesson here about voice actors really not needing to have Legendary Voice Actor status under their belts. Never once did I question the authenticity of the voice acting for Zagreus. I thought he was a legit Brit. ;) Darren Korb was perfect and clearly has the chops to voice act. I think some developers sweat too much over this particular issue not realizing that having a large variety of voice actors adds to the flavor of a game. I realize cost and efficiency is a huge issue but there are many games and popular animated shows that really would benefit from more voice actors with distinct voices rather than one voice actor trying to do everything. I think gamers notice on subconscious level and this can be potentially dangerous to a developer who can't isolate why something feels flat or repetitive. Jen Zee's art direction is masterful but every other aspect seemed to match the high quality of the visuals. Great sound design, music, voice acting, story, level design, and ambience. Can't wait to see what's next for this team!

[@gwendolynhoweshowes8113]

well you got your wish with the sequel

[@adeladam2325]

I see Darren is addicted to the spice melange

[@gassosaman1794]

Really interesting!

[@meander112]

Engagement for the engagement god!

[@pedrohpf1990]

Sick! I love hades

[@michaelholmes924]

Interesting to see how they do the dialog vs DoubleFine: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpmwmoN4msSJiMU I really feel there must have been a better way to integrate the dialog conditionals than 20k lines of code (maybe passing a JSON file with an array of states that must be true for each dialog), but I don't have the same experience as these guys!

I think this is a good example of how hindsight informs code. Easy to structure something like this nicely once you see the end product.

[@JetPackDino]

14:18 ❣Alucard! ❣ I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Thank you.

[@devastator1313]

I don’t know, I’m pretty sure Logan could’ve played Meg

[@thezanynebula5873]

ayo hades, hell yeah

[@M4TTYN]

i need hades.

[@kleanupkid]

❤️❤️

[@demivincent6555]

OMG🌪🔥 ♫♪♫♪

[@SethMcKenzieTV]

My single problem with the game was how abysmal the "British" accents were. They were more transatlantic than anything else, and they were so bad I thought it was intentionally meant to sound transatlantic. Them using early scratch voices that were only meant to be temporary in the final game explains the abysmal accents. (Americans will think they sound perfectly British but actual British people will cringe hard...) Other than the acting, this game impressed me hard!

[@NickHunter]

bollocks. The accents are fine and well delivered