How long to 'complete' the story?

[Taquila Spaghett]

Hello! I'm going to be starting an independent study this semester on storytelling in games. Particularly, I'll be focusing on how game designers can use game mechanics as a narrative tool. I'm trying to compile a list of games on which to conduct my "primary research" (yes, I get to play games for school - I am thrilled haha), and I've just heard that Hades has a really interesting approach to its storytelling. Combined with Supergiant's reputation for excellent lore, Hades is seeming like it might be a good fit!

If I understand it correctly, the Devs have integrated typical rogue-lite mechanics with the actual story, and each run is an in-universe instance of the protagonist trying to escape from the underworld. Am I correct? I would also like to make sure that my expectations for the game length are accurate. Obviously, the game doesn't have a traditional 'ending', since it's a rogue-lite -- but how long might it take to fully experience the story? HowLongToBeat has the game polled at about 14.5 hours. Is that with respect to the narrative?

Thanks a bunch!

[gruetoo]

The story is typically drip-fed between each attempt. personally, I have 50 hours in the game and still have new conversations pop up, have several unresolved character arcs, etc. yes you can "beat" the game in 14.5 hours, but that is just the expected runtime until you can successfully complete an attempt, not until you experience all the game has to offer.

[C4RNIVOR3]

Really depends on how much of the story you want. Getting the basics of the story and figuring out what happened would probably take you about that 14.5 hours. If you want to delve deeper and find the specifics and get to know the characters it's going to take much longer, because of how the narrative is tied in with the gameplay to encourage players to continue doing runs. Also the true ending to the story won't be implemented until 1.0,so you can't technically "complete" it currently.

When I first got the game during its Steam launch, I sank 60 hours into it immediately and was still experiencing new dialogue with characters. The game has seen three major updates since then and is sitting at like 18k? lines of character audio. So yeah, how much time it takes you with the story is highly dependent on how much of it you want to know.