While potentially frustrating, the rarity is intentional. But there’s also only a 50% chance Thanatos will appear during a run, meaning that some fans can put tons of time before ever meeting him. The idea, Kasavin said, is that Meg has failed at her job enough times that Hades calls in reinforcements, so that word of Zagreus’ escape attempts reach Thanatos. The other prerequisite is beating Meg the Fury enough times that her sisters start to appear as well. To meet him, the player has to reach Elysium, realm of the champions, which is one of the later portions of Hades. What we do know is that Thanatos is supposed to be “peaceful death,” which is why the team tapped voice actor Chris Saphire to portray a more “gentle” version of the grim reaper. Part of what made him exciting, he said, was that there’s little out there in existing myth regarding Thanatos, which left the team at Supergiant fertile ground to build upon. Thanatos, Kasavin said, was one of the earliest characters they put into the game, and one of the ones that changed the least over development. There’s something inherently hot and audacious about trying to show up death itself. You want to beat this guy, but also, maybe you want to kiss this guy. Whatever happens, though, the dynamic between the two remains juicy and charged. And other times, Thanatos wipes the floor with Zagreus. Keeping up with the god of death is no easy feat. Even worse, it can be an area of effect that simply makes enemies vanish. “He just deals kind of the classic 9,999 Final Fantasy ” Kasavin said. And when the battle begins, the stakes feel high - Thanatos is a beast. But the game also keeps track of how many enemies Zagreus kills versus Thanatos.

Technically, he’s there to help you beat the wave of enemies that Hades, your father, sends after you.

No other encounter in the game works this way. Except in this case, Thanatos appears, chastises you for being a jerk, and then challenges you to a competition. Whenever you meet a new character in the field, you gear up for a fight. It’s what happens next that really seals the deal. But Thanatos isn’t just memorable because of a few lines. Subtext in this case is more powerful than the actual text. “A good story is one that makes you imagine, much more than is there in the story itself,” Kasavin says. Despite only being a few lines, you get the sense that there’s history there, and Zagreus has a little reason to feel guilty. But Zagreus’ escape attempts are a “catalyst for for their feelings intensifying,” he said.īut regardless of how you interpret that introduction, it’s evocative. Zagreus, Kasavin said in a phone interview, “didn’t have a lot of friends” save for Thanatos when he was growing up. Supergiant Games creative director Greg Kasavin told Polygon that the dialogue wasn’t meant to signify that the two had an existing romantic relationship prior to the events of the game, though it can develop that way over time. I took Thanatos’ reproach as the words of a jilted lover who was pissed that Zagreus, the protagonist, was trying to leave him behind.

I came to Hades late, so by the time I met Thanatos, I had already been exposed to much of the shipping and fan art on social media. “I suppose you knew I’d catch up to you sooner or later, is that it? No escaping death, and all?” “You left, without so much as telling me good-bye,” he says.

Thanatos hades fanart