Hades is a 2D game with no real-time 3D rendering. That means every single frame of Zagreus animation exists as a unique image.
For example, when Zagreus shoots his bow (the standard attack), it's a 104-frame animation rendered at 32 angles. So that's 3,328 frames for that one short animation. We also have two alternate Weapon Aspects (and later will add another), bringing that number up to 9,984 since our Weapon Aspects are 'reskins' of each weapon.
The idea of an alternate 'skin' for Zagreus would mean dramatically compounding these types of large frame counts, having big implications on the game's file size and other technical aspects such as the memory requirement. In other words, if we had 'skins' for Zagreus it would mean having to multiply our entire already-substantial animation set. On top of that we would have to redraw all of Zagreus' character portraits during story scenes. And this would be for just one alternate 'skin'.
I think what players want out of systems like this is full customization, e.g. changing outfits piece by piece, adjusting colors, hats, pauldrons, ankle guards, you name it. This is the sort of thing that's quite feasible in 3D engines because you can just swap out a different 3D mesh/texture while reusing the same animation data. It's also possible in 2D games with less animation content (e.g. the classic Diablo games did it). In our game, though, it's the sort of thing that's beyond the capacity of our small team, at least not without making huge sacrifices to other parts of the game.
We love our proprietary engine and tools, which helps gives Hades its crisp responsive feel and graphic novel look; we have no plans to switch to different tech, since our tech is so good at letting us create many types of content efficiently. So this is one of those trade-offs for everything else our tech does well.
I get why this type of feature is desirable as many action RPGs have it. Hopefully in the context of Hades, it's reasonable that a character like Zagreus has his signature outfit and isn't worried about changing out of it.
Frogles posted...
is there anything specific you did to get the lucifer aspect? i have over 60 runs and frequently run into zeus but his bitchass isnt giving me anything.
Zeus honestly feels like the worst god to me
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