If, like me, finishing Hades left a hole in your heart, you'll be happy to know that there's a mod to fix that. OlympusExtra is a Hades mod that will add four new Olympians such as Apollo to the game, as well as new boons, curses, duo boons, and more.
What's this Hades mod all about?
Supergiant's Hades was a pretty resounding success on release, even earning itself the first ever gaming Hugo Award. Perhaps its only universally agreed-upon flaw was that there wasn't more of it, but modders AlexKage and physiX are looking to remedy that situation. OlympusExtra, which you can download right now on NexusMods, is a mod-slash-expansion-pack for Hades that plans to add four new gods to the game. AlexKage told us that he was inspired to create the game because "it made sense" to include the 12 classic Olympians, which was also the rationale behind selecting the four gods who will appear in the full mod. Right now, only Apollo has been added, but the artwork for the god of archery, music, and the sun (among many other things) is pretty impressive. According to AlexKage, the art for Apollo was already on Reddit, so it was just a matter of asking the creator, Reikiix, for permission to use it (which was obviously granted).
Apollo is all about blinding your enemies so they can't hit you. His boons include a blind debuff on Zagreus' attack or special, as well as a new Flash Bomb cast. This, according to AlexKage, was the hardest part of the game; finding "fun new mechanics" that weren't already in the base game and that would work well with what the developers had already created. Naturally, Apollo also has duo boons with other gods (more of which will be coming in a July update for the mod). These duo boons include Hyacinth, which shatters low-health foes if they're afflicted with Blind and Weak (the latter being Aphrodite's debuff), and War Song, which causes your Flash Bomb cast to inflict Ares' Doom. Make no mistake: Apollo is a fully-fledged god, and although he doesn't feature voice acting yet, the mod's NexusMods page says this is a feature that will be added at some point in the future.
In total, four gods are planned for OlympusExtra: Apollo, Hera, Hestia, and Hephaestus. I have no idea how high the other three would rank in the overall god-sexiness index, but given that Apollo is arguably just as hot as any of the gods currently included in the base game, I have high hopes for the others. They won't be added in the 1.1.0 update, which AlexKage says is coming in July; this update will make further balance changes to the mod and will also add new duo boons, so you've got that to look forward to. Anything that adds more Hades to Hades is alright by me, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing what AlexKage, physiX, and the rest of the modding community create for upcoming OlympusExtra updates.
What is Hades?
Hades is the fourth game by San Francisco-based developer Supergiant Games, whose previous works are Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. It revolves around Zagreus, the son of the titular god of the Underworld, who decides one day to defy his father's wishes and escape. What follows is a roguelite adventure that takes Zag through the lands of Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium, as well as the Temple of Styx. Along the way, he must explore procedurally-generated dungeons, receive periodical boons from the gods to help him in his quest, and deal with famous Underworld inhabitants such as Sisyphus and Orpheus. Gameplay-wise, Hades is an action-RPG with several different weapons to utilize, all of which have different aspects you can try out. Each time you die, you're returned to the Underworld, with its denizens often having new dialogue exchanges for you to engage in.
You can check out Hades right now on PC, PlayStation consoles, Xbox platforms, and Nintendo Switch. If you want to download OlympusExtra and add Apollo to your game (with the promise of more gods to come in the future), you can do so over at NexusMods, where you can also follow the progress of the mod if you wish. Here's hoping that Hera, Hestia, and Hephaestus are just as well-implemented as Apollo is and that they are just as fickle as the Olympians Hades currently features.
