The three of us were talking together over Zoom, since Penrose and Vineys are friends in real life: they met in an improv class in Los Angeles. “One was like: ‘I want Meg to whip me and read the phone book to me at the same time.” “I’ve seen some of the things you’ve gotten, Avalon,” said Vineys. “People have said the nicest things! People have made the sweetest, most adorable fan art.” “A lot of people have found me on Twitter, found me on Discord, found my stream when I stream Hades,” she said.
Hades has netted her much more attention. Almost no one reached out to her directly because of Pyre, in which she voices a chittering imp named Ti’zo. There’s so much talking going on.”įor Vineys, who also contributed voice acting to Pyre, the difference between fans’ reception to her work on the two games has been obvious. Zagreus and his companions “have the hard conversations, they have the awkward conversations. “Communication is such an important part of these relationships,” said Vineys. Zagreus, who is emotionally and physically at war with his dad, is constantly processing his feelings.
#MEGAERA HADES ART SERIES#
Viewed this way, the game is a series of conversations. Then, he checks in with the inhabitants of a house he has never been able to leave. Every time Zagreus bites the bone dust during an escape attempt, he drags himself out of a pool of blood into the House of Hades. But just as many focus on the dynamics between Zagreus and the people he encounters, from his forbidding father, Hades, to his relatives on Mount Olympus sending him encouraging, godly voicemails, to his mentor, the warrior Achilles. Since Hades is a roguelike, many of the lines focus on combat. The performances in Hades are rich, varied, and abundant: there are over 20,000 voiced lines. They’ve also never had a fully-voiced game before, though in-house voice actor Logan Cunningham played narrator-like roles in all three previous games. Until now, Supergiant Games, which released Bastion (2011), Transistor (2014), and Pyre (2017), has had a dedicated but small fandom. For the people who give voice to these characters in Hades, what is that experience like? To find out, I interviewed Penrose, as well as Courtney Vineys (Aphrodite and Dusa), Darren Korb (Zagreus), and Cyrus Nemati (Theseus, Ares, and Dionysus). For a creator, the feed might look like this: a heartfelt compliment, followed by a scream of harassment, followed by a fan artist’s cute, chibi-style drawings of the creator’s characters, followed by another fan artist’s explicit drawings of the same characters. Platforms like Twitter are endless voids, awash with fervent blasts of communication that may or may not reach the tagged targets. In 2020, it’s easier than ever before for creators and their fans to interact. “It feels empty when they’re only reaching out to me to tell me that I’m a weird part of their horny dreams,” she said. However, a few people cross the line and do fuck with Penrose, messaging her to tell her how her voice figures into their sexual fantasies.
Penrose has a naturally husky voice, which she pitched even throatier for the role of Meg.
Two and a half months later, that deluge has hardly slowed. Enthusiastic fans, who responded to the game’s complex and fully-voiced characters, began a deluge of art, chatter, and fanfiction. It climbed sales charts on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. Upon its official release, Hades received dazzling reviews and sold over 300,000 copies in three days. The game, a roguelike that tells the story of Greek god Zagreus, son of Hades, and his attempts to escape the Underworld, had been in early access since December of 2018.
Penrose got a new Twitter account and began engaging with a few fans who reached out to her directly about her performance. “I was like, should I have Twitter again?” she said. “I was in such a spiral of not enjoying social media,” Penrose said, “because of the politics I was fighting over.” Then the trailer hit, and Penrose started noticing a trickle of Hades-related comments on her Instagram. The actress, who voiced the antagonist-turned-love-interest Megaera, had deleted her Facebook and Twitter accounts in July. When the trailer for Supergiant Games’ latest title, Hades, debuted on August 18th, Avalon Penrose was not paying attention to her social media.
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