An unfortunate consequence of releasing your story-heavy game in early access is the amount of pressure on its final release to satisfy everyone who's been following along. That's the trouble Hades 2 ran into when it hit 1.0 earlier this month.
As people brought over their progress and finished the game for its "true ending", the criticisms started stacking up. The Hades Reddit was flooded with threads discussing problems with how the story wraps up, so much so that the moderators asked users to only use neutral statements about it in their thread titles to avoid any hint of spoilers for those who hadn't seen it yet.
Without spoiling anything here myself, I'll just say the main issue seemed to be about how abrupt it felt and that certain characters behaved in a way that didn't line up with the rest of the story. Basically, Hades 2 had a surprisingly tidy ending for a story about messy gods.
The negative reactions must've been strong enough to prompt developer Supergiant Games to start working on a way to contextualize—not change—the ending. In its first patch since its release, Hades 2 will get "true ending enhancements" that add new events that lead up to it and a few following it.
Supergiant doesn't go into details about what's being added in a preview of the patch on Steam, but it's also including a new incantation you can craft to rewind time back to a point where you can re-do it to see the new stuff. An early version of the patch is playable right now if you follow the steps on the Steam post. Supergiant recommends backing up your save before playing it just in case.
"The ending wouldn't be nearly as badly received if we had some proper buildup to [REDACTED]'s [REDACTED]," wrote Reddit user GenderGambler in a thread about the update.
Other commenters are still skeptical that a few extra scenes will be enough and think that a lot more needs to be added throughout the game to justify a certain character's turn at the end.
The rest of the patch has a bunch of small balance changes and bug fixes, but it seems like the focus is mostly pn trying to massage the ending into something that won't leave players so sour about it.
I enjoyed Hades 2 quite a lot despite my hesitations about Supergiant making its first sequel. It's an excellent extension of what made the first game's run-based roguelike structure work. I hadn't seen the true ending by the time I finished the Hades 2 review—it requires you to finish the game several times—but as soon as I did, I could see why it rubbed people the wrong way. Part of me wishes it was different altogether, but I also respect Supergiant for sticking to the story it wrote and just adding extra scenes to at least let people see the full extent of the direction it took.
