Next-Gen Hades Just Made Petting The Dog Even Better
We're barking mad for Supergiant Games' Hades, and if you haven't played the roguelike dungeon crawler yet, seriously, where have you been? While you might not think it, petting the dog is also a big deal in your journey through the underworld.
Bringing the tale of Zagreus to a whole new generation of fans, Hades has finally landed on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. If you want to know which version to buy, it turns out the PS5 port has an added bonus when it comes to petting the dog.
How do you pet the dog in Hades?
Among the colourful cast of gods and monsters Zagreus comes across while he claws his way through these dungeons, you'll meet Cerberus - the three-headed guardian of Hades' realm. There was disappointment that you can only pet one of his three heads (we'll get onto that later), and while this is still the case, the PS5 version adds a unique Hades feature for petting the dog.
One of the PS5's big selling features is the souped-up DualSense controller. Although we loved our old DualShock 4, Sony decided it's out with the old and in with the new. You could previously play Hades on your PlayStation, but now, the PS5 makes use of the DualSense's haptic feedback. When you approach Cerberus, there's still the option to pet his happy head. In the next-gen version of Hades though, you'll hear a happy growl through your DualSense.
The news that a content Cerberus will give a little grrrr has surprisingly popped off on Twitter. Petting the dog is a must-ask question of modern games, with one fan writing, "Thus making it the superior version without a doubt". Another added, "Well that's just adorable. Being able to pet cerberus is such a great little touch in the game".
Why can't you pet all three heads in Hades?
That's all well and good, but we still demand to know why you can't pet all three of Cerberus' heads in Hades. Kotaku raised this question when Hades first launched, and apparently, there's a very good reason behind it. Supergiant Writer and Designer Greg Kasavin explained, "Zagreus explains why Cerberus must be petted in a very precise way if you keep petting him. The bottom line is: Some dogs just don’t like pets! Especially immortal hell hounds".
There is actually a technological reason behind it, with Kasavin adding, "Completely coincidental to this in-world justification, it incidentally does happen to be very difficult to make characters in our engine perfectly line up and interact.
"If Cerberus’ two other heads enjoyed being petted, and it was necessary for us to express this in-game, then we would have had to spend many days of animation, rendering, and design bandwidth creating alternate interactions for those heads. Fortunately, Cerberus absolutely does not like having his two other heads petted, so we were able to use the time we otherwise would have spent on that on other significant features.”
Jump forward to 2021, and sadly, the updated and next-gen Hades still doesn't let you pet all three heads. These days, dogs in video games are all the rage. Only recently, there was the heartbreaking news that Fallout 4's Dogmeat sadly passed away in real life, while the Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut will let you pet a whole menagerie of animals. The @Canyoupetthedog Twitter account is our go-to to find out whether a game is worth buying or not, and now we know a purring Cerberus is part of the PS5 Hades, guess what we just added to our basket.
