A Hades player defies the gods, completes ‘impossible’ run

polygon.com:

In an act that seemingly defies the will of the gamer gods themselves, a speedrunner has pulled off one of the most technically difficult and statistically unlikely runs in Hades. The run — which was a 64 Heat run on an unmodded and unseeded version of the game — was previously declared by some in the community to be “impossible,” because the odds of rolling the correct combination of powers are so low and the technical ability required is so high. Or at least, it seemed so.

In Hades, you play as Zagreus, the son of the god of the underworld. As Zagreus, you hack and slash your way through a series of dungeon chambers in order to escape your father and hell itself. Over the course of the game, players can tinker with the difficulty by choosing various combat modifiers; someone who has less familiarity with an action combat game can experience Hadesin a variety of ways tailored to their abilities and preferences. On the flip side, the developers also have given players the ability to crank the difficulty up to nearly impossible levels.

One way to do this is through the Heat level, which imposes certain Pacts of Punishment upon Zagreus that increase the difficulty of the game. The maximum Heat level is 64, and changing the difficulty to this level essentially layers on tons of additional challenges and nerfs to Zagreus. Some examples of added challenges include no healing, enemies hitting 100% harder, and enemies moving and attacking 40% faster. Additionally, Zagreus doesn’t get any revives, so any damage you take is essentially permanent.

Hades is a rogue-like game, so each time Zagreus dies, he has to restart his escape back at the beginning — meaning that players will repeat the same series of dungeons over and over,