Hades 3 (very loose proposal)
We get our usual in medias res introduction of, you guessed it, Makaria, daughter of Hades and Persephone, goddess of paradise (as a read on "bliss/foolishness"). Accordingly, she starts her little campaign in the Isles of the Blessed, radiantly peaceful and well-lit, and where Zagreus and Melinoë were focused, Makaria seems relaxed, almost nostalgic. "Another day in paradise."
Her combat kit is likewise "complete" in a way that theirs weren't – quick, responsive attacks, plenty of dashes, and (if you run out of HP, which frankly you'd have to try to do) a self-replenishing Death Defiance. She encounters no Boons, only resources and cash (which she can spend at Charon's shop on Centaur Hearts and Nectar), but doesn't really need any to complete her zone. She talks about "tending the garden" and "keeping our honored guests busy."
Her biome guardian is Persephone, who looks a little more ragged and a little more dressed for combat. She tells Makaria, aren't you tired of this yet? Makaria says, of course not. I just wish you were still enjoying it. Just tell me what I can do differently to make you happy, and I'll work on it. Persephone says, there's nothing.
You are playing as Persephone, against the kit you've been feeling out for Makaria, as controlled by the AI. You have almost zero health. In all likelihood, she clobbers the fuck out of you.
Persephone's daughter Makaria governs the Isles of the Blessed, an aeon after the events of Hades 2. She is the only daughter Persephone ever got to raise to adulthood, and reigns now, nominally Princess of the Underworld and Architect of Paradise, but in practice very much in charge. The Fates' last prophecy is underway, and the Olympians have descended from their mountain to leave the world behind, residing in the new Paradise their little cousin designed for them – but they've undergone a kind of rebirth via immersion in the Lethe, unable to give up their duties any other way. The Olympians are children again (with according shifts in their domains and mythic roles), remembering nothing of the world before.
Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, has lived an aeon in blessed retirement, and has gotten just a little bit sick of it. Her mission is this: tear down paradise. As long as Makaria rules over the lands of the dead, admitting mortal lives and putting them to work in her paradise's vast bureaucratic/maintenance machine, the Fates' prophecy won't come true, and the world will still run on the will of the Gods (and the child-Olympians aren't governing – hence the eerie calm of the surface, seas gone placid and storms stilled). So Persephone, operating from her garden at the edge of the Isles, ventures out to defeat Makaria's judges of the dead, acquiring their authority from their bodies like the keys necessary to switch on a nuclear reactor. In a failed run, the underworld simply self-corrects, growing organically back into place; in a successful one, Persephone rips the whole place down, and forces her daughter to spend time and energy (non-infinite reserves!) restoring it all.
Makaria herself admits, given time, that she isn't just keeping paradise alive because it holds her family together, though it does. She's the only daughter Persephone ever got to raise herself; she knows what Demeter was like as a mother, and what the Olympians were like to their children. To hold them here in permanent impotence, with her as their doting, omnipotent caretaker, is their punishment for what they let happen to her mother.
Further thoughts to come.
