Hades by Supergiant Games is the Best Modern Orphic Story You’ll Ever Experience

Disclaimer: I do not hold myself as the sole and singular authority on any of what I’m about to speak about through these words. Please consider me a jumping-off point for thought, inquiry, and research, not as a pure source. Much of this has my own biases, through my study, the biases of those who taught me, and the biases of the texts I have access to read. My opinion is one amongst many.

This will contain spoilers for Supergiant Games’ Hades.

One of the latest crazes regarding the more modern (as of 2022) adaptations of Greek (or Hellenistic) mythology to a predominantly Western audience focuses on the relationship between Hades and Persephone. There’s something so attractive about exploring their dynamic that you can revisit it again and again, and get anything between hot garbage aimed at young women being irresponsible with its themes and storytelling to explorations on consent (both romantic and sexual) to exploring where the metaphysical spheres of life and death converge. If you have a favorite trope, somewhere out there exists a Hades and Persephone take on it.

But where does the foundation for this come from? The Homeric Ode to Demeter is dry and sparse on their actual dynamic, as it’s more focused on the exploration of seasons than it is about romance. Some would argue that there’s nothing romantic about it from a modern perspective, that a lot of the romance we see between Hades and Persephone in modern retellings is a modern conception. And there are valid points to that: we have a problematic habit of sanitizing mythology to fit in with morality, mainly out of practice because modern Christianity made literalism the rigid standard for dealing with religion. By doing so, we lose a lot of what the mythology establishes through metaphor instead of nitpicking “literal” details.

What happens between Hades and Persephone in the Homeric Ode to Demeter is less about romance and more about explaining seasons and marriage traditions: the kidnapping has Spartan influences all over it, while Persephone’s youth suggests an Athenian influence. Spartans liked older capable women, and their reaction to kidnapping was necessary for their militaristic culture. Athenians generally married their daughters off young. (I’d like to note here, just in case, that just because they’re traditions, traditions don’t make things morally correct. There’s a reason we moved away from these, after all.)

So, where does the romantic angle come from? Is it all specifically a modern invention? Amidst a standardized belief that Hades is Persephone’s uncle (we can attribute that to one guy [Hesiod, my nemesis, my beloathed] trying to codify a family tree for the gods. It was not a universal Hellenistic belief that all the gods were related. It’s one origin story amongst many), which is frankly odd considering all the modern moralizing we do about these stories. Why is it popular? Popular enough to give us the whole narrative backbone of Hades by Supergiant Games being explicitly about their marriage?

The first thing I have to explain, both for that question and Orphism in general, is mystery cults.

Mystery Cults

Mystery cults is an overarching term used in classics to label a religious group that we don’t know much about and that wouldn’t have been public knowledge back in the day. You can compare some of these with modern-day counter-culture groups because the vibe is similar, but they’re not 1:1, so do so with nuance and a massive bucket of salt.

To give a more minor example: much of what is considered modern consensus about Dionysus is Athenian attempts to sanitize a mystery cult. As wine traveled throughout the region, so too did a religious group with it that didn’t so much worship a god but worshiped the feeling of intoxication. Personification came naturally after and out came Dionysus, but in a much more feral state than you’d think given the generalized modern perception of Dionysus. Recall that one legend of Dionysus being held ransom by pirates, how he starts as jovial and understanding but turns knife-sharp quickly as the stakes rise, spreading madness and turning men into dolphins. That quick heel-turn always sticks out as odd to folks because, hey, it’s Dionysus, he’s the party guy, your local friendly frat boy. But he wasn’t always. (If you want to look more into specifically Dionysus, I can recommend this video as a starting point. Listen, there’s a couple of reasons that the energy of a Denny’s at 3 AM is like that, but you can’t discount the connection to Dionysus: Denny as the nickname of Dennis, Dennis evolved from Denis, Denis is the medieval French adaptation of Dionysus. The Energy can be forgotten but never quite cut off)

Orphism is explicitly a mystery cult named after Orpheus, and you can start to see how on Earth this topic is even remotely related to Hades by Supergiant Games.

What even IS Orphism???

Orphism is very specifically about the dual nature of humanity: the body (or sôma) and a divine spark/soul (or psukhḗ). Humanity gets the body from the Titans and that divine spark from Dionysus, according to the Orphics.

Orphism is heavily fixated on reincarnation, but very specifically, indefinite reincarnation.

We’ll never know 100% what Orphism is about (hence “mystery”), but what pieces we’ve put together paint something of a picture (any of which could change at any time with new research, discoveries, and perspectives on already discovered texts):

• It’s an older-than-dirt religion adapting its way into the more acceptable Hellenistic framework. This general overarching idea is connected to this idea known as the Eleusian Mysteries, which had many mystery cults attached to it. The Eleusian Mysteries give us the bare minimum basis for Persephone’s agency, along with many other core basics to the Hades/Persephone-specific tropes, for use in many modern retellings.
• Many people have always found it weird that a group so closely associated with Orpheus would choose Dionysus (Orpheus is usually described as a disciple or a child of Apollo). My theory is that Orphism was an organic mix between the Bacchics (a more explicitly Dionysus-centered mystery cult) and the Eleusian Mysteries. I dub that my theory because I’ve yet to personally find a paper supporting it with further research; it’s speculation on my part, so have a bucket of salt. Orpheus was convenient because his main story is explicitly about going to the Underworld and back again, which centers nicely on the themes of reincarnation that the Orphics would inherit from the Eleusian Mysteries.
• There’s a lot to unpack with the relationship between Orphism and Pythagoras (yes, like the Pythagorean theorem you learned in school). It’s an ongoing heated debate, but to sum it up: there are so many similarities between the two (including a fussiness about beans) that many put them in the same box, but others are less than convinced that those similarities mean they’re the same. It’s a debate akin to “did Tolkein elves actually have pointed ears?”, it’s a mess, but a delightfully comedic one to follow in academic essays. Lots of academic name-calling, lots of thinly veiled polite insults.
• We know other, particular details about Orphism (like dietary restrictions and similar information). Still, they’re not necessary to dissect what Hades by Supergiant Game does with Orphism’s philosophies as a whole. (But yes, please print vegetarian memes with Orpheus that specifically have him being picky with beans. Specific beans. Fanart and fanfic of Orpheus and Pythagoras being fussy about beans; I realize these are a niche desire, but I am planting the seed; I want to see the art beans.)

So with that very brief, trees-over-grasses overview perspective of Orphism established between you and me, dear reader, let’s talk about Hades by Supergiant Games.

Hades by Supergiant Games is an action roguelike that mixes RPG elements into the mix, whereas instead of the usual “oh you died, wipe the slate” mechanic known from the genre, any progress you make in one run adds up to the next run. You play as Zagreus as he tries to get out from the Underworld time and time again, meeting his friends and family along the way and slowly piecing together the whole picture of everything that happened as the game puts it.

Let’s break down the highly Orphic philosophy built into the main gameplay loop without even touching that Orpheus is in the game (mainly as the Watsonian delivery mechanism for the game’s phenomenal soundtrack).

Orphism, as previously noted, deals heavily in indefinite reincarnation. The idea is to live a full life, die, and then through various mechanics (maybe skipping over drinking from the river Lethe, like other Eleusian mystery cults prescribed, or other methods), retain memories of the full life you just lived and use those in your next one.

Folks who have played Hades might find that sounding a bit familiar: do your best on your run, die, and take that skill you just built up from the previous run and try to improve your best on your next run. That’s the gameplay loop of Hades, and it falls into extremely delightful Orphic philosophy.

Not quite: in Hellenistic structures, we have death happen all the time to gods. Zeus achieves his position as head of the Olympians in most common retellings because he kills his father, the Titan Kronus.

The difference between Olympians and Titans is in name alone: they’re generational and theological-political labels (though, with Titan, it gets arbitrary as to whether it is both a generational and theological-political label or if it’s one or the other; it depends on who you’re referring to). Mechanically, they’re the same: the same people who thought leopards and lions were the different biological sexes of the same species (and did not mate with each other; yes, that’s why Atalanta’s story ends like that, it’s not a girlboss thing, it’s a “what a tragedy: in your hubris, you didn’t honor Aphrodite who brought you both together, and so you’ll never have sex and children ever again” sort of Greek tragedy) constantly had Olympians and Titans have babies (yes, even beyond Hesiod’s family tree). Titans are gods, just the same as the Olympians. They’re Old Gods in most structures, but gods nonetheless. And gods can die. They can also come back, so most acknowledge that Kronos is imprisoned in Tartarus. (To the point where I think it’d be interesting to recognize that some tellings have Zeus move Kronos out of Tartarus and make him King of the Elysian Isles [another name for Elysium]) Kronos is imprisoned/King to stop him from fully coming back to life.

The difference between mortals and gods isn’t that mortals die and gods can’t: both can. Instead, the difference lies in what tools and connections are at the disposal of gods that mortals usually don’t have access to utilize. The mortals who do get access to the tools and connections of gods are heroes, traditionally classed as demigods (the core spine of this system is that familial connection is one of the most sacred things in the world; though, even despite that, there are exceptions).

The other wonderful thing Hades does is constantly draw skepticism to the words of the gods. One of the things I’d like to draw a reader’s attention to is this text from when someone looks at Zagreus’s codex file outside of the game that expands upon the rumors of Zagreus’s mortality through his blood and discusses directly how the game views Zagreus’s godhood:

We all are mortal and immortal, save the gods, who only are the latter. Some say that mortals flow from Dionysus from another life, for he is partly mortal from the details of his birth, and yet very much immortal in his station and his disposition. So, then, should it not be possible for other gods to be part-mortals, too? And, are we to take the stories of their ancestry at face value, unquestioningly always, even when the details of their origins are far too absurd or scandalous to be believed? Truly does the god of wine hold sway upon our minds, if such tales of their exploits are to spread unchecked, as fact.

As an occultist, this text makes me so happy. Not only is this the game openly acknowledging the details of Orphism that I noted to you above, but it also directly supports a healthier view of the very myths it is based upon to look at what is being said and question it, rather than take everything at face value. Look at the surrounding details, pick apart the tapestry, find the individual threads. Not memorize family trees and names alone, but to really interrogate the texts given. To question why an entity of life marries one of death, why lightning rules overhead, why could anyone believe that the god of intoxication could spawn human life as we know it. Questions and critical thinking are healthy and good.

The main mechanic that we can observe that stops people from coming back to life after Thanatos reaps them is the Underworld (or Hades The Place). In Greek myth, the Underworld has metaphysical properties that stop people from leaving. This restriction is mainly explored within Persephone’s pomegranates: she eats X amount of pomegranate seeds (regional variants; off the top of my head, some have 3, some have 6. It gets shuffled by translators, too, making the number of seeds based on how many months they consider winter vs. what’s in the actual text. Some translators will keep numbers out of it entirely) and she is then stuck in the Underworld for that many months (which is what gives us winter; Demeter mourning her daughter’s absence. Cold is the absence of heat, after all). Kronos is kept in the Underworld through institutional methods: imprisonment and gifted authority. Cerberus and the rivers are other mechanics for Underworld sapient retention.

One of the biggest questions of Hades is: what keeps Zagreus in the Underworld? The first answer is violence: Hades actively has the security system working against Zagreus. Even up at the top, Hades himself faces Zagreus as the final boss fight of the run.

But once that is conquered, what then? Such as there being the well-acknowledged humorous “Zagreus tripped and died and ended back in the Underworld again”-type end-cards once you get through the main meat of Hades’s story. Are those truly accidents, or are they the pull of the Underworld?

Don’t get me wrong: overthinking these minor events put into the game to continue the gameplay loop on one save, even after you’ve explored every nook and cranny of the main story, is not what they’re intended to be there for. They’re not there for analysis, and they don’t directly expand on the story or tell us anything meaningful. Instead, they’re the sort of thing where what you say about them says a lot about you: treating them as the jokes they’re intended to be doesn’t make you any less profound than anyone beating the drum that they mean a sequel game (despite that…Supergiant Games never does sequel games, as much as that hurts the grief I carry in my heart for the endings of Transistor and Pyre).

EDIT: Hello. Future Me from when Supergiant Games has announced Hades 2. Please don’t feel bad if you have a snort and chuckle at Past Me. I had a sense of security built from the reputation Supergiant Games had in the games industry for never making sequels. And…I wasn’t the only one. So…I’m proud to be wrong this time. Hades 2 looks great.

However, it’s also a little in the spirit of these jokes to think about it. Because up until this point, Zagreus has been dying every time he sees his mother on the surface. Each time, he dies in pretty gruesome ways.

Before I get to where I will be taking that particular conclusion, I’d like to point your attention towards my favorite ongoing joke in this game: the Dionysus-Zagreus Prank.

“Hey Zag, ever see a fellow by the name of Orpheus down there, you ever heard of him? I bet you have, and I have had a funny thought, a little just that maybe we could try, if you’d be up to have a little harmless fun?”

“Harmless fun at the expense of Orpheus? You have my full and complete attention, Dionysus mate.”

“… That chap comes up with the most smashing songs, so I was thinking, maybe we could spin him a tall tale, something like how maybe you and I, like, we’re connected or something? He’ll buy it, tell him, tell him for me, yeah?!”

When I encountered this dialogue in-game, I laughed entirely too hard. This felt like the best sort of inside joke that the developers had woven, this nod to not only me but anyone and everyone else who knew about Orphism and Zagreus’s history outside of their game, that could have been gifted.

And it keeps going! You enable Zagreus’s telling of the tall-tales of his adventures, of the “truths” he finds, and it culminates into the Song of Zagreus, which recounts real-life Orphic legend about Dionysus Zagreus. The metatextual meme-ry here is just…it’s so good. Whoever had this brainworm, I salute you.

From every level of this game, from world-building, character-building, gameplay, and songwriting perspectives, we can see the influence of Orphism.

But we also see it most strongly within Zagreus’s fate as a character, especially considering that death is inevitable for Zagreus, even as he struggles to get conversations in with his mother, even after he negotiates his parents into a healthier marriage, even after he uncovers every secret the Underworld has to offer.

(Including the Infernal Arms, which is a WHOLE DIFFERENT ESSAY, FRANKLY, Exagryph is so fascinating, diving into the metaphysical implications of the Infernal Arms is on my to-do list)

Regardless of if you believe Achilles’s speculation of Zagreus being a god of blood and life, Zagreus’s life itself is defined by what I like to call defiant kindness. He is polite, considerate, and most of all, kind to almost everyone he meets. He is living each run-up to the surface to the fullest.

But death is inevitable: that was a truth even the Orphics could not deny, and they did not, believing in fully indefinite reincarnation. Zagreus has this sort of indefinite reincarnation as long as you pick up the controls and run again.

Zagreus is an Orphic hero (give or take potential criteria lost to time’s erosion or standards like Orphic feelings on beans and similar subjects). He embodies a spark, living fully through struggle, only to rise again and embrace the Divine Struggle of Life yet again for his goal. And that is part of what makes him such a satisfying protagonist to play as, why we root for him as we play as him, as we watch others play as him, and so on.

He explores his parents’ marriage as we do, establishing it as this troubling element that underpins the entire world in its state. Rather than taking the popular narrative approach with Hades and Persephone and showing us the process of how they fell in love, Hades by Supergiant Games shows us the consequences of it and still makes it a love story. This game understands the truth that the Orphics and others who adopted the Eleusian Mysteries as the core of their beliefs honed: that real love, that the real magic of the world, was built in kindness amidst struggle and chaos.