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Escaping Hades: Playing with Classical Reception

  • Hamish Cameron
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Classical Reception
This chapter is in the book Classical Reception

Abstract

This chapter examines how the critically acclaimed video game Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020) adapts and interprets the classical mythic tradition for a contemporary audience. After contextualising Hades as a game, a narrative, and a cultural artefact, I examine several specific textual moments in the game’s narrative: partial allusions to the stories of Theseus and Ariadne and Callisto and Zeus, the rationalised aetiology of Orphic Zagreus, and the fragmented and reshaped relationship between Zeus and Demeter around Persephone’s “abduction”. These episodes show the designers connecting textual moments from the Greek mythic storyworld to the game’s story by threads of potentiality that lead the player in either direction: towards the game or towards the myths. These connections allow references to myth to expand the storyworld of the game while also allowing the designers the freedom to reshape aspects of the myth to suit the concerns and interests of their contemporary audience.

Abstract

This chapter examines how the critically acclaimed video game Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020) adapts and interprets the classical mythic tradition for a contemporary audience. After contextualising Hades as a game, a narrative, and a cultural artefact, I examine several specific textual moments in the game’s narrative: partial allusions to the stories of Theseus and Ariadne and Callisto and Zeus, the rationalised aetiology of Orphic Zagreus, and the fragmented and reshaped relationship between Zeus and Demeter around Persephone’s “abduction”. These episodes show the designers connecting textual moments from the Greek mythic storyworld to the game’s story by threads of potentiality that lead the player in either direction: towards the game or towards the myths. These connections allow references to myth to expand the storyworld of the game while also allowing the designers the freedom to reshape aspects of the myth to suit the concerns and interests of their contemporary audience.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments VII
  3. Contents IX
  4. List of Figures XIII
  5. Introduction: Classical Reception in the Early 2020s, Critical Times and Where to Next? 1
  6. Part I: Concepts, Methods, and Intersections in Classical Reception
  7. Section 1: Re-Thinking Classical Reception
  8. The Master’s Tools?: Towards a Politics of Reception 23
  9. Classics on the Surface: Classical Reception as an Emergent Process 41
  10. Masked Celluloid Classics? Shadows of Clytemnestra in Film Noir 61
  11. Section 2: Working with Archives
  12. The “Advent of the New Rule”: An Oresteia (1947) in Prague and the Epistemological Limits of Archivalia 87
  13. Karolos Koun’s Art Theatre, the Greek Dictatorship, and the Ford Foundation: From Handout to Handshake 119
  14. Narcissus, Adonis, and Medusa: Troubled Beauty in Classical Receptions of Film Stardom 139
  15. Section 3: Cultural Intersections
  16. Mocking the Hollywood Epic Canon: Parodies of the Classical World from Latin American Cinema’s Studio Era 169
  17. Suspended Temporalities and Classical Reception: Cassandra in Anne Carson’s Agamemnon 193
  18. Manga and the Power of the Classical Object: The Merging of Eastern and Western Traditions 215
  19. Part II: Classical Receptions in Response to Societal Challenges
  20. Section 4: Forming and Re-Negotiating Identities
  21. Cripping Venus: Intersections of Classics and Disability Studies in Contemporary Receptions of the Venus de Milo 239
  22. Social Justice-Engaged Reception Pedagogy at Wake Forest University 265
  23. Classics on the Italian Stage: Old Habits and ‘New Deals’ 279
  24. Section 5: Greek Tragedy in a Time of Pandemic
  25. Tragedy as an Open Network: Antigone in Ferguson (2016–) and The Nurse Antigone (2022–2023) 307
  26. “Where’s the Body?”: Performing Iphigenia at Aulis in New Zealand during the Pandemic (2020) 329
  27. Section 6: Engaging with Technology and the Wider Public
  28. Escaping Hades: Playing with Classical Reception 357
  29. Classical Reception Meets Pedagogy: The Creation and Uses of the Panoply Vase Animation Project's Our Mythical Childhood and Locus Ludi Animations 383
  30. List of Contributors 409
  31. Index 415
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110773729-016

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments VII
  3. Contents IX
  4. List of Figures XIII
  5. Introduction: Classical Reception in the Early 2020s, Critical Times and Where to Next? 1
  6. Part I: Concepts, Methods, and Intersections in Classical Reception
  7. Section 1: Re-Thinking Classical Reception
  8. The Master’s Tools?: Towards a Politics of Reception 23
  9. Classics on the Surface: Classical Reception as an Emergent Process 41
  10. Masked Celluloid Classics? Shadows of Clytemnestra in Film Noir 61
  11. Section 2: Working with Archives
  12. The “Advent of the New Rule”: An Oresteia (1947) in Prague and the Epistemological Limits of Archivalia 87
  13. Karolos Koun’s Art Theatre, the Greek Dictatorship, and the Ford Foundation: From Handout to Handshake 119
  14. Narcissus, Adonis, and Medusa: Troubled Beauty in Classical Receptions of Film Stardom 139
  15. Section 3: Cultural Intersections
  16. Mocking the Hollywood Epic Canon: Parodies of the Classical World from Latin American Cinema’s Studio Era 169
  17. Suspended Temporalities and Classical Reception: Cassandra in Anne Carson’s Agamemnon 193
  18. Manga and the Power of the Classical Object: The Merging of Eastern and Western Traditions 215
  19. Part II: Classical Receptions in Response to Societal Challenges
  20. Section 4: Forming and Re-Negotiating Identities
  21. Cripping Venus: Intersections of Classics and Disability Studies in Contemporary Receptions of the Venus de Milo 239
  22. Social Justice-Engaged Reception Pedagogy at Wake Forest University 265
  23. Classics on the Italian Stage: Old Habits and ‘New Deals’ 279
  24. Section 5: Greek Tragedy in a Time of Pandemic
  25. Tragedy as an Open Network: Antigone in Ferguson (2016–) and The Nurse Antigone (2022–2023) 307
  26. “Where’s the Body?”: Performing Iphigenia at Aulis in New Zealand during the Pandemic (2020) 329
  27. Section 6: Engaging with Technology and the Wider Public
  28. Escaping Hades: Playing with Classical Reception 357
  29. Classical Reception Meets Pedagogy: The Creation and Uses of the Panoply Vase Animation Project's Our Mythical Childhood and Locus Ludi Animations 383
  30. List of Contributors 409
  31. Index 415
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