Hades almost had a star for Theseus, which would bore AF

Imagine you are playing Hades, escaping the underworld, fighting, and succumbing to relentless enemies. Every time your character perishes, you hear the low, ominous growl of the King of the Dead in your ear and mock you for your weakness. Until finally, after countless attempts, you stand before Hades and prepare for the final confrontation, and you hear your character say, “To all our fans we dedicate this battle to you!” Because in this version of Hades, you play as Theseus.

Fortunately, that did not happen. But according to a report in the edge, we avoided a bad timeline in which the platinum-blonde blowhard was the star of Supergiant Games’ roguelite hit in 2020 instead of the sober and sweet Prince Zagreus.

Early concepts of the game were with Theseus as he explored the labyrinth of Crete, Amir Rao, co-founder of Supergiant, said in a speech on the invitational and sound-only social app Clubhouse. Although Theseus is a popular heroic figure in Greek mythology, the team was dissatisfied with its development as Hadeshero.

“When we tried to bring him to life as a protagonist, he ran the risk of being very generic,” Hades creative director Greg Kasavin said Edge. ‘But as soon as we start adding specific details[s] to him he just no longer really feels like Theseus. ”

When he returns to the mythological drawing board, Kasavin finds the neglected story of Hades’ son and decides Zagreus would make a better protagonist.

“We just found a better kind of angle on the protagonist, on the overall theme and the storytelling technique at the same time,” Kasavin said.

Theseus as Hades‘protagonist made logical sense. After all, he is the celebrated, minotaur killing hero of the Greek myth. But Hades‘story worked because it undermined expectations. Gods were still fickle and small creatures, but they are your family, and you love them, damn it. There was still a disgruntled boy who killed his trusty father, but the main story of the game was about reconciliation, not revenge. Even the design of the gods themselves as people of color was revolutionary. Although I think Hades would have been enjoyable no matter who I launched through the spinning dungeons, I feel the success of the game is because Supergiant took the worn source material and got funky with it. In Hades, Theseus is still a hero — an unpleasant, self-absorbed, over-groomed hero that everyone likes to hate.