Hades Video Game and the Greek Myths Behind It
Hades is a video game from Supergiant Games, released in 2020. You play Zagreus, the son of Hades, god of the underworld, who is determined to escape his father's kingdom and find the mother he never knew. Every time he fails, he wakes up back home and tries again, and each attempt reveals a little more of the story.
Almost every character in the game comes from Greek mythology, so this page walks through the game's story in order and points to the real myths behind it. Fair warning: there are spoilers all the way to the end.
Jump to: The House of Hades | Gifts from Olympus | Tartarus | Asphodel | Elysium | The Temple of Styx | The Surface | Game vs. Myth | Hades II
Tap any image to open the full-size printable, then download or print it.
The House of Hades
The game starts in the palace of Hades, deep in the underworld. Zagreus has grown up there, raised by Nyx, the goddess of night, and he's never gotten along with his stern, overworked father. The palace is full of familiar faces: Hypnos, the sleepy god of sleep, runs the front desk; the great hero Achilles serves as Zagreus' trainer; Cerberus, the three-headed dog, is the family pet; and a cheerful floating Gorgon head named Dusa keeps the place tidy.
One day Zagreus discovers that Nyx isn't his real mother. His birth mother is Persephone, who left the underworld long ago, and nobody will tell him why. So he grabs a weapon and heads for the exit.
Gifts from Olympus
Zagreus isn't alone. His relatives on Mount Olympus have just learned he exists, and they want to help him reach the surface. Along the way they send him gifts called boons, each one based on the god's own powers:
- Zeus adds lightning bolts.
- Poseidon adds crashing waves that knock enemies back.
- Athena adds a shield that deflects attacks.
- Ares adds spinning blades and curses.
- Aphrodite weakens enemies with charm.
- Artemis adds sharp-shooting critical hits.
- Dionysus leaves enemies dizzy and hungover.
- Hermes makes Zagreus faster.
- Demeter shows up later with icy frost, and she has a very personal reason for wanting to meet Zagreus.
Tartarus
The first region is Tartarus, the deepest, darkest part of the underworld. In the myths, it's where the worst wrongdoers were punished. The boss is Megaera, one of the three Furies, who chased down wrongdoers in Greek myth. In later attempts, her sisters Alecto and Tisiphone take her place.
Tartarus is also home to Sisyphus, the king who was doomed to roll a boulder up a hill forever, only for it to roll back down every time. In the game he's surprisingly cheerful about it, and he's even given his boulder a name.
Asphodel
Next come the Asphodel Meadows, which in the myths were a gray, quiet place where ordinary souls drifted after death. In the game, they're a sea of fire and lava. The boss is the Bone Hydra, a skeletal version of the many-headed serpent that Herakles fought.
Zagreus also meets Eurydice here, the wife of the musician Orpheus. In the myth, Orpheus went down to the underworld to bring her back and lost her when he looked behind him too soon. In the game, Zagreus can help the two of them reunite.
Elysium
Elysium is where the greatest heroes go after death, a bright, peaceful land of fields and rivers. The champion of Elysium is Theseus, and he fights alongside an unexpected partner: Asterion, the Minotaur. In the myths, Theseus defeated the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, so seeing them as a team is a fun twist.
Zagreus also meets Patroclus here, the best friend of Achilles from the Iliad. Achilles has been working for Hades the whole time and hasn't seen Patroclus since the Trojan War. Zagreus can help bring them back together.
Theseus coloring pages Minotaur coloring pages
The Temple of Styx
The last stretch is the Temple of Styx, named after the river that runs between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Waiting at the exit is Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. In the myths, only a few heroes ever got past him, and Herakles dragged him all the way to the surface as his twelfth labor. Zagreus has a gentler plan: he finds Cerberus a very smelly treat to keep him busy.
Between regions, Zagreus can spend his coins at a shop run by Charon, the ferryman who carried the souls of the dead across the river Styx.
The Surface
When Zagreus finally reaches the surface, his father is waiting for him in the snow, and they have to fight it out. Zagreus wins and makes his way to a quiet garden in Greece, where he finally meets Persephone. She's overjoyed to see him, but there's a catch: as a god of the underworld, Zagreus can't survive long in the world above, and he's pulled back home.
So he escapes again and again, and slowly learns the truth about why his mother left and why the whole thing was kept secret from Olympus. In the end, Persephone agrees to come home. She takes her place as queen of the underworld again, the family is mended, and Zagreus keeps "escaping" as his new job, testing the underworld's defenses for his father.
Persephone's mother, Demeter, is part of the story too. Just like in the myths, she misses her daughter terribly, and her grief is what makes winter so cold.
Persephone coloring pages Read the Hymn to Demeter
Game vs. Myth
Hades sticks close to the myths in a lot of places, but it also changes some big things. Here are a few fun ones to compare:
- Zagreus: In the old myths, Zagreus is a mysterious figure who's usually called the son of Zeus and Persephone, not Hades. The game gave him a brand-new story.
- Persephone: In the myths, Hades carried Persephone off to the underworld, and she had to return every year because she ate pomegranate seeds there. The game tells a very different version of their marriage.
- Hades: Movies and cartoons often make Hades a villain, but in the myths he was stern and fair, not evil. The game is closer to the myths here. He's grumpy, but he cares about his family.
- Theseus and the Minotaur: In the myths they were enemies. Making them teammates was the game's own idea and I LOVE that part.
- Achilles and Patroclus: Their friendship and Patroclus' loss are at the heart of the Iliad, and the game picks up their story after death.
Hades II
In 2025, Supergiant released Hades II. This time you play Melinoë, Zagreus' younger sister, a witch trained by Hecate, the goddess of magic. Kronos, the Titan of time, has escaped and taken over the underworld, and Melinoë sets out to defeat him and rescue her family.
Hades II reaches even further into Greek myth. Selene, goddess of the moon, lends Melinoë her power, Arachne weaves her armor, and Odysseus helps plan her battles. On the surface she faces familiar monsters from the Odyssey, like the Cyclops Polyphemus and the six-headed Scylla, and even Eris, the goddess of strife.
Titan coloring pages The Odyssey coloring pages
Greek mythology coloring pages More video game coloring pages