Last year’s surprise hit (or maybe not that big of a surprise for people who had been playing the early access version since 2018) Hades was something quite special. We were big fans ourselves, and the game has ended up creating quite a little fanbase for itself across the PC and Switch releases. As with most games, too, lots of things changed in development as well. One of those things may surprise you, too, as the game originally had a very different main character.
Speaking with The Verge, Creative Director and Voice Actor Greg Kasavin talked about how the original protagonist was set to be Theseus, who did end up in the game as a boss character. Instead of exploring an ever-changing Hades, he’d instead find himself navigating the shifting labyrinth of Crete. According to Kasavin, as they added more details to Theseus, they realized they had changed the core of the character significantly and seeing the lack of myths surrounding the God Hades and his son made them change course.
“The idea was going to be like each time you play, it’s kind of like a different retelling of the Theseus myth. So kind of cerebrally, he was interesting. But when we were trying to bring him to life as a protagonist, he has this risk of being kind of very generic. But as soon as we start adding specific detail to him, he just doesn’t really feel like Theseus anymore.
“It turns out that there are not a lot of myths about Hades, apparently, because the Greeks were just afraid of him. So they didn’t talk about him … It’s like, wait a minute. Hades is one of these super iconic like household name level, Greek gods. And yet there’s so few stories about him and he has a son?
“We just found a better sort of angle on the protagonist, on the overall theme and on the storytelling technique as well in that one swoop. Things actually did come together pretty quickly from there.”
Hades is available now on Switch and PC. The Switch version of the game will get physical release on March 19th. As of now, no other platforms have been announced.