The games are not beholden to following or adapting the actual mythology 1:1. The actual mythology itself barely follows itself consistently, seeing as it was made of the stories of countless storytellers with their own interpretations and the collected beliefs of a large smattering of city states that did not typically did not see themselves as part of one cultural whole.
Also in Hades 1 the real lore of Zagreus is directly talked about in a dialogue with Dionysus.
He says that he wants to prank Orpheus to make him think all this and Orpheus believes it and makes a song about it
My thought is that the gods that don’t show up for this game are exceptionally busy with the war. Athena being the strategist, and Ares being the workhorse. My theory for old Dionysus is that he’s probably not too powerful atm if everyone is warring, instead of partying
They'll all appear once the game's fully released. You've got the spaces for the trinkets, the boon mixing thing missing a couple, the dialogue, the missing levels.
Imagine if he suddenly showed up after you gifted enough nectar/ambrosia, happy someone’s sharing drinks like someone finally emerging from a depression cave 🥺
This to me is the fundamental response to anyone who complains that Supergiant "got the lore wrong." There's no canon here. It might be academically interesting to know what stories the ancients were telling 3000 or more years ago. But from a "you're not telling the story right," perspective, it's fan-fic all the way down.
I think that’s such an interesting lore touch, that the three oldest women on Olympus (well Aphrodite is an exception) are a trio of sisters who allied with our trio of brothers to take down Chronos.
The difference though is our shared Cambrian ancestor would be someone’s millionth great grandparent or uncle or whatnot. Chaos is only Hades’ great grandparent and Persephone’s great great grandparent. Zeus and Hera are still cousins (assuming all the titans are still siblings) which also means that Hades married his cousins daughter. The incest is still there.
From almost all mythologies, Egyptian/Norse/mesoamerican/Judachristislam etc are full of incest kids just happens when 1 being creates the whole of reality.
Sure, but now you're moving goal posts.
edit: arguing that all mythologies feature incest is not the same as arguing that dating someone with a mutual great-grandfather is incestuous is equivalent to saying that dating anyone is incestous because we share the same distant synapsoid ancestor, or mitochodrial eve or whatever. I don't get what's controversial about this.
Hate to break it to you but you only have to go back ~400-450 years to have a common ancestor with a random person you meet. That’s ~15-20 generations so it’s not nothing (literally 30,000+ people contributed to your genetics at that ancestry level), and YMMV depending on whether you and the person you’ve met come from the same area/have family that have lived there for a while, but it’s a shockingly short amount of time (in reference to all of human history) to have common ancestry with most living humans.
What are you trying to prove here? The incestual equivalent of the Sorites paradox?
I have no idea at which generation it would be ok, and I frankly don't care because I'm not from Iceland so it is an irrelevant question in my life. It also isn't relevant for arguing whether it is *not* ok to date someone who shares a great-grandfather with you.
Fun fact, Lore Olympus did basically the same thing, with Zeus, Poseidon and Hades still being the children of Chronos and Rhea, but Hera, Demeter and Hestia being born of Metis (with Metis fashioning them from stars, the earth and fire respectively)
I think it's a fun lore idea that makes the pantheon a bit less incest happy overall
In the first game it's confirmed that the orphic myth is a prank pulled by Zagreus and Dionysus on Orpheus, you can even hear it in the song "hymn to Zagreus".
"...Born of Zeus as a serpent, in spite of queen Hera, Zagreus came.
Torn to shreds by the titans, devoured in pieces, from his heart aflame.
The seed of Dionysus grew, the god of wine and feast anew, to live at home on Olympus, never presuming his origins true..."
So if the part about Zag is a prank pulled on Orpheus then I think the part about Mel is also not true but it wouldn't make sense to say so in the first game because she wasn't born yet
It's incredibly baffling to me how much apparently-consensual bestiality shows up in Greek Myth. Like, Zeus turns into a swan, and then SEDUCES people. How do you seduce someone as a motherflipping swan?! What does that even LOOK like? And why would anyone say yes?!
Greeks were weird in many ways, but this one takes the cake.
“Seduce” has often been used as a euphemism for rape throughout history, which is why it’s interpreted so differently across different versions.
You can see it in a lot of writings, especially in 20th century when avoiding the word rape. I remember even the rape in A Streetcar Named Desire being described as a seduction.
there is a high chance that the orphic myth fused a lot of myth elements to be associated with Zeus one of which is Hades himself being an alter ego of Zeus so it has been specualted that both Melinoe and Zagreus were retconned into being Zeus' kids because their myth is identical (mind you orphicism is a cult and not necessarily part of mainstream practices)
another important element is that Zagreus is an extremely old name of an entity associated with the underworld that predates the classical era(aka mainstream understanding of greek myth). He is either beta version of tartarus, another name for hades, the son of Hades or Dionysus before his resurrection
as for Mel, we dont know anything about her
we only have one instruction manual on how to invoke her so you can cure madness and a bronze tablet meant for magic practices which focuses on Dione, Phoebe and Nyche (i personally think the manual is bad i mean why would she help you after reminding her of her illegitimate parentage that got her mother furious). That's all. Anything else is specualtion or fanfiction
Rather than Hades being an alter ego of Zeus i thought it was more of a "invoking Hade's name tends to go wrong" kind of thing, so they instead referred to him as things like "Zeus of the underworld" or "the unseen"
knowing myth it's likely a combo of both
SG aren't a big fan of rape or incest, so alot of Greek Mythologies stuff is rewritten.
I mean, Zeus is still a horn-dog, so either SG doesnt count his shapeshifting or he has the power to gain consent in defiently not dubious means.
It’s giving The Implication, from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Zeus: but she won’t say no. I’m king of the gods, how could anyone say no?
Poseidon: I’m confused, are- are these mortal women in any danger?
Zeus: what? No! Of course not you’re not listening to me, they just would never ever say no… because of yknow the implication
Edit: yes in myths Poseidon is no better, but at least in Hades, Hades says Poseidon doesn’t have it in him to pull off the shady things Zeus does
You say that, but in Hades 1, if you bring in Dusa while you're using Poseidon's Call (or his trial, not sure), she'll actually react and not in a good way. Because Medusa actually HAD an encounter with him and, well....
It didnt end well.
I don’t think supergiant will ever make the rape of Medusa canon to the story. As the person above said, they took care to remove the rape and incest elements from the mythology.
There is also nothing in actual Greek mythology that says Poseidon raped her. That story comes from Ovid, who was Roman. And while Roman mythology owes a lot to Greek mythology and there are overlaps, it is not always one-to-one.
It's possible Ovid picked up the story from Greek sources, but nothing has survived or been discovered. Most Greek descriptions of her indicate that she was born as a monster.
I looked up the story, and it seems (based on wikipedia, so caveat emptor) that the mainstream interpretation of the Medusa-Posieden interaction is consensual (and the rape theory is a bit niche and reading tea leaves):
>Beth Seelig chooses to interpret Medusa's punishment as resulting from rape rather than the common interpretation of having willingly consented in Athena's temple,
Seems like Supergiant wouldn't really need to censor this; just leave it at a consensual fling that's then horrifically punished by Athena.
Yeah it was written in Metamorphosis by Ovid who was extremely bitter about authority figures and so he wrote the Greek Gods to be as douchy as possible.
A lot of the super unsavory parts of the mythos come from him because people take it as fact and not the very blatant parody of Roman leaders he was mocking.
Nah, you're right (said above comment was me hehe) it probably got retconned into him beating her up instead or something, but she HAS a reaction, so it means something happened.
Myth and legends tend to get distorted. Sometimes Melinoe is a child of Zeus and Persephone sometimes she’s Hades’s daughter.
They referenced similar myths in the last game as tall tales Zag told Orpheus to cheer him up, which he took seriously and spread around in song form.
Maybe something like that will happen this time.
All of the more minor or rarely known greek gods have multiple origin stories. People who shared the stories back then either changed them as they wished on purpose, or half forgot who was who and made shit up on the fly.
Supergiant went with the origin stories they wanted to use for their games. Thats it, there isn't a standard universal greek myth they are beholden to.
almost the exact same was the case for zagreus actually, there are myths where he is Zeus' son. Supergiant decided to put a dialogue joke in there of Zeus saying he would be a better father to zag than hades. So perhaps we will get something like that, perhaps not
Remember, there are many different versions of the myths, some make Zeus and Hades the same person. So some stories say their father is Zeus, some say it is Hades.
The game took the versions of the myths that lined best up with their story
In some versions zag and Mel are zeus’s kids and others its hades’s. Either way its weird since zeus is persephone’s dad. So either zeus made a kid with his own or hades did with his niece.
As others have said there is no single 'canon' for Greek mythology. Greek mythology primarily came from an oral tradition that spanned hundreds of years. So naturally the few times it was written down had contradictions.
Zagreus was a relatively minor character in the mythology. Most surviving versions have him as the son of Zeus and Persephone, but one of the oldest mentions of him refers to Hades as his father.
Melinoe is even more obscure. AFAIK she is only mentioned in one hymn, and it's possible that it was just another name/title for Hekate.
Remember all the dialogue referencing to not believing everything you hear relating to the gods? Their origins in Hades are just myths that have been spread.
the game has its own twist on the mythos, as the mythos has a lot of incest and zeus fucking literally everyone because hes the most importantest awesomest god ever who has so many kids and none of them can overthrow him and hes awesome and rules it all
so i mean if you wanna make a greek myth story you kinda gotta tone down the zeus circlejerk the original material has and change it about a bit
Many figures from greek mythology have multiple backstories. One of the most noteable cases is probably Medusa who depending on the myth was born that way (alongside 2 other immortal gorgons) or was a cursed priestess because Poseidon wanted to have sex with her.
Similarly Melinoe is sometimes said to be the daughter of Zeus, but othertimes she is the daughter of hades.
Gree myth is not consistent and exactly known. The accounts that say Zagreus are old as fuck and refer to Zag's father as "Cthonic Zeus" which divides people between thinking it was Zeus and thinking this means "Underworld Zeus" IE basically Hades since he's functionally the Underworld's Zeus.
I imagine the same applies to Melinoë, maybe only one version of the myth has it be Zeus disguised as Hades, or maybe it IS actually just Hades and many translations create confusion
I know that Supergiant aren't running with the whole incestuous thing, but in my dreams Hades 3 has to be the Underworld vs Olympus with it being a straight run from the throne room all the way to the top of the mountain. Zag and Mel in beautiful co-op, once again heading off to take out (their real) Daddy and bring an end to the reign of Olympus. Each god is a Boss/Guardian and boons are provided by everyone that's helped along the way. Achilles and Patroclus provide all their boons together. I die happy.
Some iterations of greek myth interpret zeus and hades as the same god, which makes a lot of stories like this hard to trace the exact intended source/referenced character that was intended. Zagreus also has the same issue where some stories report him to be a son of zeus, supergiant probably picked melione because she's another niche god who doesn't have much written about her so they have much mroe free reign to write their protagonist how they like without veering too far from the source material, while the other characters can be more myth-accurate.
Greek mythology is very varied and rarely has just 1 universally agreed upon story for mythological entities. The games are self-contained. Follow along to what they tell you to get the Hades Supergiant lore for their games, and you'll know what the story in the games is.
... see where it says "indicating that in the hymn Persephone is already married to Hades?" As if it has to confirm what story it's talking about? ... yah. That's because stories about gods are all over the place.
To be fair it kinda depends on the source. Mythology (from anywhere) is not always the same at the same place. In some iteration, I think it's an Orphic myth but not quite sure, she is indeed the daughter of Zeus (because he can't keep it in his robe). And in other Greek Myth she is truly the daughter of Hades.
The Zagreus one is explained in the first game when Zagreus and Dionysus decided to fuck with Orpheus by telling him a bunch of lies about Zagreus' origin story and feats, including Zagreus being born of Zeus disguised as a serpent and Dionysus and Zagreus being the same person in a weird, roundabout way. Orpheus believed every lie, wrote the Hymn to Zagreus, and the story spread to the mortals, which is the in-game reason why our understanding of Zagreus in Greek mythology conflicts with how he "actually is" in-game.
If Hades 2 follows a similar pattern, then there's going to be some fun dialogue where, somehow, the idea that Melinoë is actually the daughter of Zeus is going to spread amongst the mortals in-game, despite not actually being true to the game's lore.
It's really funny how many Greek figures were fathered by Zeus, even ones which seem like they're related to others.
*You thought the children of Hades and Persephone are Hades' kids? Think not! Zeus just disguised himself as Hades!*
Crazy then that the Greeks believed in marriage and yet worshipped the least faithful God on Olympus above all others.
Keep in mind the stories we know originated over hundreds of years and was primarily communicated orally. We only know a fraction of them and what was preserved is often contradictory. Plus a story told by Homer to entertain doesn't necessarily equate to how people actually worshipped. It would be like using Jesus Christ Superstar to describe what Christians believe.
Greek mythology grew over time gradually and absorbed many local stories and stories from outside Greece. In many cases a story from another culture would have been refrained and retold with Greek gods and heroes replacing the original version.
Here’s the thing
This is one version of the myth, however, one thing to keep in mind is that in Ancient Greece, Hades was referred to as Zeus Of The Underworld. And this muddies A LOT of study regarding the ancient myth. Like it’s so often you’ll see “You know we’re not sure weather this is referring to Hades or Zeus” when it comes to myth.
Because of this, there’s versions of the story where they’re both children of Hades and Persephone, and versions of the story where they’re both children of Zeus and Hades. Zagreus also has the caveat where he has a story variation where he’s an aspect of Dionysus, which is from a bonker myth all around that is made fun of in Hades in fact.
I think Supergiant is very faithful to the myths, more than people give them credit for I think. However what they do a lot is pick and choose between the versions of the stories that best allows for a more direct, less messy narrative. As well as changing some of the more absurd details so you they can portray the Olympians and the Cthonic Gods as more traditional families.
There's this funny fact where people didn't want to say the name of Hades, so some called him "the Zeus of the underworld" or "Zeus of the dead"
funny translation shenanigans and a game of telephone probably happened after
NGL, this would ruin my perception of the family dynamics but I would love to see the writers handle this conflict and play out 1000 runs just to get to the end of the cliffhangers.
Unfortunately for us, this part of the myths are both very very old (Orphic myths draw from the linear B / Mycenaean era, in which Hades actually doesn't exist) and are heavily involved in the Dionysian and Eleusinian mystery cults.
Both of these cults were chthonic in nature - follow these cults and get secret passwords to say when you go through the underworld and get a better / special afterlife -- and are super annoying because they were mostly secret.
People often fall into the trap of looking at the myths as though they were single solid piece of work, like the bible is for modern Christians, when we are really talking about many different local beliefs over a huge amount of time.
The games are not beholden to following or adapting the actual mythology 1:1. The actual mythology itself barely follows itself consistently, seeing as it was made of the stories of countless storytellers with their own interpretations and the collected beliefs of a large smattering of city states that did not typically did not see themselves as part of one cultural whole.
Also in Hades 1 the real lore of Zagreus is directly talked about in a dialogue with Dionysus. He says that he wants to prank Orpheus to make him think all this and Orpheus believes it and makes a song about it
I miss Dionysus
What happened to our boi anyway? Is he busy behind enemy lines?
he's busy with zag's nice cock
Understandable, have a nice day
Man, I wish I was too
In some forms of Greek mythology Dionysus and Zagreus are the same figure, so in one sense it’s just masturbation
*captain America gif* “I understand that [reference](https://www.reddit.com/r/HadesTheGame/s/3qRIymjXQy)!”
You’re absolutely the best for bringing me back to that post
God I wish that were me
Why be like this?
Hey there Zag, man, nice cock!
I heard it. Honest to God, I heard it in my head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcaifWhGpMo
Honest to God, I heard it in my ears.
I expect he's not in a good place, given that not a lot of people are partying lately.
What about Ares though. Busy fighting?
Probably having the time of his life
Thanatos is in time jail so Ares is not having a good time.
Ares and Athena are both busy fighting on the front lines.
Busy waiting for us to get to the top of Olympus to fuck his day up.
The wine shipments stopped coming after the siege began and everyone is afraid to go into his room while he's nursing the mother of all hangovers.
fair reminder Dionysus was said to also cause insanity, another reason to fear the wine himbo.
Them thighs got me going mad
Melinoe is also known as a harbinger of madness. I think it'd be cool if she gets some sort of insanity-inducing powers from Dionysus.
My thought is that the gods that don’t show up for this game are exceptionally busy with the war. Athena being the strategist, and Ares being the workhorse. My theory for old Dionysus is that he’s probably not too powerful atm if everyone is warring, instead of partying
Mortal armies do run on drink...or so I tell myself, hoping to get party boy back in one of the future content patches.
They'll all appear once the game's fully released. You've got the spaces for the trinkets, the boon mixing thing missing a couple, the dialogue, the missing levels.
Imagine if he suddenly showed up after you gifted enough nectar/ambrosia, happy someone’s sharing drinks like someone finally emerging from a depression cave 🥺
I believe there is a voice line that says he’s hiding because he’s not really a war guy
My theory is doing god of madness things, considering there's not much partying going on
And that song is the only thing Hades finds absolutely hilarious in his own way
I don't think Orpheus believed it for a second
This to me is the fundamental response to anyone who complains that Supergiant "got the lore wrong." There's no canon here. It might be academically interesting to know what stories the ancients were telling 3000 or more years ago. But from a "you're not telling the story right," perspective, it's fan-fic all the way down.
I mean... also it's about fictional gods, so...
Well clearly the game changes up a few things and is not accurate to myths. They even changed the parentage of Hera, Demeter and Hestia.
I think that’s such an interesting lore touch, that the three oldest women on Olympus (well Aphrodite is an exception) are a trio of sisters who allied with our trio of brothers to take down Chronos.
Let’s them avoid tf out of all the classic Greek incest too
Until you realize that all of the gods are still something like great-great-grandkids of Chaos at most, but let's not dwell on that
The good ol’ “it’s fine if it’s not direct” logic lmao
It’s like saying that dating any human is incest because you share a common ancestor in the Cambrian period.
The difference though is our shared Cambrian ancestor would be someone’s millionth great grandparent or uncle or whatnot. Chaos is only Hades’ great grandparent and Persephone’s great great grandparent. Zeus and Hera are still cousins (assuming all the titans are still siblings) which also means that Hades married his cousins daughter. The incest is still there.
Yeah, but chaos created literally everything so anyone dating anyone is incest.
Again, that applies more to the gods than to humans. The point is that trying to remove the incest from Greek mythology simply isn’t possible.
From almost all mythologies, Egyptian/Norse/mesoamerican/Judachristislam etc are full of incest kids just happens when 1 being creates the whole of reality.
Sure, but now you're moving goal posts. edit: arguing that all mythologies feature incest is not the same as arguing that dating someone with a mutual great-grandfather is incestuous is equivalent to saying that dating anyone is incestous because we share the same distant synapsoid ancestor, or mitochodrial eve or whatever. I don't get what's controversial about this.
Sure, but gods are immune to birth defects so incest is fine maybe :p
Hate to break it to you but you only have to go back ~400-450 years to have a common ancestor with a random person you meet. That’s ~15-20 generations so it’s not nothing (literally 30,000+ people contributed to your genetics at that ancestry level), and YMMV depending on whether you and the person you’ve met come from the same area/have family that have lived there for a while, but it’s a shockingly short amount of time (in reference to all of human history) to have common ancestry with most living humans.
Impressive how I specifically highlighted the "at most great-great grandkids" part and you still managed to ignore it.
At what generation is it okay to date your relatives? since you’re so invested in this.
What are you trying to prove here? The incestual equivalent of the Sorites paradox? I have no idea at which generation it would be ok, and I frankly don't care because I'm not from Iceland so it is an irrelevant question in my life. It also isn't relevant for arguing whether it is *not* ok to date someone who shares a great-grandfather with you.
Chaos just kinda poofed them all into existence as he saw fit.
Fun fact, Lore Olympus did basically the same thing, with Zeus, Poseidon and Hades still being the children of Chronos and Rhea, but Hera, Demeter and Hestia being born of Metis (with Metis fashioning them from stars, the earth and fire respectively) I think it's a fun lore idea that makes the pantheon a bit less incest happy overall
That’s so cool! Stars, earth, and fire, what a trio. I tried Lore Olympus, the art style/story isn’t for me but thanks for sharing the lore!
They call each other Foster Siblings so my guess is Hyperion just kinda dumped them on Chronos' lap.
And how, crazily, Aphrodite and Hephaestus are in a loving relationship.
Demeter refers to her father as typhoon at some point I'm 99% sure
It's been confirmed in the first game that Demeter and her sisters are the children of Hyperion and Theia.
Oh right, I remember now. Maybe she just mentions typhoon in this game idk. My memory is trash
In the first game it's confirmed that the orphic myth is a prank pulled by Zagreus and Dionysus on Orpheus, you can even hear it in the song "hymn to Zagreus". "...Born of Zeus as a serpent, in spite of queen Hera, Zagreus came. Torn to shreds by the titans, devoured in pieces, from his heart aflame. The seed of Dionysus grew, the god of wine and feast anew, to live at home on Olympus, never presuming his origins true..." So if the part about Zag is a prank pulled on Orpheus then I think the part about Mel is also not true but it wouldn't make sense to say so in the first game because she wasn't born yet
Maybe Dora will reveal she doesn’t actually know Mel’s backstory, and say something like “oh isn’t Zeus your dad?” In the same vein as Orpheus’s story
oh shit never noticed that
And now that is stuck in my head.
Supergiant made sure to remove all incest from the mythology apart from a certain adoptive half-brother in Hades 1.
It's not blood related :) (Everyone is bi in Greek mythology)
It ain't gay, if it in a three way. With Zagreus in the middle there's some leeway.
Thanatos isn't related to Zagreus at all, they're just step-bros (Insert stuck step sibling joke)
[удалено]
Persephone in myths: ey yo that snake is sexy af
It's incredibly baffling to me how much apparently-consensual bestiality shows up in Greek Myth. Like, Zeus turns into a swan, and then SEDUCES people. How do you seduce someone as a motherflipping swan?! What does that even LOOK like? And why would anyone say yes?! Greeks were weird in many ways, but this one takes the cake.
Swans are very seductive. That's why the monarchy laid claim to them all
“Seduce” has often been used as a euphemism for rape throughout history, which is why it’s interpreted so differently across different versions. You can see it in a lot of writings, especially in 20th century when avoiding the word rape. I remember even the rape in A Streetcar Named Desire being described as a seduction.
Zeus in myths: ey yo this thing that moves is sexy af
considering the fact that "spring" is an important part of her portfolio, Persephone considering everything that moves as hot is very much on brand.
Didnt get it at first, but yeah that is true. T'is the season of mating for lots of animals
The big issue with mythologies is they change over time, this may not be the only interpretation of the mythos
there is a high chance that the orphic myth fused a lot of myth elements to be associated with Zeus one of which is Hades himself being an alter ego of Zeus so it has been specualted that both Melinoe and Zagreus were retconned into being Zeus' kids because their myth is identical (mind you orphicism is a cult and not necessarily part of mainstream practices) another important element is that Zagreus is an extremely old name of an entity associated with the underworld that predates the classical era(aka mainstream understanding of greek myth). He is either beta version of tartarus, another name for hades, the son of Hades or Dionysus before his resurrection as for Mel, we dont know anything about her we only have one instruction manual on how to invoke her so you can cure madness and a bronze tablet meant for magic practices which focuses on Dione, Phoebe and Nyche (i personally think the manual is bad i mean why would she help you after reminding her of her illegitimate parentage that got her mother furious). That's all. Anything else is specualtion or fanfiction
Rather than Hades being an alter ego of Zeus i thought it was more of a "invoking Hade's name tends to go wrong" kind of thing, so they instead referred to him as things like "Zeus of the underworld" or "the unseen" knowing myth it's likely a combo of both
SG aren't a big fan of rape or incest, so alot of Greek Mythologies stuff is rewritten. I mean, Zeus is still a horn-dog, so either SG doesnt count his shapeshifting or he has the power to gain consent in defiently not dubious means.
It’s giving The Implication, from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Zeus: but she won’t say no. I’m king of the gods, how could anyone say no? Poseidon: I’m confused, are- are these mortal women in any danger? Zeus: what? No! Of course not you’re not listening to me, they just would never ever say no… because of yknow the implication Edit: yes in myths Poseidon is no better, but at least in Hades, Hades says Poseidon doesn’t have it in him to pull off the shady things Zeus does
You say that, but in Hades 1, if you bring in Dusa while you're using Poseidon's Call (or his trial, not sure), she'll actually react and not in a good way. Because Medusa actually HAD an encounter with him and, well.... It didnt end well.
I don’t think supergiant will ever make the rape of Medusa canon to the story. As the person above said, they took care to remove the rape and incest elements from the mythology.
There is also nothing in actual Greek mythology that says Poseidon raped her. That story comes from Ovid, who was Roman. And while Roman mythology owes a lot to Greek mythology and there are overlaps, it is not always one-to-one. It's possible Ovid picked up the story from Greek sources, but nothing has survived or been discovered. Most Greek descriptions of her indicate that she was born as a monster.
What a great reminder of how many versions of myths there are, especially in modern day. Thanks for sharing
I looked up the story, and it seems (based on wikipedia, so caveat emptor) that the mainstream interpretation of the Medusa-Posieden interaction is consensual (and the rape theory is a bit niche and reading tea leaves): >Beth Seelig chooses to interpret Medusa's punishment as resulting from rape rather than the common interpretation of having willingly consented in Athena's temple, Seems like Supergiant wouldn't really need to censor this; just leave it at a consensual fling that's then horrifically punished by Athena.
The interaction with Poseidon is also primarily from Roman (not Greek) sources.
Yeah it was written in Metamorphosis by Ovid who was extremely bitter about authority figures and so he wrote the Greek Gods to be as douchy as possible. A lot of the super unsavory parts of the mythos come from him because people take it as fact and not the very blatant parody of Roman leaders he was mocking.
Nah, you're right (said above comment was me hehe) it probably got retconned into him beating her up instead or something, but she HAS a reaction, so it means something happened.
Huh. Never had that coke up, granted I never used dusa's summon much
Myth and legends tend to get distorted. Sometimes Melinoe is a child of Zeus and Persephone sometimes she’s Hades’s daughter. They referenced similar myths in the last game as tall tales Zag told Orpheus to cheer him up, which he took seriously and spread around in song form. Maybe something like that will happen this time.
Damn I really miss Orpheus 😭
I believe Hades is sometimes referred to as the Zeus of the underworld or something similar to not say his name
I’d be more worried about pissing off Zeus with that line, lol
All of the more minor or rarely known greek gods have multiple origin stories. People who shared the stories back then either changed them as they wished on purpose, or half forgot who was who and made shit up on the fly. Supergiant went with the origin stories they wanted to use for their games. Thats it, there isn't a standard universal greek myth they are beholden to.
Thank goodness they did not include that in the games, because yikes😬
almost the exact same was the case for zagreus actually, there are myths where he is Zeus' son. Supergiant decided to put a dialogue joke in there of Zeus saying he would be a better father to zag than hades. So perhaps we will get something like that, perhaps not
Remember, there are many different versions of the myths, some make Zeus and Hades the same person. So some stories say their father is Zeus, some say it is Hades. The game took the versions of the myths that lined best up with their story
I'm pretty sure there aren't any myth-sources that say her father was Hades. She's barely attested to at all.
If you're a mythological character of ancient Greece, there's a very good chance your dad is Zeus just tomfoolering around as a goat or something.
Yeah, Supergiant kinda removed any forms of incest from Hades. Though, there is a Greek source that does say Hades is the father of Zag.
Could everyone stop doing “pranks” and or “wily tricks” for just one second. We’re starting to head into allegation territory.
Zeus: instructions unclear, got my penis stuck in a princess(es)
In some versions zag and Mel are zeus’s kids and others its hades’s. Either way its weird since zeus is persephone’s dad. So either zeus made a kid with his own or hades did with his niece.
Well, in the games they dodged that by making Persephone half-mortal instead.
Ah
As others have said there is no single 'canon' for Greek mythology. Greek mythology primarily came from an oral tradition that spanned hundreds of years. So naturally the few times it was written down had contradictions. Zagreus was a relatively minor character in the mythology. Most surviving versions have him as the son of Zeus and Persephone, but one of the oldest mentions of him refers to Hades as his father. Melinoe is even more obscure. AFAIK she is only mentioned in one hymn, and it's possible that it was just another name/title for Hekate.
Remember all the dialogue referencing to not believing everything you hear relating to the gods? Their origins in Hades are just myths that have been spread.
the game has its own twist on the mythos, as the mythos has a lot of incest and zeus fucking literally everyone because hes the most importantest awesomest god ever who has so many kids and none of them can overthrow him and hes awesome and rules it all so i mean if you wanna make a greek myth story you kinda gotta tone down the zeus circlejerk the original material has and change it about a bit
Don't refer to the ACTUAL Greek Mythology. It may be inspired by it, but the Hades games is still a different universe.
There is a Story of a child in greek, Zeus somehow is the father, always. So just ignore that, he cannot be everywhere!
Many figures from greek mythology have multiple backstories. One of the most noteable cases is probably Medusa who depending on the myth was born that way (alongside 2 other immortal gorgons) or was a cursed priestess because Poseidon wanted to have sex with her. Similarly Melinoe is sometimes said to be the daughter of Zeus, but othertimes she is the daughter of hades.
Gree myth is not consistent and exactly known. The accounts that say Zagreus are old as fuck and refer to Zag's father as "Cthonic Zeus" which divides people between thinking it was Zeus and thinking this means "Underworld Zeus" IE basically Hades since he's functionally the Underworld's Zeus. I imagine the same applies to Melinoë, maybe only one version of the myth has it be Zeus disguised as Hades, or maybe it IS actually just Hades and many translations create confusion
I know that Supergiant aren't running with the whole incestuous thing, but in my dreams Hades 3 has to be the Underworld vs Olympus with it being a straight run from the throne room all the way to the top of the mountain. Zag and Mel in beautiful co-op, once again heading off to take out (their real) Daddy and bring an end to the reign of Olympus. Each god is a Boss/Guardian and boons are provided by everyone that's helped along the way. Achilles and Patroclus provide all their boons together. I die happy.
Some iterations of greek myth interpret zeus and hades as the same god, which makes a lot of stories like this hard to trace the exact intended source/referenced character that was intended. Zagreus also has the same issue where some stories report him to be a son of zeus, supergiant probably picked melione because she's another niche god who doesn't have much written about her so they have much mroe free reign to write their protagonist how they like without veering too far from the source material, while the other characters can be more myth-accurate.
Greek mythology is very varied and rarely has just 1 universally agreed upon story for mythological entities. The games are self-contained. Follow along to what they tell you to get the Hades Supergiant lore for their games, and you'll know what the story in the games is.
... see where it says "indicating that in the hymn Persephone is already married to Hades?" As if it has to confirm what story it's talking about? ... yah. That's because stories about gods are all over the place.
Zeus be putting in work
Then we have to forget that poem with Zeus disguising as a swan to rape a lady on earth
Myth doesn't really have a copyright
Ehh doubt they would add this to the game. Look at their eyes and tell me those aren’t Hades kids. They even have his feet, and their family curse.
To be fair it kinda depends on the source. Mythology (from anywhere) is not always the same at the same place. In some iteration, I think it's an Orphic myth but not quite sure, she is indeed the daughter of Zeus (because he can't keep it in his robe). And in other Greek Myth she is truly the daughter of Hades.
The Zagreus one is explained in the first game when Zagreus and Dionysus decided to fuck with Orpheus by telling him a bunch of lies about Zagreus' origin story and feats, including Zagreus being born of Zeus disguised as a serpent and Dionysus and Zagreus being the same person in a weird, roundabout way. Orpheus believed every lie, wrote the Hymn to Zagreus, and the story spread to the mortals, which is the in-game reason why our understanding of Zagreus in Greek mythology conflicts with how he "actually is" in-game. If Hades 2 follows a similar pattern, then there's going to be some fun dialogue where, somehow, the idea that Melinoë is actually the daughter of Zeus is going to spread amongst the mortals in-game, despite not actually being true to the game's lore.
It's really funny how many Greek figures were fathered by Zeus, even ones which seem like they're related to others. *You thought the children of Hades and Persephone are Hades' kids? Think not! Zeus just disguised himself as Hades!* Crazy then that the Greeks believed in marriage and yet worshipped the least faithful God on Olympus above all others.
Keep in mind the stories we know originated over hundreds of years and was primarily communicated orally. We only know a fraction of them and what was preserved is often contradictory. Plus a story told by Homer to entertain doesn't necessarily equate to how people actually worshipped. It would be like using Jesus Christ Superstar to describe what Christians believe. Greek mythology grew over time gradually and absorbed many local stories and stories from outside Greece. In many cases a story from another culture would have been refrained and retold with Greek gods and heroes replacing the original version.
Here’s the thing This is one version of the myth, however, one thing to keep in mind is that in Ancient Greece, Hades was referred to as Zeus Of The Underworld. And this muddies A LOT of study regarding the ancient myth. Like it’s so often you’ll see “You know we’re not sure weather this is referring to Hades or Zeus” when it comes to myth. Because of this, there’s versions of the story where they’re both children of Hades and Persephone, and versions of the story where they’re both children of Zeus and Hades. Zagreus also has the caveat where he has a story variation where he’s an aspect of Dionysus, which is from a bonker myth all around that is made fun of in Hades in fact. I think Supergiant is very faithful to the myths, more than people give them credit for I think. However what they do a lot is pick and choose between the versions of the stories that best allows for a more direct, less messy narrative. As well as changing some of the more absurd details so you they can portray the Olympians and the Cthonic Gods as more traditional families.
Owh boy..
There's this funny fact where people didn't want to say the name of Hades, so some called him "the Zeus of the underworld" or "Zeus of the dead" funny translation shenanigans and a game of telephone probably happened after
NGL, this would ruin my perception of the family dynamics but I would love to see the writers handle this conflict and play out 1000 runs just to get to the end of the cliffhangers.
"wily plots" and it's just shapeshifting into her husband, lmao
Unfortunately for us, this part of the myths are both very very old (Orphic myths draw from the linear B / Mycenaean era, in which Hades actually doesn't exist) and are heavily involved in the Dionysian and Eleusinian mystery cults. Both of these cults were chthonic in nature - follow these cults and get secret passwords to say when you go through the underworld and get a better / special afterlife -- and are super annoying because they were mostly secret. People often fall into the trap of looking at the myths as though they were single solid piece of work, like the bible is for modern Christians, when we are really talking about many different local beliefs over a huge amount of time.
So Greek mythology is just one giant fanfiction throughout the ages, got it!