CHAPTER 7
Kira Jones
There is no shortage of classical video games. Whether you want strategy, action, platform, role-playing or any combination thereof, there is a classically themed video game ready to help you live out your sword and sandal fantasy.1 Unfortunately, the vast majority of these games were created under the assumption that the majority of gamers are heterosexual men who are interested in dominating the battlefield – and the bedroom. Female characters are especially prone to hypersexualization, such as God of War III (Santa Monica Studio, 2010), in which the ‘fight’ with Aphrodite is the male protagonist Kratos walking in on a lesbian orgy; the player then completes a mini game while listening to Aphrodite and her topless handmaidens cry out in ecstasy and admiration.2 Smite (Hi-Rez 2014) caters to its allegedly male player-base by clothing Athena in a bronze bikini over a short dress; Aphrodite wears a barely there bikini while Bellona gets a full suit of platemail … minus pants.3 More recent games have tended towards more progressive depictions of women, although these gains have not been without struggle; Ubisoft’s marketing decisions regarding Odyssey’s Kassandra and Alexios are one example, along with Total War: Troy’s Amazon faction.4
Fortunately, not all studios are quite so regressive. California-based Supergiant Games, which developed its first game Bastion in 2011 and has since released three other increasingly ambitious titles, consistently offers thoughtful, beautifully designed characters of all genders (and non-genders). The games which they inhabit are engaging, narratively driven experiences that privilege your relationship with characters in the game rather than your participation in a power fantasy. Their most recent offering, Hades (2020), builds on their previous catalogue to buck the trend of hypersexualized women and features a cast of mythical women who, together with the male protagonist, model consent, empowerment and mutual respect between characters.5 Eurydice has by far the most radical change in character, and will be examined here.
The Orphic experience
Hades follows the journey of Zagreus, son of Hades, as he fights his way through various levels of the Underworld to escape to the surface and find his mother, Persephone.6 Along the way, he enlists the help of various Olympians and develops relationships with chthonic figures such as Cerberus, the Furies, Thanatos and a floating gorgon head named Dusa; all of their aid is required to eventually break free of the Underworld long enough to convince Persephone to return. While Supergiant did extensive research into both primary literary and artistic sources, the sheer number of variations in classical Underworld mythology enabled them to pick some versions, leave aside others and add new material as needed for a cohesive and engaging narrative. With Eurydice they chose to step back from established trends in modern retellings, instead pulling focus to Eurydice herself and what happened after Orpheus was out of the picture.
Orpheus himself has long been the focus of reception works.7 Orpheus, a divinely talented musician whose songs could charm everything from beasts to trees and rocks, fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice. They wed but Eurydice was bitten by a snake shortly after the ceremony and died, leaving Orpheus bereft. He was no ordinary musician however, and travelled to the Underworld to reclaim her. He charmed Hades and Persephone enough with his songs that they granted him a chance; he could lead Eurydice out of the Underworld and back to life, provided he did not look back until he was in the mortal realm. Whether through fear, doubt or pre-emptive joy, he glanced back at her at the last minute and she was snatched away, lost to him forever. His grief was immeasurable and he swore to love no other woman (although, depending on the source, boys may have been negotiable). Eventually he was torn apart by a group of maenads and his disembodied head floated to Lesbos, singing the entire way, and birthed an oracle.
It should be noted here that the most action Eurydice sees is as a catalyst for Orpheus’ katabasis; she becomes his wife so that she can die and he can become a tragic hero attempting to thwart the natural order of the universe for the sake of love. The focus is not on her death, but on his loss of her; not on her missed chance at rebirth, or even whether she wants to be reborn or not, but on Orpheus’ mistake and the sheer monumentality of his grief. Unfortunately, ancient accounts are not much kinder to her.
The ancient Eurydice is almost as elusive for us to grasp as her shade was for Orpheus. While Orpheus can be identified in art as early as c. 560 BCE (on the metopes of the Sikyonian monopteros at Delphi), there is no clear mention of Eurydice in either art or literature until 5 BCE. Pseudo-Erastothenes says that Orpheus went down into Hades on account of his wife, but does not name her (Ps-Erastothenes Katast.24). Gantz posits that since Dionysos was also mentioned in this passage, Orpheus’ death was likely covered in Aeschylus’ Lykourgos cycle and, perhaps, his quest to resurrect his wife.
She is mentioned in two accounts of Alcestis and Admetus; Plato asserts that the gods were more impressed with Alcestis’ self-sacrifice than Orpheus’ quest and so conjured a phasma (apparition) for him to try and rescue rather than her actual shade (Plato Symp. 179b–d). Alternatively, Euripides has Admetus proclaim that if he himself had Orpheus’ powers he would rescue Alcestis himself, rather than letting Herakles do it (Alk. 357–62). It should be noted that all of these refer to Eurydice simply as Orpheus’ wife and do not give her a name; the first concrete usage of Eurydice as Orpheus’ wife is from Moschos (Lament for Bion 3.123–4). The artistic record is even less helpful, as Eurydice is absent from archaic and most classical art; the earliest artistic representation we have of Eurydice appears some 200 years later than that of Orpheus.8
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the first extant and complete recounting of the tale and sets the standard for most later versions.9 Yet, despite nearly all of book ten either dealing with Orpheus or being narrated by him, Eurydice is still relegated to the background as a catalyst for his tragic arc.10 Of the 739 lines in the book, only 11.5 per cent (lines 1–85) comprise the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Within those eighty-five lines, Eurydice is referenced only ten times.
We meet her early on as a nupta (bride, line 8), albeit after Hymen has been summoned by Orpheus and put a damper on the whole affair with his bad omens. This one reference to her as a living being marks her as a thing, a bride, and only in the context of her death at the wedding. While Orpheus is mentioned by name (Orphea) in line three, we have to get through the disastrous wedding, Orpheus’ grief, and his journey through the underworld before we hear about Eurydice again.
After her death, Eurydice transitions from a nupta to a coniunx, a wife. This descriptor is used three times; the second reference to her in line 23, when Orpheus states the reason for his journey; the sixth reference in line 38, when Orpheus is negotiating the terms of her release; and the last reference in line 64, when Orpheus is overwhelmed by her second death.
Eurydice is most often referred to with mere pronouns, however. Illa, hanc, and haec are used four times to indicate her indirect participation in the narrative. Unlike coniunx, which establishes her post-mortem relationship to Orpheus and is used to indicate her as the cause of his journey, the beneficiary of his request, and the cause of his new grief, pronouns are used when Eurydice is being (potentially or otherwise) acted upon. In line 36, Orpheus states that she, haec, will be yours; even if she is resurrected it’s only temporary, and she will eventually return to Hades anyway.
In line 37, he ‘pro munere poscimus usum’, asks to enjoy [her] as a gift, with the understanding that he will be able to enjoy her youthful years without fear of recompense. Notably, she is excluded from these negotiations. He then receives her (line 50) and soon after loses her (line 57) as she, illa, is swept back to Hades as a result of his impatience. Once again dead, she returns to being a coniunx (wife).
Eurydice is only twice referred to by name, and both of those in the context of Orpheus’ transaction with Persephone and Hades. While Orpheus initially introduces her as his wife, he asks that the fate of Eurydice specifically be undone by the chthonic rulers. She is referred to twice more by pronoun and once more by wife before Persephone and Hades seal the deal by summoning Eurydice with her proper name. As explained above, she reverts to a pronoun immediately afterwards and remains so until her last mention in line 64. Orpheus, meanwhile, is either referred to as Orphea (line 3) or his heroic moniker Rhodopeius (lines 11 and 50).
Thus, despite Ovid’s version being the source of most Orpheus and Eurydice adaptations since, Eurydice is little more than an actor in Orpheus’ play. She is at best a bride and at worst a simple pronoun; her name is only used to seal the terms of a contract in which she has no say. While she does have one line of dialogue, a wispy ‘farewell’ in line 57, it is spoken by the pronoun and serves more to underline Orpheus’ tragedy than to give her any sort of agency.
The carefree muse
This is where Supergiant’s vision of Eurydice differs most drastically. We meet her first, which perhaps makes sense as Zagreus (and by extension the player) is undergoing a reverse katabasis to the surface, in an isolated section of Asphodel. Rather than the pale, classically-drawn white woman we usually see in depictions of the story, Supergiant’s Eurydice is a brilliantly-hued woman of colour.11 She is tall and lithe, with intricately tattooed bark skin and a brilliant canopy of oak foliage pulled up into an afro coiffure. Her character portrait, to the left of the dialogue box whenever she is interacted with, has none of the shrinking passivity of Ovid’s Eurydice either. She faces the viewer in a three-quarter turn, hands on hips and head cocked to the side as she chews thoughtfully on an oak twig. She confidently meets our eyes as if we have just interrupted her, which, per her character animation, we usually have – upon entering the room, Eurydice is either engaging with her cooking paraphernalia or much later in the game, singing a duet.
The game is set after the heroic age, meaning that various mythical mortal characters (Achilles, Theseus, Sisyphus) can make an appearance and Zagreus has sometimes heard stories of them. This is not the case with Eurydice and so, while the player may already be familiar with the myth, the game assumes that we are not and therefore gives Eurydice the chance to make an impression that is entirely her own.
This is done in three ways: through visuals, dialogue, and the codex entry that grows as you continue to build a relationship with her. As discussed above, she is visually set apart from other shades by her arboreal physiognomy. Where characters such as Theseus or Sisyphus may have exaggerated physiques they are still more or less human. In making Eurydice (herself a nymph rather than a full human) tree-like, Zee further accentuates the divide between her characterization and standard canons of representation. This Eurydice is different, and everything about her visually prepares the reader for this new, self-assured woman.12
Figure 7.1 Eurydice and Orpheus from Supergiant’s Hades, 2018. Art by Jen Zee. Courtesy of Supergiant Games, LLC.
Second, the codex entry provides some mythological background but leaves out any mention of Orpheus by name.13 The first section, which is all players have access to for the first few interactions, tells us that:
Mortality and immortality are closer than most gods care to believe. There are such minor gods as can be killed. So it is with nymphs, and all the naiads and the dryads and the like, the spirits of the woods, and seas, and skies; in life, they captivate our mortal senses and imagination, but in death, we all are more alike.
As far as the codex is concerned at this point, Eurydice is one of these minor gods that can be killed but nothing more specific than that.
Third, Eurydice characterizes herself with both dialogue and song. Upon entering her dedicated section of Asphodel, her voice is apparent long before she herself is visible. She sings an original composition, Good Riddance, which exemplifies her view of the afterlife.14 The song begins, ‘Farewell / To all the earthly remains / No burdens / No further debts to be paid / Atlas / Can rest his weary bones / The weight of the world / All falls away / In time.’ Rather than the all-consuming grief that we are used to getting in Orpheus-centric tellings, Eurydice sings of relief and peace. All of her debts, burdens, and earthly obligations have been erased in death and she can lay aside the crushing burden of worldly matters.
The second verse continues, ‘Goodbye / To all the plans that we made / No contracts/I’m free to do as I may / No hunger / No sleep except to dream / Mild and warm / Safe from all harm / Calm.’ Here she refers once again to worldly obligations, both in terms of relationships and survival. She has let go of plans made during life and is no longer bound by contracts; this possibly refers to plans of a life with Orpheus and the contract of their marriage, or the contract for her freedom between Orpheus and the Underworld gods. She does not need to eat or sleep, but can do so for pleasure. She is safe and free from all fear. In short, her time is now her own and she can spend it however she pleases without fear of reprisal.
The third and last verse of the song echoes this sentiment and reiterates her determination to embrace the situation. She proclaims, ‘Good riddance / To all the thieves / To all the fools that stifled me / They’ve come and gone / And passed me by / Good riddance / To all.’ While it is not clear what fools and thieves she refers to, she is clearly happy with their absence. Without anyone to stifle her or any obligations to eat up her time, she is finally free to explore her own potential. This is not a Eurydice who is defined only by her connection to (and separation from) Orpheus. This is a woman who has found empowerment in the afterlife and is determined to make the most of it.
Her dialogue reflects this view to a lesser degree. The narrator gives us (and Zagreus) a brief introduction to the area, stating that ‘from within a humble residence in Asphodel reverberates the golden-sounding voice of lorn Eurydice, who once attempted to escape the Underworld and failed, utterly, much like Prince Zagreus.’15 The narrator refers to her attempted flight but stops short of naming Orpheus or indicating that anyone else was involved. Presumably he does this because it makes for a better insult, but it also gives Eurydice credit where it would normally go to Orpheus; she is the one with the golden voice, and she was in charge of the (failed) escape attempt.
Upon interacting with her for the first time we learn her title, ‘Carefree Muse’. She introduces herself with a simple, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Eurydice,’ before informing Zagreus that, ‘I’ll let you go, but there’s one rule in my place, which is no one leaves empty handed.’ The player can then choose between three consumables (ambrosia delight, pom porridge, and refreshing nectar) which Eurydice has made in her humble Asphodel residence. At the end of this interaction, we are left with three pieces of information: she once attempted to escape the Underworld but has let go of worldly matters and is now carefree (muse refers to a later plot development discussed below), she is a nymph named Eurydice, and she likes cooking.
Our introduction to Orpheus plays as inverse to that of Eurydice. Where we followed her voice and were welcomed into her home, Orpheus is introduced by an empty chair in the House of Hades. Once he does appear in the flesh (relatively speaking), we learn that he had been cast into solitary confinement within Tartarus for failing to carry out his duties as court musician. Eurydice’s vibrant colours are countered by his pale, drawn visage and dour garments; her direct gaze and stance, ‘proud and supple as the oak’, matched by his slouch and woeful disengagement. Even his voice, a wispy and wavering tenor, is inverse to her strong inflection and tone.
Zagreus, unfamiliar with their story, does not immediately learn of Orpheus’ connection with Eurydice. The first few conversations with him establish his character, as with Eurydice. Unlike her, his current state is very clearly tied to his mythological story; he refuses to sing and is unable to move on from his failure, even as he refuses to do anything about it.16 Despite threats from Hades and the encouragement of his friends, Orpheus continues to lurk in despondent silence.
Subsequent conversations get Orpheus to reveal that the reason for his silence is ‘that I have lost my muse, my friend. It isn’t harder to explain than that’. He does not elaborate further, other than to confirm that he is no longer searching for her and expresses his happiness that Zagreus is still striving for his own goals. Zagreus, ever the optimistic busybody, refuses to let go of the matter and we eventually learn that Orpheus had tried and failed to rescue his mysterious muse back when he was still alive.
Despite his reticence, Orpheus is soon cajoled by Zagreus into describing ‘My muse … never has somebody been as splendorous as my Eurydice …! She was so gentle, yet so stout of heart that it would make yours ache, just thinking on it. She inspired innumerable songs of mine.’ Notably, Zagreus has visited Eurydice multiple times before now but since Orpheus had only referred to her as a muse (not unlike Ovid’s coniunx) and Eurydice had refrained from discussing her past in detail, he was unaware of the connection. Exhibiting an unusual amount of forethought, he excuses himself from the conversation and does not say anything else until he meets Eurydice in Asphodel again.
Predictably, he is terrible at hiding things and Eurydice greets him with, ‘Hey, hon, what’s going on, speak up! I know when something’s up down to my roots, and something’s up.’ Zagreus continues, ‘Well it’s just, I think that you may know an Orpheus, don’t you? Quite musically inclined, a little dour, impressive hair? He’s court musician in my father’s house. Calls you his muse. Says he misses you terribly. I … thought you should know.’ At this point, one might expect some sort of romantic confession from Eurydice, praising Orpheus’ efforts to rescue her and lamenting their separation. However, this self-assured daughter of the oak does no such thing. She points out the ridiculousness of Orpheus’ quest to come ‘all this way to try and save me, even though I was already dead’ and suggests that Zagreus ask Orpheus about when next they meet. When Zagreus says that he didn’t mean to upset her, she doubles down and states that, ‘Yeah, well, neither did he! But you know what? Actions beat intentions, hon,’ before kicking him out of her house.
‘Actions beat intentions’ could well be the motto for Orpheus and Eurydice’s relationship in Hades. Orpheus’ intentions have devolved into a definite lack of action, while ‘gentle’ Eurydice answers his earlier intentions with action of her own. Thus, while he is lurking in a self-made pit of despair she is moving on with her (after)life.
Orpheus’ lack of action continues to define his response when Zagreus admits that he found Eurydice, ‘doing fine up there! All on her own. You said the two of you were very close, isn’t that right?’ Orpheus replies that they were more than close as she was both wife and muse to him, falling back into his Ovidian habit of referring to her by role rather than name. He laments, ‘To think that we are doomed to be apart during our afterlives. Ah, well … I do not wish to trouble her again, my friend. Speak not to her of me, all right? I have my memory of her; it is enough.’ Despite Zagreus’ incredulity and offer of assistance, Orpheus has resigned himself to the memory of Eurydice and the grief of her absence rather than risking a reunion.
Orpheus’ grief was legendary, but there is no close parallel to this choice between Orpheus and anyone else in ancient sources. We do find a similar exchange in the 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, in which the two main characters (Héloïse and Marianne) switch back and forth between Orphic and Eurydicean roles. At one point, they analyse the section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Orpheus looks back, and attempt to decipher his reasoning. Marianne suggests that Orpheus made the ‘poet’s choice’, valuing his memory of her over the woman herself.17
Although Orpheus’ artistic ability is inaccessible due to Eurydice’s absence, he still makes the poet’s choice of memory over actuality. In requesting that Zagreus leave well enough alone and stating that he is content with the memory of her, he is, in essence, constantly looking back. He chooses to dwell in the moment of loss rather than take any real steps towards a reunion, which is perhaps why he only referred to her as a muse until shortly before this conversation with Zagreus took place.
Eurydice, on the other hand, lives fully in the present. Unlike Ovid, for whom Orpheus was only guilty of loving her, this Carefree Muse isn’t letting her ex off the hook so easily. Zagreus once again tries to act as intermediary, despite Orpheus asking him not to, and promptly gets reprimanded by Eurydice:
Don’t tell me you’ve come all the way from Tartarus to ask me more about your good for nothing court musician friend … let me see if I understand. Orpheus blew it with me like an idiot, but now I’m supposed to be reaching out to him? Sorry, hon, but that’s not happening. The two of us are finished. And, you know what? I think we’re finished here, too. If you’ll excuse me!
She not only refuses to do the emotional labour of patching up the relationship, she ends the conversation promptly by kicking Zagreus out of her house.
With the ball of atonement back in Orpheus’ court, we finally begin to see some personal growth from the dour poet. He asks about Eurydice by name, although he still will not entertain the idea of attempting to rekindle their relationship: ‘Alas, I cannot change the past, my friend. So, no. As you can plainly see by now, I’m dead to her. Rightfully so, at that.’ When Zagreus points out that death is just a technicality at this point Orpheus affirms that he would love to see Eurydice more than anything, ‘Provided she wanted to see me. I tried once to disturb her everlasting rest, as you well know. And that did not pan out as I had hoped …’ He acknowledges that her consent matters, and intimates that he realizes he did not consider it the first time he tried to reunite with her. He even admits later, after Eurydice tells Zagreus and Zagreus brings it up to him, that, ‘I owe my everything to my Eurydice. She authored many of my songs, indeed; and she inspired many, many more. Whilst living, we collaborated frequently, you see.’ Now much more than a muse and a wife, Eurydice is revealed to have been an active partner in Orpheus’ career.
It is her role as collaborator that ends up being the catalyst for their eventual reunion. Zagreus obtains the score for her newest song ‘Good Riddance’ and brings it to Orpheus, who not only starts singing it but (with lots of help from Zagreus) comes up with a plan to ‘make certain that [his listeners in the House] know whose songs I sing,’ thus insisting that she receive the professional recognition which she lacked in life.
As for Eurydice, she drifts occasionally into memory but ultimately keeps herself grounded in the present. She asks Zagreus how Orpheus has been doing and if his hair is still styled, but qualifies it by musing that ‘his tan must have faded by now.’ She does seem to recognize Orpheus’ fragility, especially in light of her own resilience, when she says that, ‘Music’s his gift. Good to know he’s not thrown everything away.’ Considering that her former husband is someone who was so incapable of moving on after her death that he treated with the very rulers of the Underworld to resurrect her (or, as Zagreus puts it, ‘I think the experience of trying to rescue you, failing, dying, becoming court musician, refusing to sing, then being locked in solitary confinement, then finding out about you probably did a number on him’), she is probably right to be cautious in her expectations.
Despite this knowledge, or perhaps because of it, she still expects Zagreus (and by extension Orpheus) to offer the initial olive branch:
E What happens now, hon …? What I mean is … now you got me thinking about Orpheus again, so … what am I supposed to do with that?
Z Even if you can’t be together right now, I hope it feels better knowing how much he cares for you. And I will try to pull some strings, like you said. I can’t make promises where my father’s concerned, but … I’ll do everything I can.
E Well, what can I tell you? Thanks, Your Royal Majesty. That means a lot. No pressure, though. I’ve been all right without him all this time, and I will be all right, no matter what. If only he could say the same.
Zagreus bears responsibility for continuing to interfere, despite both affected parties telling him not to. Thus, Eurydice lays the burden of reaction at his feet. She was perfectly happy until he kept bringing up her ex, so what is he going to do to fix the situation? It is at this point that we get the final section of her codex entry, and discover the heart of her character: resilience. Even if Zagreus fails, as Orpheus once did, she’ll be all right.
The codex reads that she ‘took a suitor who, by most accounts, was but a common mortal; talented beyond compare, but not a god. Yet, all the love they shared could not keep death from tearing them apart. She bears a special mention here for having almost fled the Underworld, once. Such was the full-hearted devotion of her mate, that he did venture all the way into this realm, in search of her, and treated with the Master for her soul. They say the Master almost let her go. But when he finally refused, she grieved, but she did not despair. Even in death, she moved on with her life.’
Here, we once again return to the myth and find modern Eurydice’s place within it. She loved a mortal (the emphasis on her agency in taking a suitor should be noted here), was parted from him by death, and he was so devoted that he ventured into the Underworld to bargain with Hades and bring her back. This echoes Ovid’s sentiment about Orpheus’ only fault being his love for Eurydice, but pulls the focus back from him and onto Eurydice. When she died again she grieved but, unlike Orpheus, did not despair. As he refused to move on with the life he still possessed, she moved on with hers in death and eventually acts as the catalyst that spurs Orpheus to move on with his afterlife as well.
She grieved, but did not despair
If not from myth, where does this modern Eurydice come from? She bears some resemblance to the Eurydice in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, whom Marianne suggests told Orpheus to look back herself. However, the film shifts roles and while both women do move on with their lives, they also frequently look back and it is unclear whether either one ever truly moves beyond the moment of loss at the precipice of the Underworld.
Eurydice does find close parallels in Supergiant’s previous games, notably with Bastion’s Zia and Transistor’s Red. Bastion (2011) was the studio’s first release and follows the Kid as he seeks to restore his world after the Calamity, a catastrophic event that wiped out everyone except for himself, an elderly man named Rucks who narrates the game, and two members of the Ura people, Zulf and Zia.
As with Eurydice, the player’s first introduction to Zia is through music. We follow the sound of her voice through the level until we find her with her guitar and recruit her to return to camp with us. Through Rulf’s exposition, we learn that she was raised in the city, Caelondia, and though she knows little of her heritage she was constantly bullied and ostracized for it as a child. A supposed friend manipulated her into trying to return to the Ura, at which point her father is blackmailed into servitude and she is left on her own. When she disappears later in the game the Kid, assuming she has been kidnapped, traverses the game world in search of her only to find that she had left willingly and was not, in fact, in need of a rescue. At the end of the game, she represents one of two paths forward; the Kid can either side with Rulf and turn back the clock to how things were before the Calamity, or side with Zia and move on.
Greg Kasavin, Creative Director at Supergiant, has characterized Zia as ‘a source of hope in Bastion’s post-Calamity world. Through her, we see that the situation may not be as bleak as it initially appeared. Her life is better after the Calamity; she has internalized and moved past any sense of survivor’s guilt, and accepts that she has a new opportunity to live a better life.’18 Much like Eurydice, she moved through the trauma in her life and built a better future for herself.
Transistor (2014) follows a beloved singer-songwriter named Red, who was attacked by a hostile robotic force called ‘Process’ at the behest of a shadowy organization known as the ‘Camerata’. While Red’s companion saved her life, his consciousness and her own voice were absorbed into the greatsword-like ‘Transistor’. Red, together with her talking sword partner, must then fight through a city that is rapidly being consumed by the Process and defeat the Camerata.
Transistor also plays with the idea of lost voices and choosing to move on (or not) after loss. Red and her partner ultimately undergo a reversal of roles; she becomes silent but capable of great action, while he loses his ability to act but becomes the main voice (narrator) of the game. Asked about the use and loss of voices, Kasavin notes that:
In Transistor, we sought to make the “silent protagonist” idea a direct part of the story. Transistor explores what it means to have a voice in society. Red is a character whose influential voice is taken from her as part of the story, though despite not having her literal voice anymore, she can still take powerful action as well as communicate when she decides it’s necessary to do so. Her companion, meanwhile, loses his body and is reduced only to a voice.19
Ultimately, Red chooses to regain her voice and join her partner permanently in the Transistor rather than reshape the city; unlike in Bastion, the player is offered no choice in the matter. In the end, despite her partner’s insistence otherwise, Red chooses her own destiny.
Although Eurydice keeps her voice and Red loses hers, we see a similar level of empowerment between the two women and perhaps, in Red, a glimpse of what Eurydice would have been like had her and Orpheus’ roles been reversed. Red’s journey through the game is essentially a katabasis. As she fights through a city that has been increasingly taken over by the Process, the world around her becomes more and more detached from reality. Buildings give way to white cubes, robots wander the streets in lieu of people, and at one point she enters the body of a Leviathan that is more Klimt painting than creature. Finally, after navigating a fully Processed district in which everything is white cubes and the rules of physics have ceased to apply, she enters the Transistor itself. Upon defeating the final boss within, she is sent back to the city with the knowledge and power to rebuild it.
If we map her journey on to the katabatic formula proposed by Scherer and Falconer, we see a roughly Orphic story begin to emerge. Rather than a (male) hero who travels to the land of the dead to gain something vital to his quest, such as a loved one, superpowers, or information, we have Red travelling through the Processed city of Cloudbank and into the Transistor to regain her partner and her voice. Where the hero would have reunions with heroes and people he knew that would remind him of his past and act as a foil to his destined future, Red has conversations with her sword companion about their shared past and finds dossiers on the elite of Cloudbank, who have now been Processed and are able to share skills and powers with her.20 All of these are echoes of the Cloudbank from her past, which she can never fully recover.
Red’s katabatic journey is not entirely successful, however, and here we find the closest parallel between her and Eurydice. When she exits the Transistor she has what should be the ultimate goal of the game; the power and knowledge to undo what the Process did to her city. What she does not have are her voice and a physically realized partner. When she returns to her partner’s body she finds it too battered to accept the return of his consciousness and must face the prospect of a life without him. That is certainly his choice for her, as he urges her to move on and make the city a better place. Yet, this is Red’s story, even if she wasn’t the one to narrate it. She chooses to be content in death and commits suicide, joining her partner in the Transistor and regaining her voice while leaving the heroic task of rebuilding the city to someone else.
Like Orpheus, Red travelled to an Underworld to bring back her partner and was ultimately unsuccessful. Also, like Orpheus, she loses her musical ability. The crucial difference between her and Orpheus, however, is that when faced with failure she chose death rather than despair and for that, she regained both her partner and her voice. In Eurydice’s conversations with Zagreus, we learn that she is furious with Orpheus for many things, but is especially indignant that he tried to rescue her when she was already dead. Apart from upending the natural order he negated any agency she might have had in the matter and, in rejecting the reality of her death, rejected his own ability to move forward without her. Red accepts the reality of her partner’s death and chooses to move forward by joining him.
When Eurydice is eventually reunited with Orpheus, she again becomes the catalyst that enables him to thrive. They start singing together again and Orpheus once more fulfils his duty as court musician; she keeps him focused on the future and he seems to finally grasp the moral of his own story.21 In ignoring her partner’s idea of what’s best for her, she leads them both into an afterlife of contentment.
The Eurydice of Hades is about as different from that of classical myth as it is possible to be. She is an outspoken, self-possessed woman of colour who was a true partner and collaborator for Orpheus during their life. In death, rather than drifting through eternity as a memory of Orpheus’ heartbreaking failure she picks herself up and makes a new afterlife for herself in which she can be happy and self-sufficient; a narrative arc that Supergiant is especially qualified to write. As with Bastion’s Zia, she endures her trauma and comes out on the other side free of guilt and looking towards a brighter future. Like Transistor’s Red she grieves but does not despair, and chooses how she wants her story to end regardless of what others had planned for her. Is it any wonder that such a character also bucks the trend of catering to an assumed male gaze?
Notes
1.TV tropes defines sword and sandal works as ‘a particular kind of Period Piece set in ancient biblical or mythological times’. See: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SwordAndSandal (accessed 15 March 2021).
2.See Ciaccia in this volume pp. 128–146 for a full discussion, and Clare (2021): 55–6.
3.Not all the goddesses are hypersexualized; see Beydler pp. 116–27 for goddesses in Smite and Orellana Figueroa pp. 36–41 for sexualized armour, both in this volume. However, the game has also received complaints from the Universal Society of Hinduism due to its inclusion of Hindu gods, and in particular Kali’s original outfit of strategically placed bits of fabric and not much else (Gonzalez 2012).
4.See pp. 2–5 in this volume.
5.Regarding terminology, Supergiant’s video game Hades will be distinguished by italics while Hades, without italics, refers to the god himself. The realm of Hades will be referred to as the Underworld.
6.Supergiant opted to have Zagreus be raised by Nyx, unaware of his birth mother until the events of the game. His role in the Orphic Mysteries is not canon here but is mentioned numerous times, most notably when Dionysos suggests to Zagreus that they play a prank on Orpheus and tell him that they are, in fact, the same god. Orpheus believes the story and, determined to get the word out, immediately composes a Hymn to Zagreus that recounts the Orphic mythology.
7.Bernstock (1991: xv–xvii).
8.Gantz (1993: 722–3).
9.Ovid Met. X.
10.Ovid Met. XI.61–6 does reunite the two characters after Orpheus’ death; he seeks her out in the Fields of the Blessed. Eurydice gains a bit of independence, as she is referred to by her name twice and is able to walk in front on occasion, but the overall tone is still that of a reward for Orpheus.
11.Eurydice and all other characters were designed by Supergiant’s art director, Jen Zee. For more on the racial diversity of character design, see Parrish (2020), and Bernstock (1991) for earlier artistic versions of Eurydice.
12.Her vibrant colouring and accessories link her visually with the furies, gods and other non-human characters; this compliments her codex entry and reminds players that she is not a mere mortal.
13.The codex itself acts as an in-game dictionary of enemies, characters, places and objects of note. It was canonically written by Achilles (hired by Hades to teach Zagreus how to fight) after his death but has largely disappeared at the start of the game. As one interacts more with the subject of each entry, more and more information is revealed.
14.Lyrics and music by Darren Korb, performed by Ashley Barrett.
15.It is worth noting that the narrator is prone to exaggeration and has an antagonistic relationship with Zagreus, who can hear him and often replies accordingly. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, the narrator will use the situation at hand to make his opinion of the prince known.
16.The game makes no mention of what happened between looking back and dying himself, although his visual similarity to Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus character may allude to the Sandman episodes which do contain the bacchantes, dismemberment and brief oracular stint (Gaiman 1991).
17.Stevens (2020) has analysed the interplay between the two women, as well as the interchange of memory and art within the film. Our Orpheus has no physical reminders of Eurydice but he does use vivid language in his descriptions of her.
18.Personal correspondence between Greg Kasavin and the author, 3 October 2020.
19.Ibid.
20.Scherer (2019: 2–3) and Falconer (2007: 3).
21.Over drinks, Orpheus tries to impress upon Zagreus the importance of not looking back.