Love is a force more powerful than death. Today we review video game heroes who travel to the Underworld with the power of love.
Happy Valentine’s to everyone! Whether you like this date or not, we deserve joys, like a frivolous day in which we can have a detail with someone special in our life. In addition, it is a perfect day to share a game of one of these games designed to be enjoyed from the same sofa. Or we can also commemorate a video love story, or take advantage of a Valentine’s event like the one launched by Pokémon Go. In FreeGameTips we also commemorate the day of love and today we talk about a narrative archetype that we love: the search for the loved one in the Underworld, or modern versions of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Orpheus and Eurydice, post mortem love
Ovid in his Metamorphoses compiles this legend. Once upon a time there was a musician named Orpheus, whose talent with the lyre was such that he tamed beasts. He was one of the Argonauts who accompanied Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece, and with his music he managed to distract his companions so that they would not fall victim to the captivating voices of the sirens. His beloved was a nymph named Eurydice, who delighted in his recitals. One day, the hunter god Aristeus noticed her and chased her through the forest with the intention of subduing her. The young woman, during her flight, received the mortal sting of a snake. The afflicted Orpheus decides to undertake a feat with which he challenges the natural order of life: to go in search of his lover in the Underworld itself.
With his lyre, Orpheus dazzles Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog that prevents the living from entering the world of the dead. When the musician takes his request to Hades, god of hell, he responds reluctantly. However, his wife Persephone, touched by the boy’s resolve and his musical talent, convinces her husband to fulfill such a desperate wish.
Orpheus and Eurydice, by Rubens
Hades agrees to bring Eurydice back to life, but on one condition: the nymph would follow the musician on the way back to the world of the living, and during the journey he should not look back to verify that the god was fulfilling his promise. However, Orpheus ended up betraying his will, and one glance was enough to see how he lost his love forever.
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has been one of the most represented in the history of art. In the essay Orfeo in artistic discourse: the survival of an archetype (María José Sánchez Usón), it is analyzed: “Orfeo has been treated as inspiration and theme by the vast majority of artists of all genres, times and places, attracted, doubtless by the imperishable spell of his lyre. Given this, one wonders where the fascination that has contributed to popularize and preserve Orphic history comes from, and the answer leads us to different origins: First, from the attractive duality that combines its myth, two extremes: love and death; the light, represented in nature in all its splendor and in the radiant Eurydice, and the darkness, contained in its catabasis or descensus ad inferos. Orpheus captivates, too, for having been an introducer of rites and mysteries, and, in short, for all the ambiguity that surrounds his life and death, susceptible to complex symbolism ”.
Orpheus and Eurydice in the video game Hades
Likewise, Orpheus and Eurydice are the representation of a classic literary topic: post mortem love (love beyond death). The publishing house Es Poesía, in a didactic literature blog, defines this recurring theme throughout the history of literature, especially during the Baroque and Romantic periods: “The literary topic love post mortem seeks to reflect the idea that love it crosses all borders, including those of death. In this sense, this topic has the character of eternalizing love despite all the regrets. It is a topic that was used a lot in the Baroque and Romanticism, which sought to characterize human love as something that lasted after bodily death ”. Losing a loved one is a blow for which we are never prepared, and through post-mortem love we see reflected that desperation to reverse the very laws of nature and recover someone who is no longer with us.
Orpheus refuses to accept fate, like many tragic Greek heroes, and is able to embark on a dangerous feat only to win back his love. Video games, on the other hand, look to classic topics to build their narratives and in our toy libraries we find several examples of lovers who defy death itself to hold the loved one in their arms.
The Battle of Olympus cover
Orpheus and Eurydice between pixels
The same Greek legend has had its own version in video games, with different licenses to promote a playable and surprising experience for the player.
The Battle of Olympus, for NES, presents the archetype of the damsel in distress inspired by the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Nintendo Times they analyze this title that was not one of the best known of Nintendo, nor the best valued: “You control Orpheus, who must rescue Helena, his recently deceased lover, from Hades. Of course, he is the god of the Underworld and the main antagonist of the game. The world of Olympus is divided into eight interconnected regions. Each zone contains a different god, like Zeus, Ares, Athena and others that you will know and that will help you with your mission ”.
Terry Cavanagh also designed his own version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, called Don’t Look Back. In this shooter title, Orpheus exchanges his lyre for a pistol, and must overcome a series of platforms to recover his beloved. Its difficulty is part of the narrative itself, as described in Jay Is Games: “Hades is a difficult place, but so is mourning.” The same designer recounted in Game Critics his intention when adapting the myth to a shooter and changing the end of the legend for an outcome that would displace the player: “The other idea I had was to create a game that was shown as a shooter silly or something, and put a twist on it that will put your actions in a new and much more interesting context. It occurred to me to version the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice while I was thinking about how to achieve this ”. After several sketches, the designer came up with a satisfying title for him: “I think the fantastic theme added something new to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which is about self-insecurity, and in a way that only a video game can achieve” .
Image from Don’t Look Back
In Persona 3, Orpheus is the persona of the protagonist, which is appropriate due to the young man’s fondness for music and the adventure in Tartarus that takes place within the game. On the other hand, we cannot forget the appearance of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Hades video game from Supergiant Games, where Zagreo has the mission to reunite the lovers.
Do not forget the surreal title Oikospiel Book I, an indie work by David Kanaga that he presents himself like this: “The Oikospielen Opera is developing an epic and worldwide video game festival called GEOSPIEL, whose premiere is dated in 2100. The employees of the theater Organized by the Working Animals Union, they are trying to bring Koch Games’ developer dogs into their group, but these loyal pups love their job and their boss Donkey Koch too much. Will there be union of Unity and community, or will multiplicity and individualism prevail? The money has woken up. Pluto (the main dog, named after the Roman version of Hades), has captured the spirit of Orpheus, and Eurydice is the main composer of this operatic reform of the adventure genre ”.
Image from Oikospiel Book I
The journey to the Underworld for love
But Orpheus is not the only lover who is capable of defying death himself to win back his love. Some titles have transgressed the topic and have developed their own version of the lover who crosses the Underworld to be in the arms of his partner again.
At Dante’s Inferno, we witness the hack n’ slash version of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The Italian poet recreated post-mortem love through a work in which he himself descended into hell in search of his beloved Beatrice. Visceral Games offered a more violent version, as The Guardian studies: “This Dante [del juego] He is not a poet, but a crusader, who has faced Death and won (of course) and now returns home with the Grim Reaper’s scythe on his shoulder. Unfortunately, the Tuscan villa has been razed and Beatrice, his big-chested wife (of course), lies dead in the garden. Her ghost tells Dante that he must rescue her. In the original, it is ‘girl saves boy’. Beatrice, deceased at a young age, gazes at Dante from heaven, sees that his soul is in danger, and sends help. In the game, however, it is Dante who fights abominations to save the girl. As you descend into Hell, the graphics become powerful and haunting, but the story is far more boring than in the book. Kill one monster, then another ”.
Dante’s Inferno Art
Hellblade also offers us a curious version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Instead of offering us Greek mythology as a background, we find a title inspired by Norse mythology. On this occasion, in addition, it is not a leading man who is looking for a deceased woman with a passive role. Our heroine is Senua, a Celtic warrior who travels to the domain of Hela, goddess of the realm of the dead, to recover the soul of her beloved Dillion. The young woman’s journey not only deals with the power of love, but also offers us a journey through the tortured mind of the young woman, with an honest representation of psychosis. However, its bitter outcome offers us a lesson that they relate in Zena: “an epic where the protagonist and the antagonist are women, where mental illness is represented with truthfulness and care and where the loss of a loved one leads us to the conclusion that revenge against death itself is a traumatic and futile act ”.
Shadow of the Colossus is another epic where we control a hero in love. Wander is a boy without the excellent physical gifts of epic fantasy. He is a young man with a modest military training, who is exhausted when he makes a higher effort such as long or distance running or fighting. And yet it is his love that leads him to visit the Forbidden Land to pray to the god Dormin to bring his beloved back to life. The task you must do to fulfill your wish is not negligible: you must defeat sixteen colossi that prowl inaccessible lands and that serve as an equivalent to the Underworld. However, the development of Wander’s adventure remains far from successful. Throughout the game, we discover that Dormin has been using the boy as a vessel to dump the fragments of his soul to restore his power. Escapist Magazine reveals the symbolism behind this title: “Shadow of the Colossus is clearly a stellar game, but also a parable that teaches us that mourning is something we must overcome. Staying anchored in it, without moving forward, will cause more pain to us and the people around us. When we lose someone, we cannot flee, or negotiate with it, because in the end we will end up hurting ourselves. With Shadow of the Colossus and the failure of Wander, we learn a lot and grow as people. “
Shadow of the Colossus Image
Thus, in video games we find many heroes moved by a love more powerful than death. Will passion be enough to resurrect the loved one? What are your favorite Orpheans and Eurydids?
