Hades Interview

Among many other things, the Long Winter early access update for Supergiant Games’ roguelite action-RPG Hades introduced the Greek goddess Demeter to the game. And as it turns out, figuring out how to properly add an Olympian such as Demeter to a game about slashing and stabbing a bunch of monsters and demons wasn’t such an easy task. As a result, we can now check out this Gamasutra interview with the developers that sheds some light on that tricky process.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Demeter hadn’t really been in the running among gods we were eager to add,” explains writer and designer Greg Kasavin. “For one thing, I believe she would rank dead last in terms of ‘household name’ status among Olympians. After all, she’s the goddess of agriculture… that’s hardly as dramatic as lightning, war, or strategy. [And that theme] was not as clear a source of gameplay inspiration in the context of an action-oriented experience like ours.”

Demeter does play a large role in the myth of Hades and Persephone, which forms the basis of the game’s narrative. “In the myth, Persephone was Demeter’s daughter, and Demeter understandably was not thrilled after her daughter suddenly disappeared,” Kasavin explains. “[At first], Demeter’s role presented a number of significant story complications I was happy to avoid.”

However, Demeter remained stuck in Kasavin’s mind, and he began to see it as an opportunity. “The part where she’s unpopular as an Olympian should not be driving our choices about which characters best serve the story, as that sort of thing has never been a factor in our story decisions. And the part where she doesn’t seem interesting from a gameplay standpoint can be solved by considering her from a different point of view.”

Each god gives the player “boons” which improve their abilities on his path out of hell. When considering Demeter as an agricultural god, “We just thought of stuff like grasping vines slowing enemies down,” Kasavin explains. “Nothing too inspiring.”

Instead, they turned back to the source myth to reimagine her powers. “Demeter creates desolate winter while her daughter is away, then brings spring when her daughter returns. In plainer terms, we liked the idea of Demeter as an ‘ice queen’ type of character, providing powers over cold,” he says. “That’s one of those classic fantasy-game archetypes we were excited to explore through the lens of our game. With our big cast of characters, having archetypal personalities as a starting point is important so you can immediately tell everyone apart.”