Hades, the fourth game from the indie developer Supergiant, adds a coda. The story had always struck me as a tragedy, two lovers forever separated by the wily god of the dead. Either way, Orpheus fails, and Eurydice is swept back to the land of the dead. In the original story, Orpheus looks back just as he reaches the doors of the underworld because he can no longer hear EurydiceвЂ™s footsteps in the playwright Sarah RuhlвЂ™s retelling of the myth, he looks back because Eurydice calls out to him. Impressed by OrpheusвЂ™s skill, Hades, the god of the underworld, allows him to take EurydiceвЂ™s soul back to the surface where she may live - so long as Orpheus never looks back to make sure she is following him. The talented musician Orpheus, stricken with grief at the death of his wife and muse, plays his lyre so skillfully that Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld, lets him pass. IвЂ™m one of those people who went through a Greek mythology phase when they were kids, so the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is familiar to me. ItвЂ™s the beginning of a side quest - one that makes me recognize just how special Hades is. The womanвЂ™s name, the game tells me, is Eurydice. So to hear the sound of a woman singing in the middle of the flaming depths of the underworld made me stop in my tracks. The underworld does not give up one of its own easily, and you will find yourself dying often, only to return to the House of Hades and attempt to escape again.Д®arly in the game I had met Orpheus, the court musician in the House of Hades, who told me he stopped singing because he had lost his muse I figured this was the game, with a sly nod to the classics, telling me not to expect any stirring vocals anytime soon. This is, to put it lightly, easier said than done.

You play as Zagreus, the son of the titular ancient Greek god of the dead, and your goal is to fight through the levels of the underworld - Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium - to reach the surface of the Earth, where you hope to find your mother, Persephone. Music is not rare in Hades - the video gameвЂ™s soundtrack is an absolute banger that follows players throughout the entire journey, punctuated only by moments of silence at the end of battles - but actual singing, up until that point, had been nonexistent. Halfway through hell, I hear the singing.

Orpheus hades