“In the name of Hades, Olympus, I accept this message!”
If you’ve played Hades, Supergiant’s seminal 2020 roguelike, you’ve likely heard that phrase hundreds of times. On his mission to escape the underworld, protagonist Zagreus says the line (or some variation of it) when accepting Boons, missives from the Olympian gods that grant powerful abilities. You’ll encounter it dozens of times on a typical run. Yet it never gets old.
“In a game where so much of the dialogue never repeats, we did want a few recurring phrases such as this one,” Supergiant creative director Greg Kasavin told Polygon in an email, adding that this particular quote was “from relatively early in the development of Hades when we were figuring out what it would feel like to interact with Olympians’ Boons throughout the game.”
With roguelikes, repetition is the name of the game. Hades, however, attained its popularity by bucking that framework. Sure, with every run, the dungeons look the same. The enemies fight the same. But so much of each run — from the Boons and items you find to the ways character relationships unfold — will evolve and change with each attempt you make.
This helped lead Hades to become one of the famous early-access success stories; it spent about a year and a half in early access ahead of its 2020 breakthrough, where it won the first-ever Hugo Award for a video game (and Polygon’s game of the year). Along the way, Supergiant fine-tuned the game, including aspects of characterization. You’d think the creative team would have spent time adjusting Zagreus’ de facto catchphrase too, but the “in the name of Hades” line practically came out of the oven fully baked.
