The Odyssey badly needs a big budget video game adaptation

July 18, 2026 - 19:01

With Christopher Nolan's upcoming movie adaptation of The Odyssey set to launch worldwide, the conversation has turned back to one of humanity's oldest and greatest stories. But while Hollywood is finally giving Homer's epic the blockbuster treatment, video games have been surprisingly slow to mine this rich material. A reader asks: why are games so hesitant to borrow from classic Greek myths and other famous tales?

The answer is not simple, but it is frustrating. The Odyssey is a perfect blueprint for an open-world action game. You have a hero, Odysseus, trying to get home after a war. Along the way, he faces cyclopes, witches, sirens, and gods who meddle in his fate. The structure is episodic, which fits a game with distinct levels or regions. The core theme of cunning over brute strength could lead to creative gameplay mechanics, like stealth, persuasion, and puzzle-solving, rather than just swinging a sword.

Yet, developers mostly stick to Norse mythology or generic fantasy settings. There have been attempts, like the God of War series, which borrows Greek figures but twists them into action-horror. A faithful, large-scale adaptation of The Odyssey, with a focus on exploration and survival at sea, has never been made. The same goes for other classic epics like The Iliad, Beowulf, or The Epic of Gilgamesh. These stories are public domain, full of drama, and already familiar to millions. The tools exist to make them immersive. The question is whether any studio has the ambition to try.