Beowulf: The Game structure but is defeated and thrown into the water; there, Grendel's mother appears and says he is her new hero, and grants him power. Beowulf defeats the sea serpent with his newfound power and returns to the beach where he was racing with the Thane. Afterward, having heard the problem the Danes are facing, he goes to help King Hrothgar to stop Grendel, gaining Heroic powers on the journey. Afterwards, the player plays through the thirty years of Beowulf's life as king of the Danes, which was not seen in the movie. Beowulf gets to journey from Herot to Iceland,
Old English literature which concludes Beowulf's fight with the monsters during his swimming match with Breca: Crowne drew on examples of the theme's appearance in twelve Anglo-Saxon texts, including one occurrence in Beowulf. It was also observed in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga. John Richardson held that the schema was so general as to apply to virtually any character at some point in the narrative, and thought it an instance of the "threshold" feature of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey monomyth. J.A. Dane, in an article (characterised by Foley as "polemics without rigour") claimed that