Shadow of the Colossus
Kenji Kaido and Funito Ueda are geniuses.ICO was one of the most beautiful, moving games ever created. It was simple but not simplistic, bare but not barren. In an era when most designers throw in the kitchen sink, then look for another sink, ICO had no extra elements. None. There was nothing to distract from the focus of the game, which was simply to make you care. And I did.
It was, unquestionably, a work of art.
So when I dusted off the PS2 to play Shadow of the Colossus, I knew it was going to be something special, a fable in game form, and I just knew it was going to be wonderful.
And it is.
It's a fable that's part myth and part dream, a journey across a forbidden landscape to battle epic, fantastic creatures. Why must you do this? To resurrect someone you love who has been lost.
Could it be any simpler? A boy and a mission to save his love.
Could it be any more beautiful? I don't see how. The landscape is so meticulously crafted, so striking, that the sand and cliffs and forests all seem as if they have been taken from another world, as real as the landscapes of our own dreams.
The Colossus are so enormous that they defy description, and there is unspeakable beauty in that as well. They are fierce and noble and somehow vulnerable, and I greatly regretted killing them.
Then there is Agro, your horse, a magnificent animal in his own right, and his uncanny movements are yet another way that the feeling of reality tugs at the fable, mixing in ways that are powerfully affecting.
If you want to know what the battles are like, I'll just tell you this: the sensation of seeing a Colossus, of drawing near, of finding purchase--it's all unforgettable. Hearing its scream of pain as your sword plunges through its skin is both exhilarating and and tragic. Seeing it fall to the ground, its giant form now just a husk, its spirit gone, is terribly moving.
While I was in battle with the fifth Colossus (who flies) I realized that I was experiencing one of the absolute finest moments I'd ever had in gaming. The Colossus in flight, my desperate struggle to hang on, the orchestral music swelling in the background--it was all so beautiful, so majestic, that I wanted to stop there. I didn't want to kill that Colossus, didn't want to see it fall from the sky.
But I did kill it, and I continued on to see more marvels, more magnificent beasts, and felt more moments of pure wonder.
So why didn't I finish the damn game?
That sounds like a complex question, but is has a simple answer: because I stopped caring. That lovely girl was dead on the slab, and I no longer cared.
Did I care that I no longer cared? Hell, yes. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that I revere Kenji Kaido and Funito Ueda. They make games that are fragile jewels, so unspeakably beautiful that it almost diminishes their importance to call them "games." So as the feeling that something was wrong started to swell, it was misery. I didn't want anything to be wrong.
And make no mistake: this is a great game. The best moments absolutely soar. I know of nothing that can compare in gaming.
So what stopped me?
Was it the camera? The camera is ass, certainly. It's manually adjusted using the right analog stick, but often it's automatically "improved" to the point where you have to start adjusting it all over again. On horseback, it's also very hard to see enough of the landscape to adjust your course properly. I fought the camera from the first minute to the last.
That didn't do it, though.
The battles with the Colossus can be very frustrating at times. There are puzzle elements for each, usually involving how one finds a place on the Colossus from which to hang on and climb. They are usually interesting, occasionally ingenious, and they're wonderful if you're successful the first or second time. Often, though, I knew what to do and just couldn't execute it properly, either due to a balky camera or the difficulty of aiming arrows. When I failed, I simply had to repeat the technique over and over again until it was successful. It was in these moments that the fable simply stopped breathing, and instead of moving through a living world I felt like an unskilled actor in a stage play. I'd just go back to where I flubbed the line and run through it again, and the Colossus would respond in exactly the same way every time. Forever.
There are other curiously repetitive elements in battle. If you fall or are thrown from a Colossus, you will generally just reuse the exact method by which you first climbed on. That would not be a problem, except each puzzle usually as a somewhat novel solution, solutions that are too unique to be sturdy enough to withstand repetition.
Then, of course, there's the eleventh Colossus, which is singularly cheap in the manner in which it does damage. Infuriatingly cheap, actually, and it brought me to something approaching a boiling point.
Cursing and fables would seem to have basic incompatibilities.
That didn't stop me, though. I defeated the eleventh Colossus and went on to the twelfth. It featured a wonderful puzzle element, truly inspired, but even as I played (and replayed, as I stumbled through mistakes) I felt my indifference.
I no longer cared about the girl.
That, in the end, is what stopped me. There is a fantastic, remarkable story in Shadow of the Colossus, but you will essentially see none of it for the vast majority of the game. It began to scratch the surface in a cut scene between the eleventh and twelfth Colossus, but for me, it was too late. From Colossus one through Colossus eleven there was nothing, not even a scrap of a story. My departed love changed not a whit on the cold slab. There was no sense of anything beyond the narrow world of saving her life, and she was not changing.
If I had been given anything, even a crumb, anything to strengthen the bond I felt with her, I would have kept going.
And here's the unfortunate irony: when the story finally beings to reveal itself, it's unforgettable. I had a long briefing from a friend (after I stopped playing), and the ending is so memorable, so moving, that it surely ranks among the finest stories ever told in a game. And I was right there, right on the cusp, of seeing it unveiled.
It was so hidden, though, so totally concealed, that I had no reason to believe it was there at all. In the end, I simply gave up looking.
Much to my regret.
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