Me And My Shadow : Reservations About “Shadow Of The Colossus”
I was initially very excited about “Shadow Of The Colossus” because I had played Team ICO’s previous effort “Ico” and found it to be one of the most emotionally affecting and incredibly beautiful videogames I had ever experienced. “Ico” appeared at a time when the medium of videogames had become a stable, reliable and immensely profitable industry. It was far safer for a company to continue putting out games that reinforced what gamers had already indicated they wanted, in the form of endless sequels, sports games with the newest rosters, and rehashes of first person shooters, then for a company to challenge the prevailing paradigm by releasing something almost completely new, original, unknown and untested. “Ico” did just that and differed from every single other game on the shelf in terms of its visuals, its aesthetic, its gameplay, its internal logic, its interface with the player, and even its music.
Because of that experience, I had high hopes for the announced follow-up “Shadow Of The Colossus.” I didn’t necessarily hope for something as fresh, new, and disruptive as “Ico” had been, but I did hope for the same level of depth, similar emotional content, and an unquestionably unique kind of gameplay. Sadly, I was and continue to be mildly disappointed.
Take that disappointment with a grain of salt though. Casting even minor aspersions at a game like “Shadow Of The Colossus” is like being forced to choose between a single hundred dollar bill or nine ten dollar bills. Either way, both are great and you’re going to be happy with what you get. “Shadow Of The Colossus” is an incredible game, miles ahead of so may other titles on the shelf. I just feel that it fell short of what it could have achieved and it has take me some reflection to really figure out why. As a warning, there are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead.
1) AGRO
I understand why Team ICO added Agro, the main character Wander’s horse. I really do. Some have criticized the controls while riding Agro, saying that they were jerky, unreliable, and difficult to master. Have they ever ridden a horse? I have. Not often, but I have. And controlling Agro felt a lot like controlling a real horse. But that’s not my issue with Agro at all. Agro is integral to many Wander’s battles with the colossi, risking death, braving terrors, and giving everything to help Wander. But this relationship is already there, intact, when the game begins. There is no arc to it, no growth, and no backstory. You never know just how Wander came into possession of such an amazing beast, how they bonded, why they seem to love one another and are so willing to sacrifice everything for one another. It’s just kind of dropped in your lap and you go with it. I think the developers could have really expanded on the unique and touching relationship between Wander and Agro which would have added a great deal of emotional depth to the game.
2) MONO
Much like the relationship between Ico and Yorda in “Ico,” very little is explained regarding the relationship between Wander and the dead girl he is trying to resurrect, Mono. I am generally strongly in favor of ambiguity, and I think that many videogames, movies, books and television shows spoon-feed their audiences far too much. But there is a fine line between ambiguity and absence, and I think that in an effort to mirror the Ico / Yorda relationship the developers strayed too heavily into the territory of absence. At the very end of the game, when Wander succeeds in his goal and resurrects Mono, although he pays a heavy price, she looks at him with an absolute absence of emotion. The player never has any idea at all what Mono might be thinking. Does she even know Wander? Does she care about him? Were they lovers? Were they related? Did he abduct her? There were simply too many questions and not enough context to stimulate the player’s imagination into creating the story for him or her-self.
3) THE FINAL COLOSSUS
It was too hard to beat. There. I said it. Look, I relish a challenge in videogames, and I also enjoy the casual pick-it-up, put-it-down puzzle game. I like a wide wide variety of games (other than first person shooters that don’t have the word “Metroid” in the title and murder simulators…oops, I’m sorry, I meant war simulators like “Call of Duty Number 254”) and will always approach a game on its own terms. But the learning curve between the second to last colossus and the last colossus was simply too steep. This, marred by the worst camera work in the entire game, made defeating that final colossus a brutal marathon rather than an exhilarating challenge and it left a bad taste in my mouth for days. It just didn’t seem to fit. Sure, some of the prior colossi did show malice and aggression, attacking Wander and Agro pretty fiercely. Others seemed to barely notice Wander, even while he was destroying them. But every single colossi seemed, for lack of a better descriptor, like a force of nature. A thing. Something which existed in the natural order of things, but absent a driving will. That final colossus, complete with the raging storm and the crashing lightning and the slim human torso reminded me very much of some depictions of Satan, such as Chernobog in the “Night On Bald Mountain” section of the Disney film “Fantasia” (which you should totally YouTube if you’ve not seen it) and Gustave Dore’s engravings of the archfiend in Dante’s “Inferno.” The game, thus far, had deliberately offered nothing but hints and shades of meaning, but here at the end you’re fighting for your life against a pretty clear embodiment of evil. It clashed with the internal logic of the game, rendering the entire experience invalid.
After reading that, it’s probably hard to believe that I still think “Shadow Of The Colossus” was a brilliant game. It really was. And games like that are hard to come by. But it is a flawed gem, and one which I think could have been polished into something truly memorable. As it is now, I doubt I will play it again, and I am a bit glad to be rid of it.