Shadow of the Colossus

This game is the golden standard of how to develop, encourage, and sustain an emotional attachment to the characters by the player. Ignoring the truly epic gameplay, ignoring the setting, ignoring the "what the hell is going on?" questions this game never answers, at the core of this game is a love story. It's not a mushy, candy-coated love story, nor is it a overtly sexual, exaggerated kind of love that a game like Mass Effect has in spades. The love story in Shadow of the Colossus is not that.

Here it is downplayed. It's low key. It's almost in the background at times, and yet, it's front and center all the time. Alfred Hitchcock was a genius, and his supposition that character actions trump everything, including dialogue, as the single best vehicle to communicate intentions and emotions of the characters, is evidence of his genius, and Shadow of the Colossus is evidence he was right.

For behold, "The Wanderer," and fittingly enough, the game fails to communicate even the name of its main character to the player, speaks very little during the game. His relationship with the girl is explained in this game's predecessor, Ico, but the grandest thing about this game is that you do not need to play the previous game to understand their relationship.

It's clear from the outset that this girl means something to "The Wanderer". There is the cold reply by "The Wanderer" of "It does not matter," when he is told he may die by trying to revive the girl, and there are subtle hints about the nature of the setting this game takes place in being "a forbidden land," hinting that "The Wanderer" is desperate to revive her, but their relationship is most explained in cutscenes.

Case and point, immediately after vanquishing the first colossus, "The Wanderer," after regaining consciousness in the temple, rises, merely glances himself once over, then hastily moves to examine this girl. He anxiously approaches her, clearly fearing for her own safety, even though he was off waging war against a being that could easily have killed or maimed him in a glancing blow. Again, it's low-key, but how effortlessly this game communicates such a pure, unadulterated form of love between these two without dialogue, and merely on actions alone is sublime. Communicating this with words does not do it justice. You truly have to play this game to understand how impressive it is.

everything from the gameplay to the story, to the music, to the mechanics, to the scenery, everything about this game is just incredible. I remember the first time I finished it I immediately started a new game again, and after that run, I did another one and another one, it's just that good of a game. And that's extremely impressive for a game that only has boss fights.

10/10

(written mar 4, 2018)

What a chilling sight the unfamiliar is. Foreignness is one of the sturdiest pillars of fear, the stepping stone of anxiety and intimidation, bubbling over into xenophobic hostility. The unknown is the invisible hand that guides all wars, the paradoxical motive for and deterrent of nuclear holocaust.

It would be wrong to call Shadow of the Colossus a horror game, despite the conceptual boogeyman it presents. but “unsettling” is the perfect word to describe director Fumito Ueda’s quasi-prequel of ICO. When taking control of Wander, a warrior(?) saving(??) a girl named Mono from the clutches of doom(???), the player becomes literally unable to settle into the landscape he treks. Half of the game is riding the horse, Agro, in a windy silence, letting the player think while reminding that their thoughts are all they have here. Only until Wander comes across a colossus, incomprehensible beasts born from the earth, does he find purpose, but little presence, within Ueda’s world. He leaves no mark except for the final stab in the colossal craniums; no more than a pesky insect with unrelenting venom.


When the player feels Shadow of the Colossus, they feel emptiness. Stairs and pillars are tripled in size. Feeling the pierce of a sword in mossy flesh is a rough and ugly experience. Everything about Shadow of the Colossus screams “you shouldn’t be here,” but the words fly past Wander and land on player’s ears. Riding horseback across chasms of dirt and scaling coats of colossus fur become one in the same action: a provincial rape far worse than any political pillage. This is Shadow of the Colossus‘ narrative, not meant to center around the player but to invade them. The game wouldn’t continue if not for the inky tendrils that pierce Wander’s heart.

Critics have debated the complicity players have in playing Shadow of the Colossus, but there seems to be little choice for player’s to agree or disagree with the game. I believe Shadow of the Colossus to be a story spoken through play, but spoken nonetheless. It’s a story meant to be felt around, get a sense of it’s scope, not for immersion but to read deeper into the tragedy. Even then, Shadow of the Colossus isn’t afraid to admit that, at the end of the day, it’s pretty damn cool to fight the colossi, and provides extra difficulty and time attack modes post-game; a dissonant design choice, sure, but that appreciation of design is something many games with this bleak of a tone opt out of.

Now for the meat on these once-ancient bones: Bluepoint does a remarkable job in this remake. There’s no question that this is the definitive version of Shadow of the Colossus, it looks and plays more beautifully than ever, but there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel something is lost in translation. I played the PS3 version to prepare for this remake, and I find myself almost missing the bleached muddiness, the emptiness left by a lack of rendering ability of the original. The remake adds meticulous detail to every inch of the world, but sometimes luscious scenery doesn’t quite seem to fit.

There’s much to be said about the preservation of game history, but I digress. What matters is that even when given a brand-new facelift, Shadow of the Colossus can still stand on it’s own monstrous legs as an epic tragedy told like no other.

Just end it, it's perfect EXTREMELY influencial game. Like i play it and just think about other games that SOFC influence. Incredible non word story, world characters design, music, gameplay ideas just everything. Thanks Mr Ueda!

It's perfect.
A incredible masterpiece and one of the reasons why videogames are also art.

Painful as the FPS rate can be, the original Shadow of the Colossus is still a better experience than the remake, which kinda misses the point of the game by adding dozens of meaningless collectibles. In this game, the various vistas of the Forbidden Island are their own reward. Galloping across the empty gameworld in search for the next Colossus not only provides a respite from the action, it also gives you the opportunity to reflect on your actions, the story, and the nature of the world. The scenery in the original is clearly demarcated between "interactable" and "non-interactable," while the remake is a (very pretty) mess of textures to get stuck in. And there's the lighting, which in the original can be quite harsh, but in the remake is uniformly overcast and dull. Anyway, I could also talk about how SotC is an achievement of atmosphere and makes for a very contemplative video game with a bunch of boss fights that range from okay to great, but I mostly wanted to take the opportunity to say: play the original.