maxle
4001
Various posts on Qt3. No, I don’t know which ones. No I don’t know where they are. I more or less got the same impression those two did, though I would have phrased it differently; slowly find out you’re an asshole and killing critters that probably don’t deserve to die. Something like that.
That’s the impression the game (intentionally, IMO) starts you out with. It is not, in fact, what is happening.
Thank you for the clarification, MattKeil. Anaxagoras and maxle are correct about how one could come to the conclusion I did. I suppose I am ignorant if the only alternative is direct experience, but since the initial decision is always whether to spend time and energy on something, third-hand deductions are often the best I’ve got. I’m fortunate that when I go against those, I often find my initial conclusion correct.
Actually Shimarenda, I did play the game and came away with much the same impressions. Or let’s say that you were destroying large edifices/creatures that were for the most part unaggressive and sometimes fairly docile, at least until you start plunging your sword into their conveniently-glowing vulnerable spots. But I’m sure I missed out on some plot points, as I said I did play the game over a fairly long period of time.
Pogue, did you finish the game?
Yeah I did, but I don’t remember too much about it. Honestly, I wasn’t looking too deeply into the story. I noticed the main character’s deterioration and the, well, am I spoiling too much to mention the horns? But I don’t remember any details about the nature of the creatures, they just seemed like they existed. Except the last one, I remember he was a bastard.
But I liked SotC. Didn’t love it, and mainly that’s because I found the Colossus battles to be my least favorite part of the game – mainly because, like BJB, I don’t care for boss battles too much. But I really liked the world Team ICO put together and liked galloping around finding hidden-away caves and amazing vistas to look at. I liked that the protagonist was called Wander, that encapsulated the best parts of the game for my money.
SPOILERS FOR A FIVE YEAR OLD GAME
The colossi are either fragments of the demon Dormin or the semi-living results of Dormin’s fragments being trapped inside pieces of the landscape and/or ruins of the Forbidden Land. As such, it’s not like you’re wiping out the last buffalo or something. They could be seen as manifestations of evil (or whatever you want to consider Dormin…SotC is very much about points of view).
Wanky Trivia: Dormin is “Nimrod” backwards. Nimrod was a biblical king who killed a bull with his bare hands and wore its horns as a crown. After Nimrod’s death, he was cut into pieces and spread out across the land. If you take the Forbidden Land as an otherworldly representation of Babylon, Wander is forsaking the monotheistic tribes and instead appeals to ancient polytheistic powers to resurrect Mono (the dead girl…name probably not a coincidence there, either). There’s a lot there if you want to dig into it. Essentially Wander is doing the wrong thing for (arguably) the right reasons, and it’s clear at the beginning of the game that he knows he won’t survive his quest. Dormin says, “The price will be high,” and Wander replies, “It doesn’t matter.” He’s trading not just his life but his entire being, body and soul, for Mono.
Yeah but even if it’s not a ‘path of murder and destruction’, isn’t it a selfish act? I’m not saying I don’t understand it but it’s putting the gamer into a morally shaky situation that I could see turning some people off. Not all obviously, given the popularity of GTA games, but still.
Drastic
4009
I don’t really know the fact (or most likely interpretation, which I agree with, yup) that the Colossi are “just” godfragment-animated stone gets away from the murder-pathing. Mythologically speaking, people are “just” clay that’s been breathed into, after all.
The final Colossus I didn’t feel any guilt over, though a lot of that was transference. By killing it, I was symbolically killing the camera. It gave me far more trouble on that sequence than it did against the colossi before it.
(Potential SPOILER warning, for what it’s worth.)
It’s been a long time since I played it, but the impression I remember having was that the colossi were vessels specifically meant to keep the fragments of Dormin contained and separated, which would make them ‘good’. But I can’t really remember anything in the game that specifically states that (there’s little enough dialogue as it is), and it may have just been my own speculation.
Wade42
4011
Here be spoilers; abandon all surprise ye who enter here.
I’ve finished the story, and gone back to do some of the time trials, and though it’s been a while, I got an impression of the story similar to Pogue’s. I’m still in the “I love this game” camp (the exploration and the bosses, but yeah, Lake guy and Last guy were bastards). Wander is willfully ignorant (well, not completely) of the consequenses to himself; he continues in a feat of single minded bone headed self destruction. Love makes you stupid. Yes, his actions are ultimately selfish, and the fact that you feel slightly dirty when you kill the colossi is just your conscience talking. IMO, that just means the game is working. :)
I think the interpretations we’re getting are not too different from each other, it’s just that our individual viewpoints cause us to focus harder on one aspect or another. But I think that the fact that the game lends itself to this kind of discourse is a good argument for its goodness.
Drastic
4012
Definitely. I’m certainly tempted to dust off my ps2 and fire it up again. Mostly, I’m renewing my hopes for the rumored ps3 reissue being more than rumors.
Murder’s got connotations that don’t really fit, it’s certainly not like you’re playing Postal with them. The problem is there really isn’t a charge that maps onto it. Defacement of a nature preserve combined with felony vandalism combined with killings of endangered species (the lizards, mostly. Grip-strength increasing geckos are rare!). Call it Cosmic-Degree Reckless Endangerment, maybe.
I see why you bring up GTA in this context, but my response would have to be: What does GTA have to do with it? GTA is not the first work of narrative to feature an unpleasant protagonist. Literature and film are filled with protagonists who range from flawed to downright repulsive, but that doesn’t make the work they appear in somehow not worth experiencing. Isn’t this mentality one of the abhorrent elements of the book banning phenomenon? Humbert Humbert is a reprehensible character, but most would not refuse to read Lolita as a result. And I don’t buy the “games make you be the character” argument because Lolita is a first-person narrative which forces you to identify with Humbert by its very nature and by the author’s design. I don’t want to turn this into another “games as art” wankfest, but at the same time, I don’t understand why this is something that is apparently okay to hold against a game.
If someone doesn’t want to be challenged on that level when they just want to jump some chasms and stab some monsters, okay, but it’s not a flaw of the game in question. I don’t have to always agree with what my character is doing in a game, at least not if the situation and narrative his/her actions are serving remain interesting to me. It could certainly be argued, and quite successfully, that you play what could be considered the “bad guy” in SotC. This is not a strike against the game in my book, and it’s actually rather depressing that people would refuse to play the game as a result. It’s just such a glib dismissal on such arbitrary grounds.
No, I’m with you on this one Matt, I’m just throwing out the devil’s advocate case. I would say that the fact that the game makes you empathize with the Colossi (or whatever the plural is) and feel guilt over destroying them is a strength of the game. But I can see the other side, there are those who do not want to be put in the position of forcing the killing stroke themselves.
Yes, the GTA games are a cartoonish extreme of the type of game we’re talking about, to the point that nobody except newscasters and policitians takes them seriously anymore. The subtlety at work in SotC is part of the uneasiness, that and its general mood. Anyway, not much more I can say about that. I liked what they were doing with the game, I just wish I had enjoyed the actual ‘game’ aspects more.
Wade42
4015
Colossodes
Some people will just not get anything out of SotC, and that’s ok. That doesn’t diminish the value of it to those of us that do.
Every dictionary of repute I know of says colossi or (if you must) colossuses.
And I have to say that while I did feel the pangs of guilt after killing the first few, there were a couple in there I was glad to kill the shit out of. Especially that small warthog-ish one you had to leap on and ride around like a bucking bronco. Hate that fucker.
EDIT: Nevermind. MattKeil, like myself, obviously didn’t click on Wade42s link. Carry on.
But Colossus IS from the Latin.
Wade42
4019
Lighten up, guv’nah. :p
In my defense… um, it was funny at the time.
Wade42
4020
