SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS (****) (abdnm #11)
a review of
shadow of the colossus
a videogame by sony computer entertainment japan
published by sony computer entertainment japan
released in 2005 for the sony playstation 2 computer entertainment system
text by ario barzan
score: 
(out of four)
selected as #11 on the action button manifesto: a list of the 25 best games of all-time
This one was inevitable, wasn’t it? Here’s where everyone who plucked eyebrow hairs each time the game was championed with copious ellipses can move on to tearing hair out of their heads, and where those who tirelessly campaigned for the game as True Art can pump their fists and add however many digits to their internet-arguments-won counter. And where the people who don’t fall into those categories can say, “I don’t fall into those categories.” Well, whatever. Shadow of the Colossus came out and did what it did. I’m not going to classify it as “feel-good” or “snappy” or (oh god) “crunchy.” Going in initially, I had, like anyone, preconceptions. There are sixteen colossi, who are the heart of the game’s challenge. Thus: “Dude, this’ll be pretty brisk.” Shadow of the Colossus can be over quickly. You can finish it through whatever breaks you have in a day. It can also be long. Contrary to my expectations, I had a hell of a time pressing onward, and was hassled by friends, who came in to gawk at the game’s colossi, to get on with it when I hadn’t advanced in a week. “I’ll get to it,” I waved – not because Shadow of the Colossus is a shambling mess, but because it is emotionally draining. Playing it can feel like standing out under the night sky and being hit by that icy awareness of inevitability. That’s when we go back in and turn up the music and television, right?
This is a game about killing giants. These so-called colossi inhabit a sun-blasted, harsh land. Some people call the colossi bosses, though that’s kind of incorrect; that would imply that there are small-time enemies, and there are none in Shadow of the Colossus’ world – just birds, tortoises, fish, and salamanders. You can kill most of the animals, if you’re so inclined. If you attack the salamanders with glowing tails, you can build up the endurance of your grip meter. The colossi themselves aren’t really enemies, despite whatever aggressiveness they exhibit. They’re more like neutral extensions of the land. You could call them the reincarnation of the sleepy nature spirits in Japanese legends. Director Fumito Ueda calls them “inverted Zelda dungeons,” in the sense that they are both dungeons and dungeon masters combined into externalized, event-sized stages. Each has a different way of being approached, and each has a different set of weak spots.
Ueda is a rare type of guy in the industry. His games are oddly fragile things, their inner workings distilled to a minimal, humming framework. Ueda says that Shadow of the Colossus, as a whole, is his “riff on Zelda.” Allegedly, when he and his team were planning the game, they faced a choice between a riff on Zelda and a riff on Dragon Quest. So they went with the former. It’s then interesting, and logical, that this game resembles the first Zelda so much, which remains, shall we say, the lightest entry in the series. Shadow of the Colossus gives you a sword and bow with a quiver, and that’s that. You never learn any new sword techniques, never get spells to cast, never are given a grappling hook. As a game, as a machine, as a formula, it’s startlingly simple. What you see is what you get. And though Shadow of the Colossus is an extension of Ueda’s established aesthetic, there’s a resemblance between its world and Zelda’s: the same barrenness, the same wind-worn cliffs, a similar dreamy ambiance.
What would a riff on Dragon Quest have been like? It might’ve not appeared much differently than Shadow of the Colossus, really. Both Dragon Quest and Zelda give you a boy with a sword, villages and castles, deserts, oceans, and fields. Both have dungeons with bosses. Perhaps Ueda would’ve taken the title “Dragon Quest” literally, and made it be about one man going after one dragon, a tweak of the medieval tale. Perhaps: in a boat, on a body of water, are a young man and a girl. The young man is wearing emblematic clothing. A copper helmet shows his face, and a sword is by his side. The girl is thin, cleanly robed. Beads encircle her temple. She puts a hand on the back of the young man, who is rowing. He nods, and the scene goes dark. A sequence of candle-lit murals follows, going faster as its repeats its theme several times. A boy being born to a graying king and queen. The boy growing into a young adult, being paired with a girl whom he is to marry, taking up a sword as his parents look on. The girl and him crossing a sea and a wilderness, holding hands, fighting off wild animals, staring up the side of a mountain on top of which a large shadow resides, and – yes. Then, the two returning to the kingdom bearing the single, large claw of an animal. Both are wed, both age, both have a child as king and queen. Etcetera. The montage ends and returns to the present, where the boat nudges the edge of a beach. The young man and girl get out. He stops and leans down, scooping up a handful of sand. The girl looks at him, and then glares ahead. The camera lifts itself up to show undulating hills, thick forests, sharp geologic formations, a sky exploding in a brilliant haze. It might’ve been a tale of tradition. Seeking out a dragon and protecting a girl, proving one’s worth as heir to the throne. Let your head play out the final, monolithic battle. Could the boy end up losing the girl?
Anyway: the colossi are this game’s stars, and why wouldn’t they be? They’re what made everyone sit up and pay attention. They can instill a humility similar to (I can only imagine) what you’d feel swimming alongside a blue whale. Not all of the colossi are enormous, but most are. Dealing with the rarer, smaller ones can be like placing yourself in the shoes of a cowboy in a rodeo. Tackling the true giants is a series of relativistic revelations. When you come upon them, they are immediately overwhelming. Then you climb a calve – a thigh – their back – their shoulders – and then you are on top of their head, hanging onto a tuft of hair or protrusion. The ground is way down there, and birds are circling around nearby. How far you’ve come, how huge the animal you’re on is, hits you with a chill. And it’s time to do your job: jab your sword into whatever weak points are available, shown as glowing emblems. Blood sprays out like a fountain of pent up oil, and the colossus groans and tries to shake you off. In these moments, the game comes across as disturbingly violent. Let’s make the distinction that this is not the “Kill Bill” of its format. It is, in general, passive, introspective and intimate. By way of this, whatever jolts of conflict Shadow of the Colossus has are magnified. When the blood sprays out, it’s almost obscene, and each stab holds a twist. There’s the sense of accomplishment, of reward. We’ve mounted the thing, and it was a hell of a struggle. At the same time, there’s a guilty regret in killing such a relic.
Shadow of the Colossus is also a game about a boy, Wander, and a horse, Agro. In the beginning, there’s a figure wrapped in cloth, held close to the boy’s chest as, on his horse, he enters a body of rock – down a staircase, down a spiraling path, into an airy chamber. The boy gets off and lays the figure on a pedestal, removing the cloth to show a black-haired girl. As far as we can tell, she’s dead. A voice speaks from above, then, identifying itself as Dormin, wondering why the boy is there. Dialogue follows and, in the end, a deal of sorts is made: if the boy will seek out and kill the sixteen colossi roaming the land, the girl might be revived. Nothing is promised for sure, anyway, and from the start there’s an air of uncertainty. There are shadowy figures that rise from the stone floor and spook the horse. Dormin’s voice is the voice of a foreign, unloving deity who requires sacrifice. The land itself has been deemed forbidden. The boy isn’t very good at wielding his sword; maybe he’s stolen it.
Inside this temple, Wander is told by Dormin that he can use his sword to focus the sunlight on each colossi’s location. And, upon return to the temple after killing a colossus, small clues are given to where the next colossus resides. Both of these feel unnecessary. For how much the game subtracts to its benefit, it could lose some extra pounds. Coming upon a colossus without the knowledge of its to-be presence, without the spotlight deal, would be all the more dramatic. The hints are less abrasive, though having vague tips warbled from above if we’ve not mounted a colossus in time (?) is just asking to be picked on. Really – let me alone, please. At least, it’d be nice to have the choice of switching the hints off. To go further, the game’s presentation is iconic enough to be free of translated text in the cutscenes.
Since I’ve touched on the topic: there’s a rumor going around that Fumito Ueda developed Shadow of the Colossus while playing tons of Burnout 3, and that he just might have once screamed that it would be the BEST GAME EVER if they ditched all the fucking menus. Yes, I’m addressing Shadow of the Colossus’ HUD. Mostly the sword/bow/hand icon in the lower right corner of the screen, but also the grip indicator and health bar. The latter are unneeded; the former could only be the doing of someone with an evil heart. The weapon icon is the pointlessness of the “You got a keyyy~” message in The Legend of Zelda. I switch to the bow and Wander takes the bow out, and that’s all there should be. That hand icon feels like a bad joke, and it sure is ugly. Almost as superfluous are the grip meter and health bar. Instead of having a circle that decreases in size, the audio-visual clues that already exist could’ve sufficed. And what if the red bar were replaced by Wander nursing his body if he were standing still or crouching? His movements might be slower. He might gasp in haggard breaths. Whatever first-time oddness these decisions might bring would be outweighed in heaps down the line. If it’s to something’s benefit, let’s go for indicators, rather than intruders. Let’s be a little more…clean.
In any case, so it goes. The colossi are out there, and you’re in the temple. You can walk or ride your horse. The game, like many, exists by pattern, though Shadow of the Colossus is pretty literal. Search, kill, return; search, kill, return; et cetera. And every time a colossus is felled, dark tendrils snake out of its body. There’s a pause before all of them shoot into Wander’s body with an ugly crunch. Wander gasps, falls on the ground, and awakens in the Temple after it all goes back. There is this “agenda” to the progression, sure. Still, the game’s ever-present, timeless-tale moodiness justifies that pattern well enough. Think: those sleepy bedtime stories you were told as a kid, repeating an idea that evolved as it kept happening. And, really, the colossi serve as all the diversity the repetition needs.
As the game progresses, so does the discomfort. A vague sickness begins to infiltrate Wander’s body. One of my friends pointed it out midway: “Your guy’s skin is getting darker.” “What’re you talking about?” I asked. He got up and pointed at the screen. “It’s smoky. Look.” I realized he was right and sort of shuddered. The Most Unsettling of Things happens: we start to doubt ourselves and our purpose for moving forward. Strange exhibitions of conscience emerge. You’re free to kill the animals, as always – and, hey, how about increasing your grip’s strength? – yet there’s the realization that with each colossus you kill, a fragment of the world’s identity is lost. You’re exterminating a race and emptying the land. As this sank in, I had the thought of preservation. So I began to wander.
Here is where Shadow of the Colossus gets pretty damn smart. Though its world is believable and self-contained, there’s nothing to really do within it besides jump on rocks, climb trees, and swim in water. It’s not a Video Game World, exactly – it’s Shadow of the Colossus’ world, and it serves to exist. In this regard, it’s more of an accomplishment than the bustling locales of Grand Theft Auto. While those games have the sincerest intention of being fully realized universes, they end up throwing so much stuff out of their bags that we begin to wonder why we can do this but not that. The more a game allows, the more restrictions we see, and Shadow of the Colossus’ setting performs all it needs to by consistently keeping us within its limits, and giving greater weight to our decision. It doesn’t matter that there’s no Treasure, no Optional Bosses, no Side Quests. That’s the point. It’s not going to provide in that sense; its uneventful grandeur is the only alternative to the action. The colossi subconsciously begin calling out for our return. They are both our reason for reprieve and, shall we say, the game’s (innocent) meat. There’s also the boy, whose goal we can latch onto. We don’t need to have real-life experience to associate; we’re already opposed to loved ones dying. In theory, the player could just stop, like they could in any other game, and leave their status in limbo, forever delaying what must be done. But this is, at best, a fruitless attempt at self-retribution. You realize this. You choose to return to killing.
And the game never really needs to “prove” any of its emotional strata to you. It’s enough that the colossi and their world are haunting, worthy of being respected for their magnitude and heart. It’s enough that there are crumbling bodies of architecture here and there. Coming upon them, there’s the notion of an unrepeatable past. They stir up the sort of dismay and curiosity we have when we see the ruins of Persepolis. It’s enough that how Wander jumps, how he climbs, how he aims with the bow, how he rides the horse, is all simply mortal.
If Secret of Evermore is brought up, there’s the inevitable “ugh this game would be good if only it had two players” sentiment. Far be it from me to say that these people don’t “get it,” but they can go play Secret of Mana if they’re looking for the co-op juice. Secret of Evermore has a dog and a boy. It’s the one constant relationship throughout. From this, a one-on-one, wordless dialogue grows between the two. Man and his best friend, separated now and again by events, but eventually reunited with charming satisfaction. Absence makes the heart grow fonder – the lack of an actual friend by your side – your in-game buddy being a dog – it’s so clear, isn’t it? In the way that Shadow of the Colossus’ quietness sharpens its violence (the presence of something is heightened by the otherwise lack of it), your reliance on your horse, Agro, is nurtured by its exclusivity. Part of the reason why Ueda didn’t include active secondary characters is probably because the player’s link to their animal wouldn’t be as strong. It got to the point where, late in the game, Something Terrible happened to Agro, and I wanted to stop right then and there. Mind, this would be pointless if Agro were a shrill tag-along. Instead, he’s just a good-looking, devoted horse. He’ll come if you call his name, or if you begin moving away from him. He’ll guide you safely along cliffs and hills if you stop controlling.
For all this, the game wrestles with communication now and then. Most of the colossi work by way of glinting suggestions and having you follow a strong gut feeling. As the second one walks, glowing spots are visible under its hooves: there’s the “I wonder if…”, the shooting of an arrow at a spot, and then the “A-ha” as the colossus falls over. And yet, some of the colossi are so vague and oddly inaccessible that it feels like you might need to “break” the game’s establishments in order to advance. This is never the case, but the notion is hard to shake when it wells up. The fifteenth colossus took me more than an hour. I’m not saying that the same colossus will take everyone as long. I am saying that it’s inevitable that everyone will have a number of colossus fights click into place, and then extensively mull over just how on earth to approach the next. These few colossi don’t really operate, so much as they have the player fumble around until an accident unearths a shard of the process.
Either way, maybe that fifteenth colossus instilled enough bitterness to lend me a bit more, er, violent confidence for the sixteenth, which is just as out to kill you as you are it. Bucking the trend of colossi who are defending their territory, it becomes the exception as a figure whose reason for being is to oppose you(*). The sixteenth colossus can’t move, it doesn’t inhabit, and it doesn’t really live. It’s vaguely industrial, more of a machine. The opening to the fight with it recalls trench warfare: hiding behind walls as the colossus fires long-range attacks, ducking into pits, going through tunnels as the world above shakes, and re-emerging closer than before. It’s the spilling forth of the gross uneasiness that’s been building up. The sky is dark with clouds, there is lightning and rain, you are at the edge of the world, and Wander’s skin is thick with the tendrils of each dead giant. Shadow of the Colossus doesn’t end with another bittersweet struggle of proportions. Maybe Ueda wanted to suggest something – maybe, that Wander’s influence has somehow birthed this malicious building. Things are changing, being corrupted. In the end, it’s the game and its violence that has won, and we’ve chosen to let it win by maintaining it.
Coupled with what it tries, and the precious few – emphasis on precious – things it does, Shadow of the Colossus is close to an air-thin miracle. That I’ve had no real need to play it again is, contrary to reviewers’ compartmentalized, qualifying elements that include the oh-so-nebulous Replay Value, not a problem. It’s content in being what it is, and when it’s done, it’s gone through what it’s needed to. And, really, let’s try to avoid perverting its ideals. It is not the thing that has magically crossed the finish line marked ART (I still can’t figure out why that’s even an issue). It is not there to validate anyone’s agenda. At its strongest and sharpest, Shadow of the Colossus is exhausting, audacious, an inhalation of melancholic freshness that escapes in a curling chill. It might be worth noting that Fumito Ueda’s favorite game is Out of This World. The parallels between it and Shadow of the Colossus share aren’t hard to see – the unity and control in the worlds and mechanics, the confidence they have in Standing for Something, how they are, in spite of being one-time experiences, very cathartic one-time experiences. If Out of This World became “Out of This World: The Videogame” with Blizzard’s Blackthorne, then Shadow of the Colossus is, in a way, the progressive inverse of Shigeru Miyamoto’s The Legend of Zelda video game. Absolutely, it is, and always will be, a game, though there’s much to be admired about how it doesn’t take a concept and explode it, but funnels it, condenses it, turns it into a self-sufficient skeleton that resonates, nonetheless. It’s something that carves a hollow in the gut and places a weight on the shoulders. And right next to this unease is a crystallized thrill. It’ll be interesting to see what Mr. Ueda, and the future, come up with next.
August 15th, 2008 at 2134
Whooaaa, you touch on pretty much everything here, the good and the bad. A real tight review. In addition to things you mention, I am sort of bothered by the behavior the the Colossi. I wish they were less aggressive. I wish you had to actively pick fights with them. I wish they had more personality. As it stands, I can merely see that I’m supposed to feel kind of bad when they die, but I usually don’t. They are too much obstacle, not enough creature.
Though, I mean, we’re speaking in degrees here. They are certainly huge and kind of majestic and vaguely organic and beautiful and challenging and all of those things. I just wish they were a little more in tune with the game’s ideals. Allowing the player to stumble upon them naturally would certainly help this, though I understand the idea of wanting to provide focus both for the character and the player.
Really though, the environments might deserve a little more exposition than you give them. They’re fucking amazing. Gorgeous and properly scoped, yes, but they also manage to be what I’ve complained the colossi really aren’t. They’re not gamey. They’re perfectly natural. And, lo, this doesn’t make them boring to run around in either! It’s refreshing to play through a setting comfortable enough in its design to not require the player’s existence, much as it is refreshing to note Ueda’s confidence in the capabilities of he and his team to provide an environment doesn’t intimidate the player without Not Intimidating The Player being its central tenant. They allow the game’s flow to breathe. We get to think about how this inevitable march of destruction we’re embarking on really is draining (absolutely the correct word, by the way). The game makes great use of downtime. Though, yes, eliminating the glowing sword, or at least paring it down, would make even greater use.
Really, if a few of these nagging flaws were fixed–and it wouldn’t be that hard–this game would approach perfection, for what it seeks to do. It’d be the kind of game that simply melts in your hands and runs all over the floor once a year as you get the urge to come back. Instead, it’s merely gorgeous and haunting.
August 16th, 2008 at 839
I was actually going to complain about this game and even go so far as to say it doesn’t deserve to be on the list, but then I had to go to work. My reason would have been that I found the game far too easy, even on hard mode. Defeating each colossus never really felt like a triumph in the same way defeating a Megaman or Metroid boss does, and not simply for all the subtle guilt-trippy reasons you described. It always seemed like as soon as you got your first tiny foothold on the monster (which was usually right away) that victory was inevitable, it was just a case of getting up there and getting on with the stabbing. The thrill of wondering whether you might actually win or not was absent. If you took the game at face value, as a game made up of boss fights (I never took this view, mind), this would be a terrible thing.
Then I remembered everything else you described. I DID feel like a real cunt after each kill. The entire objective of the game WAS always constantly being questioned in the back of my mind. I realised that maybe if you felt like a total badass champion after killing each giant that entire effect might be ruined, and immediately felt better about it being on the list.
Then, like a double-take, this thought entered my mind: am I really okay with satisfying gameplay being sacrificed for atmosphere and storytelling?
The only answer to that question that I can think of is “maybe that’s why it’s not number 1″.
August 16th, 2008 at 1843
am i the only one that liked ico more?
August 16th, 2008 at 2047
Colossus is interesting to me because the gameplay, well, it sucks, and yet I still think it’s a fantastic thing. What this “thing” is, I’m not sure. In a way, it feels like a love letter to Zelda, but instead of setting out to create a game just like Zelda (such as the overrated Okami), it sets out to capture what made us love Zelda in the first place and strip it of all the unnecessary fat. Somewhere along the line someone realized that, incredibly, what made Zelda Zelda wasn’t the tight controls, the weapon upgrades, the comprehensive dungeon/puzzle designs. It was all the little things surrounding these highly polished, video gamey elements. And so Colossus, ironically, becomes all about the little things. It’s about riding your horse to the top of a hill, looking out towards the horizon and thinking, “how nice”. It’s about killing a massive, beautiful beast and thinking, “how sad”. There is no melodrama, no straining attempts to be “epic”. This isn’t a damn Final Fantasy game. You’re not going to burst into tears when your true love is murdered in front of you. In fact, she’s already dead. And that’s the feeling Colossus gives me. It’s not trying to make you shed tears. Instead, it captures those moments after you’ve finished crying, when you feel a gentle mournful quiet and strangely, you’re at peace.
August 17th, 2008 at 1245
Although, Colossus does that that tearjerker of a scene just before the final battle. They lay it on a little thick, there!
As for it not being ‘epic’, I don’t know that I agree with you there. There is a scene where you are riding on the wing of a giant eagle over a huge lake! But yeah, the tone of the game is quite subdued compared to what we’re used to.
Somes: I think Ico is more solid in execution. The plot points hit you a little harder and the ending is tighter, from a narrative point of view. But then, it’s a far more tried-and-tested story they’re telling. Shadow of the Colossus is a lot more ambitious, I think. For the most part, it doesn’t spoon-feed the narrative to you- instead, it relies on you to provide the emotional content and the main character’s inner world. It’s a very bold and sophisticated thing to try and do. That it’s actually very successful at it is the astonishing thing.
August 18th, 2008 at 030
harveyjames: Yeah, that dramatic moment at the end was my least favorite part of the game (in terms of story). It just didn’t quite fit, and was the most obvious/easy way to try to affect the player’s emotions. It becomes even sillier in the game’s ending. Also, I agree there are some breathtaking, exciting moments with the Colossi, but they’re presented in such an understated, matter of fact way that it never reaches overblown operatic levels – I love how the Colossi just slowly lumber into view. While a lesser game might have presented us with increasingly elaborate and over the top cut scenes, Shadow of the Colossus is confident enough to let the sheer scale and beauty of its creatures speak for themselves.
August 18th, 2008 at 101
One other thing the game did was encase me with doubt. After that Something Terrible happened before the final fight, I thought of all the death that occurred then and before, in the name of returning this nameless, beautiful girl, who I have no knowledge of, back to life, only so she can die again later. And those years she would live, Wander might not even be able to spend with her. I looked at Wander’s ragged body as I began my trek up the winding edifice, and wondered if this would indeed end in self-destruction. He continues throughout the game in an almost single-minded obsession, and I’m controlling him, and at that point the game left me wondering why I should carry on at all, but not out of the usual frustration or sense of futility I get from most games.
Though, when I laid eyes on that final colossus, and he fired upon me with those artillery shell-like blasts, revenge was almost certainly on my mind.
The irony of the situation was the reason that everything that happened up to that point was because of me, yet I centered all of my misgivings on that towering, mechanical bastard. He was going down, and I would enjoy it. And, once the deed was done, and Wander lay motionless on the ground, I felt like I should have just turned back. But, I could not; I had to try to save a beautiful girl.
August 18th, 2008 at 1153
“I’ll get to it,” I waved – not because Shadow of the Colossus is a shambling mess, but because it is emotionally draining. Playing it can feel like standing out under the night sky and being hit by that icy awareness of inevitability. That’s when we go back in and turn up the music and television, right?”"
This is exactly how I feel about SoTC. I bought it a few months ago and every month I’ll get tired of games like Ratchet & Clank or Viewtiful Joe – fun, well-put together games without much soul. And i’ll play SoTC and so far i’m on the 3rd boss. I liked it. I appreciate it. The world feels like an old Lord Dunsany fantasy novel – one of those ‘the world is moving on. the magic has died. The Elves have grown tired’ sort of thing’ and it has the same immensity, the same fantastic melencholy
But its draining. Its draining like Psychonauts or Killer7 is draining and so i can only play for a bit at a time
It reminds me a bit of the start of Metroid Prime, only the world is much more natural
Games need to do more with scale. There are bosses in Ratchet & Clank that are bigger then the Colussi but they don’t bring the same fear. There needs to be more of the sublime, that sense of terrible terrible scale
SoTC is a bit of Lovecraft. Imagine making a monster game thats truly scary using this idea. Pure immensity
The sublime – the old Romantic idea – dosen’t get explored enough in gaming. Arctic wastes. A man, the last of his race, stands at the edge of a cliff. SOTC is a textbook exploration of ideas that existed at the start of Gothic fiction
August 18th, 2008 at 1924
harveyjames:
“I think Ico is more solid in execution. The plot points hit you a little harder and the ending is tighter, from a narrative point of view. But then, it’s a far more tried-and-tested story they’re telling. Shadow of the Colossus is a lot more ambitious, I think. For the most part, it doesn’t spoon-feed the narrative to you- instead, it relies on you to provide the emotional content and the main character’s inner world. It’s a very bold and sophisticated thing to try and do. That it’s actually very successful at it is the astonishing thing.”
But ICO and SotC are telling the same story!
I suppose I just felt ICO to have a much more solid sense of mystery and wonder. SotC often seemed to be too “videogamey.” It was like ICO took videogame conventions and tried to make them disappear into a world, whereas SotC took a world and layered some conventions on top of it. They stood out, I think.
August 19th, 2008 at 336
Kinto: I think the colossi being “not difficult” is part of the point. By which I mean, sometimes it’s pretty damn difficult to actually kill the colossi; I think what you are referring to is that you’re never really in danger of dying yourself (another reason why the health bar is superfluous – why not just make Wander invincible short of certain things that kill him outright?). You can try over and over again to kill each colossus, even though each one is, presumably, doing its level best at self-preservation.
But I think that’s part of the point. These colossi are old lions, melancholy and alone. Some are spiteful, some are wistful, and some are outraged, though none of them are what they used to be. The whole climbing/gripping system makes each kill feel like real work, but the work doesn’t feel particularly dangerous. It reinforces the theme of the game: that you absolutely can go through with this, but do you want to?
August 19th, 2008 at 916
What’s great about SOTC is its one of the few videogames that tells a story that you can’t tell in any other medium. Its been beaten to death in every review but the fact that you, the player, are committing all the actions and taking on all the guilt gives the game its power. Tim Schaffer (i think) wrote an essay about the mechanics – how you have to press one button to raise your sword and press it again to deliver the killing stroke. The player’s agency is so clear.
I was having one of those ‘are games art?’ discussions with a friend who dosen’t know gaming but knows art. I explained SOTC to her, emphasizing the ‘guilt’ thing, and she just got it. Instantly
There was apparently an Adam Sandler movie that used this game as some sort of metaphor for 9/11 and the post-9/11 world. Has anybody seen it?
August 19th, 2008 at 1000
I never felt any guilt killing the colossi.
I mean its your job. Not sure where all the hesitance comes from. Obviously something isn’t quite right from the get go, but… I don’t know… “guilt” and “regret” just never crossed my mind.
August 19th, 2008 at 1035
That’d be pretty great if, instead of a life bar, you just have to deal with dying immediately if you get smooshed, fall from high enough, etc. I guess they’d have to make it harder to fall from a certain point, but it’d become a lot scarier if you know that, if you let go, that’s it.
August 19th, 2008 at 1646
Tlon: the movie is Reign Over Me, and the use of SotC isn’t so much a metaphor as the least embarassing videogame the director could put in a Hollywood movie about redemption and loss and shit. I guess there’s some toying about with the Toppling of Giants and Dealing with Guilt but it’s all pretty fast and loose.
August 19th, 2008 at 2339
Actually, I remember reading that the director was inspired to put the scenes with SotC in because it reminded him of how his father, a Vietnam vet, would watch Apocalypse Now over and over as a way of dealing with his bad memories. Haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on its effectiveness, but it was at least a thought out/genuine attempt to use a video game as a symbol. As an interesting side note, apparently a scene in the movie where Sandler is explaining the game to Don Cheadle was largely improvised, with Sandler actually teaching him how to play the game – maybe the only time in a movie where the actors aren’t just randomly pounding buttons pretending to play.
August 20th, 2008 at 121
I read somewhere that the game was originally going to be something old school like Space Invaders, and he was just going to be completely obsessed with it.
August 20th, 2008 at 520
They kept calling it “Shadows of the Colossus”, which was kind of annoying. Nice movie, though.
August 20th, 2008 at 931
“maybe the only time in a movie where the actors aren’t just randomly pounding buttons pretending to play.”
there’s also Shaun of the Dead, where the actors are actually playing Timesplitters 2, which is also really British. there’s a good use of some Genesis hockey game in Chasing Amy too
i read that they were originally going to do a ‘generic’ game but someone on the cast tipped them off to SOTC
i haven’t seen the movie but even if its not explored the basic thematics of ‘little guy takes down big thing’ is still there… though i guess that makes Wander a villian. which we’ve explored
if i ever make a Quirky Coming Of Age Comedy it will have to have Mario Kart and Goldeneye in it ’cause they were like my whole teenage life
August 20th, 2008 at 1554
Well yes, considering the movie is about post-9/11 psychological redemption and whatnot it’s appropriate that the game is about a small guy taking down these massive (building-sized?) colossi. Again, though, not much is done specifically with the metaphor.
I think we’d probably be better off keeping videogames out of movies if possible, if only because so many movies aspire to be videogames in toto.
August 20th, 2008 at 1714
I disagree. I think videogames are this generation’s art form and its going to be interesting to see how they filter into arts. The Modernist writers of the 20s started borrowing form and a bit of content from films and people are going to do the same with games. Besides stuff like naming bands after games and blatant referencing i suspect we’ll see things like videogame tropes creep into films. There’s a bit in Minority Report which is basically a platforming sequence
It wasn’t very good, come to think of it
But still… games are what we grew up with. If i’m making a movie for my peers and i want to show the main characters bonding as kids they will be playing Mario Kart and everybody will understand that
August 20th, 2008 at 2237
Jumping back in here to say I also prefer Ico. It’s the purer, smoother game. Not as daring as Shadow, but just as breathtaking
August 21st, 2008 at 106
I feel the game has been partially spoiled for me by reading about it before playing it. It’s hard for me to feel guilt in a videogame when consciously aware and expectant, as at the actual moment of Colossus death my mind triggers into thoughts related to “do I feel guilty?”.
My favourite moment in the game was idly riding, thinking about the emptiness of the land, and seeing vague building remains in the distance. It was, despite ruined landscapes being ten-a-penny, a genuine slap in the face of sharp, pinpointed atmosphere.
Still haven’t completed the game. The fourteenth’s ability to slowly kill without escape was unneccessary and frustrating, even if he was otherwise easy. By that point the Collosi were mostly starting to feel like just videogame challenges anyway, with the steering lake boat being a particular low. Too abstract from the earlier sublime feeling of clambering on giants.
August 21st, 2008 at 213
Somes… You are not alone in your preference to Ico.
Great review. I think the first moment I thought twice about killing the creatures was in-fact the very first Colossi. It’s the eyes, round, cute doting eyes. Like a puppy. The first Colossi actually looks like a rather large teddy bear.
No HUD indeed would have made for a better experience. A lot of the time having a grip meter made killing the creatures quite a bit easier than it should have been.
I do hope Ueda or someone equally capable goes on to create another giant-beast scaling game at some point as though SOTC is good I did think there should have been more effort made by the creatures to peel you off them. I’m sure this was only due to hardware constraints.
August 21st, 2008 at 926
I love the atmosphere so much. The best thing I can compare it to is the cover of old fantasy novels that promise these fantastic landscapes that are always vaguly post-apocolyptic. This lets you play through them…
September 3rd, 2008 at 1531
I no longer feel guilt about killing them…
November 10th, 2009 at 1028
[...] Action Button Dot Net http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=409 – view page – cached released in 2005 for the sony playstation 2 computer entertainment system text by ario barzan score: (out of four) selected as #11 on the action button manifesto: a list of the 25 best games of… Read morereleased in 2005 for the sony playstation 2 computer entertainment system text by ario barzan score: (out of four) selected as #11 on the action button manifesto: a list of the 25 best games of all-time Read less [...]
March 29th, 2010 at 159
One of the most epic games out there. I want them to make 16 more colossi, rearrange the land and change nothing else. Re-release it as a sequel and I’ll buy it every time.
Never could figure out if you can do anything during the game’s ending.