On Ico
I just posted a comment on a blog in regards to Ico, and thought I’d repost it here as background for the review of Shadow of the Colossus I’m planning to write (short version: Colossus is no Ico). You can find the article and discussion that spawned it here.
A friend sent me a link to this article while we were discussing Shadow of the Colossus, and I found the discussion interesting. I’m a little late joining the fray, but I felt compelled to add a few comments.
Ico, as a game, isn’t brilliant. The gameplay is simple, the camera control a bit finicky, and the puzzles merely a 3D update of the old Prince of Persia games. If you want a great game, there are probably better alternatives.
But, for me, Ico is the best video game experience I’ve ever had, because it is far more than a game. The game is merely what gives me something to do, but it’s the place and the characters that I’m there for. It’s that vast castle, and the subtle but constant change of the lighting, and the mists and haze . . . you can almost taste the salt from the wind. It’s the sound of the wind, sometimes whispering, sometimes howling, but ever-present. The sound of that place haunts me to this day. It’s the soundtrack that’s so subtle, and so other-worldly, that it just becomes part of the fabric of the dream. It’s Ico’s echoing, gentle call of “entwois” when he wants Yorda to catch up; it’s the soft tug on his arm as he pulls her along; it’s his desperation when he fights off the monsters with nothing more than a stick and his determination; his boundless energy as he climbs around the castle looking for a way for them to move forward; and his earnest concern for Yorda’s well being, told primarly in body language and gesture. I’ve read novels that were less emotionally resonant and involving.
I bought Ico on the strength of one television commercial I saw late at night. I never saw the commercial again, and it was months before I could afford to buy the PS2 I needed to play it. Yeah, I bought the PS2 in order to play Ico. And that was before I knew it was anything more than beautiful to look at. Quiet, thoughtful, beautiful things appeal to me, and Ico struck me as being just such a thing. I didn’t know the tenth of it.
I think the problem — the reason Ico “failed” financially — is that nobody in the marketing department knew what to do with it. It’s hard to sell new things, and Ico, at the time, was very new. It was a genre-bending amalgamation of video game and virtual reality and impressionist painting, all wrapped up in a simple, archetypical story of two kids abandoned by the world, and told in actions, instead of words. How do you sell that to an audience that is used to adrenaline-charged, reflex-demanding killfests? The answer, in hindsight, may be obvious: you don’t. You sell it to somebody else. Sony didn’t do that.
For my part, my life is better for having played Ico. It sits on a shelf with my favourite books and movies. It will always have a special place in my heart. If Sony never does anything right again, I’ll still always respect them for having had the courage to try something like Ico, and I very much hope that they — or someone else — will try something like it again. Perhaps it didn’t make bags of money. I hope that isn’t to become the only measure of success.