Action, adventure and a Spiritual Journey
Shadow Of The Colossus (Team Ico 2005)
About ten years ago, I was lucky enough to ârandomlyâ pick up Shadow Of The Colossus from my local electronics store, where I had just before bought a Playstation 2 in addition to my first console of choice (- in hindsight - a regretful choice) from that generation, the Xbox.
I had never played Ico, the spiritual predecessor to this marvel, and was not hyped for â nor even informed about - SOTC.
When I first played it, it simply BLEW MY MIND.
I am not carelessly using this phrase (â in all caps), but I really couldn't quite believe what I was seeing (and hearing and doing), while playing this beautiful game. I was amazed.
I would describe Shadow Of The Colossus as âAWESOMEâ, if the expression hadn't been overused and corrupted almost worse then the term âfriendâ has been by the likes of (heavy) Facebook users. So let me go with awe-inspiring instead, and finally elaborate on that AWE.
I have neither been - nor will I ever be (again) â as emotionally charged playing any other digital game.
This game was my video game equivalent of first teenage love. I will always think fondly of it. I will always be harsh on other games, for not making me feel like it did.
This game was my âOcarina of Timeâ.
I get dreamy and nostalgic even a decade later when I watch youtube videos, of people still searching for mysteries and secret areas, with unbreakable hope, even though the game has long been opened up and dissected by hackers.
Also Shadow Of The Colossus might cause bipolar disorder, because I have never before been so happy and sad at the same time - as I was while wandering its minimalistic, solitary and aesthetically touchingly beautiful landscapes.
The long breaks between the 16 boss battles â there are no enemies other than the 16 colossi - makes them feel even more epic, as they already are.
It was all in the contrast - and a decade later I am still quite disappointed by the little impact this exceptional use of contrast seemed to have had on AAA game developers' (or producers') understanding of the phenomenon.
SOTC is one of the rare games that can rightfully be called Action-Adventure:
There is a sense of exploration, while wandering the vast landscapes between the action-packed battles, with the colossi that mostly truely feel colossal.
Level Design â Boss Design (Puzzles)
But it is also a puzzle game. The bosses are increasingly tricky to beat. Each one is designed like a level: You climb the colossi and have to find their weak spots and the right way to reach them, in order to take them out.
This can take quite some time, if you try to figure it out on your own without using guides.
The colossi are uniquely designed. They have an ancient feel and also really are (visually) part of the world they inhabit. They almost look like mountains themselves, when they are resting, which some of them do, when you encounter them.
Especially in my teens when the game first came out I had a huge problem identifying with the protagonists of most games.
That was not only the case in single player games. I was almost offended by the male character models of World of Warcraft. They looked as ridiculous as the cast of Epic's Gears of War series did later. Those walking mountains of muscles. Colossi themselves.
I on the other hand was a skinny guy, with long hair and always went for the female characters when I had the option, as I deemed them more fit to the image I had of myself.
Furthermore the type of hero that fascinated me in games and in stories in general, was never the Parsifal-like, flawless, mighty being, chosen by the gods for greatness. Those powerful creatures wouldnât understand the likelihood â not even the possibility of failure...
I always preferred Spiderman to Superman.
âMy heroesâ would always face seemingly impossible ordeals â they would be in over their head. They would be fragile. They would be flawed like any human, but their heroic deeds through their unlikelihood would be that much more meaningful, because they would be overcoming their own limitations.
Starting as ordinary humans they would against all odds successfully deal with their own or the whole universes' misfortunes and ordeals and return from their journey transformed.
This hero's journey was always a spiritual one to me. As it is deeply rooted in western mentality: To achieve greatness a certain level of suffering seemed almost desirable or logical to me.
The hero who had no difficulty achieving his or her goals, was no hero to me. His exploits were worthless.
As Joseph Campbell says in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book I was very fond of at that time: â[...] where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves, where we had to thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence;â
This âslaying of oneselfâ I understood as overcoming whatever it is that holds the hero back, and thus figuratively being reborn.
Shadow Of The Colossus was a metaphor for this very phenomenon to me.
Especially the ending I saw a metaphor for what Campbell was writing about.
Minimal Narrative â Mystery/Interpretation
SOTC left a lot of its plot open to interpretation. The minimalistic design philosophy of the game was also evident in the story telling.
The ending itself, was not executed greatly in my opinion, as the designers let you âplayâ (control) some small portions, without the possibility to change the outcome, which made me feel cheated.
But the rest of the story is vague enough to have people come up with their unique stories. The protagonists relationship or his motivations are left to the players own interpretation.
And to be fair, also the ending is â even thought you cannot affect it â very open to speculation about what actually happened.
The Hunter and the Hunted
What I found curious about the game was that the colossi were as mentioned before (mostly) truly colossal, but also had unique design and even different âpersonalitiesâ.
Some were hostile, some where peaceful until the player attacked them, which made the act of slaying them very questionable.
The game is beautiful but also violent. You see colossi experience pain and fear, as you tiny human weaken and kill them one after another.
After a colossus dies, strange black seemingly poisonous energy breaks out of inside them, seeking you in form of tentacles, no matter how far you mange to run and penetrating your body in a violent fashion, causing you to lose consciousness and be mysteriously brought back to the central temple, for a little chit-chat with some god and/or demon, that promised your love-interest(?)'s resurrection in exchange for the defeat of the 16 colossi, who seem to be connected with it being banished and trapped in this mysterious forbidden land.
The slaying of colossi, besides being not exactly an easy task seemed to be physically and emotionally hard on the protagonist and also ethically questionable, which I found very interesting and had not seen in any game before.
The main character actually subtly changes (for the worse) with every beaten colossus.
In addition to that every âkillâ had meaning and emotional attachment, because you did not âmurderâ anything on your way to the boss fights. (Unike in other games, like the COD series, where you kill thousands, remorselessly - or without even thinking about it.)
There was no multiplayer mode, but it is still one of my favorite âmultiplayer gamesâ of all time, because I played it together with my little brother and my cousin, in a way that sadly became quite rare these days.
Back in my day âLet's playsâ were watched offline together and people actually had their turn to play. We tried our luck in the time trial mode to unlock and collect special items. When we were good enough to unlock all the items we tried to beat each othersâ best times.
We went together to explore the landscape and hunt geckos with white tails, or climb up the wall of the main temple, to reach the secret garden that can be seen in the gameâs ending sequence.
Besides being insanely fun it was one of the games that helped me connect to my brother and my cousin. So now I can (and will) officially blame the alleged lack of exceptionally good games, for the gradual decay of my family bounds.
When I first played SOTC it was also a time when I was very enthusiastic about video games, because they gave me the feeling of achievement and certainty. Unlike in real life, in games everything asked of you was quite possible and doable, even though it might seem hard in the context of the narrative. In life I was pretty lost in this time of teenage angst, which was maybe one of the reasons why the before mentioned fragility of the protagonist was immensely appealing to me, in addition to the fact that I am a sucker for the âeveryday heroâ like Isaac Clarke in Dead Space (1 - In part 3 the protagonist had gone from misfortunate Engineer, trapped in a nightmare to full-blown generic âRamboâ, and thus lost my sympathy).Â
I mentioned that the ending was quite odd and open to interpretation, but I didnât mentioned the quite detailed interpretation I had of what the metaphor of the (quite spiritual) hero journey meant to me in the case of SOTC:Â
The way I saw it, the gameâs narrative was âdealing with loss and/or rejection (which to me was synonym for loss)â and acceptance: The woman Wander brings to the forbidden land, which to me was a manifestation of a psychological space, was dead to him (as in - for whatever reason - not available, for what he wanted from her). âHer soul was lostâ (From his point of view.) The colossi he had to slay to retrieve her soul, were not what he had thought at the start of this learning process. Love can not be âwonâ that way. Eventually the colossi (like dragons and other inner demons) to be overcome, would turn out to be representations of a struggle for acceptance of a fact and Wander is transformed and reborn into a state that makes it obvious that their âtogethernessâ would never be possible in the sense he had once wished for. The nameless woman is left in the forbidden land with a version of Wander she cannot âbe withâ in a romantic way. To me this was a metaphor for something that became apparent to the hero: The fact that he would be the one locking her up in the Forbidden Land, which exists within him. The alternative is letting go.Â