The story is somewhat cryptic and the game, structured by a series of boss battles, is much harder to solve. There’s a lot to figure out as you play and even when you put the controller down for the last time some there are things left unexplained. It was designed and released in 2005 by Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido and despite being now five years old, the look of the game is one of the initial appealing aspects: the hazy colours, motion blurring as well as the frightening enormity of colossi themselves. Here, the PS2’s graphical power is used to perfection. The map is vast with plenty of space to explore and gladly loose yourself in. Some parts are bleached in bright sun, others drenched in fog and everywhere remnants of a lost civilisation dot the countryside. It’s a game that allows your imagination to wander as much as the hero and, as such, can be played again and again.
Ueda and Kaido’s first game Ico, released in 2001, set the tone for Shadow of the Collosus. The white robed girl you to take by the hand and lead through the game is very much like the bond that the nameless wanderer of Shadow has with his horse Agro. He is brought to life by superb animation and a sweet personality which entices you into treating him respectfully. The feel of riding him is very unique. He’s not just any mode of transport after all. Occasionally, he’ll nip off for a drink or wander about but whenever you whistle for him he’ll come galloping at full pace ready to help.
Aside from loneliness, a melancholy sense of helplessness and inevitability shrouds the game. After each colossus is grounded, falling sadly and slowly to earth, neon black-green tendrils leap out of its body slicing whip-crack through the air to strike our hero down. The first time this happens it’s a real shock. I mean, what game kills you off after completing an important task? And even versed in the knowledge of your reoccurring fate, knowing full well you cannot escape it; you still try, running with all your might and desperately shouting for Agro to come to your aid. So here we have a moral: Death is and always will be, no matter what. But our will to survive is inherent. Our hero’s lot of repeated self-sacrifice for love is what every epic quest is made of. Rarely does anything so hauntingly affecting and poignant appear in a videogame.
The trick is to make the player actually care what happens. It sounds simple but so many games lull you into a mindless pattern in their attempt to keep you focused on the cool graphics and on playing it for as long as possible. Generally, their characters are nothing more than pixel rendered representations of movie stereotypes and you’re not expected to feel any sympathy or association with them. In Shadow, the hero is human, a bit crap like all of us, an everyman. He has no ass kicking super powers, no sharp wit or masculine soaked style. All he has is a battered sword and bow, a faithful companion in his horse and tremendous courage for love’s sake. His tasks seem utterly impossible, so daunting you earnestly want him to succeed.
Another trick is to cut out needless chit chat and dialogue which serves no purpose other than to keep you abreast of the plot. Shadow ignores this giving you the credit of working out what’s going on for yourself. The sounds of nature are the dominant sounds: the lonely cries of the eagles flying over head, the worried panic of the horse when the dark figure of a colossus looms above, the sad song of the wind on the open plains. In fact the game is very pro nature, much like many Miyazaki films. It verges on pantheistic and suggests a link to Celtic mythology, particularly in the hero’s relationship with his horse. The godlike voice that introduces the tasks for our hero speaks in riddle translated from a strange concocted language. The musical score, which only appears in cut scenes and during battles, is beautifully well composed. After a little while, I found solace in putting it on mute and adopting my own soundtrack. Bands that already contain a visual landscape like Sigur Rós, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky accompany the game play perfectly. For me, Shadow was always a good way of getting into unusual music. All-nighters were made for this kind of thing.
In the end, once every giant is slain, the dark powers ever present throughout the game envelop him and turn him into a ghostly black monster which the player can control, smashing all around him. A tragic twist? Not exactly because he is altered again, into a horned baby (oh yes) and carried by his awakened love to the top of the gigantic temple, to an idyllic secret garden. It is then that you realise that this baby will grow to be the protagonist of Ico, and that Shadow of the Colossus is actually a prequel.
Frankly, it laughs in the face of anyone who doesn’t think videogames have any artistic value or merit. Compared to the latest contrived Hollywood blockbuster, tacky reality TV show, even smug and pretentious ‘art’ films and literary adaptations; in achievement and imagination, Shadows of the Colossus is a God damn masterpiece. I’m convinced that if game designers were to take its unusual experimentations further we could see a rise of far-out gaming. It proves that the medium has the ability and scope to tackle Big Themes, to become a serious art form with sublime and lasting experiences.
There has been speculation of an eventual film based on the game and it will be interesting to see where this could take its two creators. It will bring Shadow to a wider audience for sure but it has no hope in replicating the immersive feel of the game. The player’s involvement in the dramatic events, the memorable and wonderful escapism that Shadow of the Colossus grants – basically everything I’ve been talking about, is something that only videogames can give you. Please, please, please… I want all videogames to be this daring and this good.
(© Copyright 2010 Brendan Morgan)
