- Shadow of the Colossus, PS2, 2005
- Artwork for the game. SotC features a magnificent architecture.
Shadow of the Colossus was arguably the best 2005 game, judging by the quantity and diversity of awards it got, from the prestigious GDC Game of the Year title to the Special Rookie Awards (?) from Famitsu. As often with games of that caliber, pretty much everything has been said about their flawless execution, intricate story, audacious artistic direction and all of these things that journalists love. That’s why at gamethink, we’d like to cover different areas of the game that haven’t received as much attention: game consistency and how it deals with the notion of guilt.
Beyond consistency
Shadow of the Colossus is the prequel to Ico, which we’ve talked about in some detail in our consistency article. Ico was a textbook example of a focused, consistent game, as every game element, from visual design to gameplay, was adding value to what was the focus of the game. Here is the chart that summed it up:
As we said, consistent game design is the most efficient way to produce a game, as all of the resources put into the game development contribute to improve the most visible, the most exposed part of the game, its focus. You may think that Shadow of the Colossus used the same approach as Ico, but...
Not exactly.
In SotC, the game focus is apparently the fight with the colossi. The colossi are 16 huge opponents that the player must beat to revive the sleeping heroin. All have a weakness, like typical end-of-level bosses of traditional games. What is less traditional is their size: while some are just the size of your proverbial dragon, some are tens (or hundreds) of meters tall.
Typically, in action-adventure games, bosses are at the end of a "dungeon" of some kind. In Zelda, before battling a boss, the player will have many rooms to cross and many puzzles to solve before that final battle. No such thing in SotC. The player knows where their next target is and just have to travel to them. There is no key, no puzzle, no mechanism, maze or whatever. Just the tiny hero and his gigantic opponents.
- Slaying a colossus
- The hero has to climb on the giant, get somehow on the top of his head, cling while the colossus tries to shake him off and strike...
With such gameplay choices, the densest game moments are the fights against the colossi, which the hero must climb or ride or jump on or swim along and observe and hit with their bow and strike with their sword. Each battle is quite intense, due to the clinging game mechanics.
- Wandering in the forest
- This is what most of the SotC gameplay looks like: travelling to your next destination.
But, surprisingly, this is not where the player will spend the most gameplay time. Instead, they will cruise the countryside for hours looking for their opponent, stopping now and again for the view, to explore some intricate ruins off the side of the road, or to hunt for the occasional white-tail lizard. On the way, they’ll try silly tricks with the horse Agro, like riding full speed while standing up on the saddle or hanging from one side. All of this has nothing to do with the game’s objective and doesn’t help beat the colossi in any way (hunting white-tail lizards does increase the player’s grip power but is strictly not necessary). The only mandatory part is to travel to the next colossi, for which the hero knows the general direction. Even on the second or third play, when the player doesn’t have to poke around to find colossi, just getting there takes at least ten minutes.
While the hero certainly needs to be agile enough to fight the colossi, there’s a good number of game moves that are here just to show off. Same for the immense game world, which has no other purpose than itself. Except for the arenas where the boss fights take place, the game world is not a level. Just settings. A stage.
By contrast to the fights, the travel part is the least dense: often, the hero just follows a direction and press the button until he’s there.
Why this approach? It is definitely not an efficient one. Lots of resources are invested into features that all players will not enjoy, instead of adding contents to the essence of the game. Similarly, during development, more than 16 colossi had been created, and considering the complexity of their design, making an extra one is no simple feat - but only the 16 best have been kept in the game.
Fortunately, the game didn’t have to be efficient. After Ico became a legend among gaming connoisseurs, Ueda’s team probably had slightly more lattitude than a rookie studio. Besides, the final game is about the right length - a longer or harder game would have meant a smaller audience. Finally, all of the games features, from the intense battles to the more contemplative ones, is what gives it its unique identity. The atmosphere of the empty countryside reinforces the storyline, that of a hero that travelled to a lost land and faced a curse.
Shadow of the Colossus and guilt
In videogames in general, the player doesn’t question the morals of their players. There are mission objectives, the player fulfills them, end of the story. It might involve killing bad guys, but hey, they were criminals to begin with, right? See what I mean. If the game makes you to do it, then it’s probably right.
Personally, I’ve never been comfortable with that, especially with games that try to make a name for themselves by the sole means of transgression. Well, SotC uses a whole different approach.
- The sleeping beauty
- Is it really worth it?
At the beginning of the game, things are rather clear: the hero must defeat the 16 colossi to gain the power to revive the heroin. But when the hero finds the first colossus, it is he who must attack to get the giant’s attention. Who is the aggressor? Who is the monster? Who is the predator?
The line becomes less and less clear as the game progresses. Some colossi are peaceful until the player tries to kill them. Others are aggressive indeed, or maybe just defensive? In general, they behave like wild animals, and the player is the hunter. When a colossus dies, we see its huge body slamming down to the ground in a heart-breaking slow-mo animation. And with each death, the hero’s body looks more and more wretched, darker, torn. The player naturally comes to wonder, is this right? Am I doing the right thing?
That sense of guilt is instilled very subtly: by the animations of the colossi when the player finds them and when they die, and by the slow change of appearance of the hero. It is not explictly dictated by lenghty monologues or any such thing.
It’s interesting to raise that question in a game. First, it allows the game to go beyond the question of violence. SotC has been rated T by the ESRB - there are copious amounts of colossus blood. But a game that features blood and invites its player to doubt is certainly less disturbing than a game without blood, but where the player kills.
Second, the notion of guilt is naturally associated with video games. Ever since the media existed, playing has been seen as something not quite right (addictions, excessive behaviours...). That’s why this issue in the context of videogames gets a special resonnance.
Incarnating a guilty character, ultimately condemned by the justice of men, as opposed to a shiny hero fighting for a justice where the end justifies the means, is what gives SotC its true dimension.