Though released during the later years of the Playstation 2’s lifespan, Shadow of the Colossus, like it’s predecessor Ico, was in many ways far ahead of its time. Within this beautiful, forbidden land, little lives aside from you, and Agro, your faithful horse. Lizards crawl between the rocks, hiding in the shadows and the nooks and crannies of the landscape; birds will take wing from the trees and launch themselves into the sky, fleeing your approach. But there are no other humans to be seen, and no quarry save for the colossal beasts of the earth themselves. The landscape is not plagued by people who exist solely to offer ambient dialogue, nor any who would ask for your help, giving you naught by a meagre reward in turn. You are alone. But you do not feel alone. Your horse is rarely more than a whistle away, and even during those few times Agro cannot reach you, there is the monstrous size of the beast you are hunting to contend with. You cannot help but notice you are one of few living creatures in this forbidden land, but you never feel as though the land is lacking for life. That is the triumph of Shadow of the Colossus: though its story is simple, it is told in such a complex manner that you never feel as if you are simply watching it pass you by. You can journey from place to place, playing the game for nothing more than the fights themselves, but you cannot possibly experience the entire game this way. In order to truly understand this game, you must see the world around as more than simply an obstacle in your path to the next colossus. You must see it as it is: a forbidden land, devoid of all but the purest, most natural forms of life, housing within it beasts of a forgotten lore than can grant you the power to restore life to your lost love. It is one of few games where the setting itself is more important than the characters that populate it, as the characters are so few, and the setting so vast.
As a player, there comes a realization when you finally become immersed in the world that this forbidden land sketches out for you: a realization that a story does not need to be told explicitly. Cinematics explaining every nuance and detail of the world are not needed: the hero’s motivation does not need to be sketched out in black and white. Circumstance, context, animation all of these can tell a story in a fluid and more immersive way than a cutscene ever could. You do not need to be pulled from the action, even temporarily, to grasp the full importance of what is happening around you. You can infer good and bad, right and wrong, positive and negative, simply by the way the game reacts to your presence. You do not need the tonal shift of a character’s vocals to understand that perhaps they are not telling you all that you should know: such a revelation can come simply from playing the game. You do not need future events foreshadowed to understand that something terrible is on the horizon: the reaction of the world to your character’s actions can warn you of this. Implicit storytelling is an art that, if done well, cannot be matched by the exposition of a game’s entire cast of characters.
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| Source: Video Games as Art |
But, alas, time does pass. Silver tarnishes, steel rusts, and once great structures can tumble and fall at the slightest gust of wind. Gaming has changed in the years since Shadow of the Colossus emerged. A good story is no longer the commodity it once was in videogamedom. It is now expected: the story of a game now gets attention only if it is revelatory in its execution, or dismal in its content. Implicit storytelling seems to no longer have a place in the heady action titles of today’s market: replaced instead by the rattling of gunfire, or the clash of steel-on-steel as swords meet. But then Shadow of the Colossus, alongside Ico, was re-mastered and re-released for the Playstation 3, and, initially, it was simple nostalgia that drove me to buy the collection: the memory of that first play-through, when each new colossus was awe-inspiring in its size, movement, and detail.
The game proved, however, that the old adage is false: sometimes, you really can go home again. Within less than an hour, I had forgotten the age of the game, forgotten I had played it before. I was immersed once again in this vast forbidden land, devoid of all life save the lizards crawling through the shadows, the grass of the valleys, the trees of the forest, the colossi themselves, and that lone man and his horse, desperate to bring his love back from the dead. I instantly forgot all that the newer generation of video games had taught me about presentation, and found myself, once again, creating the story from the giants, the subtext, and the landscape itself. There needed to be no firefight to sustain my interest, no epic sword battle to keep my attention. This world, in its forbidding beauty, was enough to keep my eyes locked.
Modern videogames may have set a bar that very few of the classics can come close to, save when played through the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. They are extremely well-versed in presentation and execution, unmatched when it comes to landscapes and urban centres. They can create a compelling hero, or an unquestionably wicked villain with a few well placed facial expressions, and well-written lines of dialogue. But for all their flash and charm, for all the work that goes into them to make them as good as they are, modern videogames have forgotten one thing: sometimes, a story doesn’t need to be told through dialogue and cinematic moments. Sometimes, silence and a simple gesture can say more than a thousand words ever could. That is something that Shadow of the Colossus understood, and that is why it still remains an unmatched title to this day. That is what gives me the belief that sometimes, you can go home again.
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