I have a really hard time picking favorites. I get really excited about lots of things, and sometimes I like things so much I can’t bear to tell any of them that they’re not my favorite. (I learned when I became a dad that this is not such a bad thing.)
For instance, I can’t tell you what my favorite album is. Several albums come to mind immediately: Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, Genesis’s Selling England by the Pound, Depeche Mode’s Violator, The Strawbs’ Grave New World, Supertramp’s Crisis? What Crisis? I encourage you to check out any and all of these, but the truth is the list could probably keep on going. For instance, I forgot Close to the Edge by Yes, and oh yeah, Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick… and so on.
The point is, I like all these albums so much I can’t pick a favorite. But when it comes to single-player videogames I do not have this problem in the least. I used to, up until I played Shadow of the Colossus on the PlayStation 2 about 16 years ago.
Much ink has been spilled about this game, and I’m certainly not the only one to hold it in such high regard. So rather than do a detailed review, I’m going to try to explain, from my own perspective, what it is about this game that makes it so astoundingly good.
(Note: I’ll avoid serious spoilers, but I encourage anyone and everyone reading: play this game yourself if you have any interest, and especially if you enjoy videogames at all. It would be best to play it before reading past the spoiler alert below.)
Riffing
The game should be put into its historical context in the world of videogames. The game’s creator Fumito Ueda called it his “riff on Zelda.” The Legend of Zelda is probably the most iconic and established fantasy adventure game series out there, and has been since the original game in the series came out in 1986.
Shadow of the Colossus, however, was released in 2005, and by that time the Zelda games—along with all the adventure games inspired by them—had become complex and byzantine, with 40+ hours of playtime, and 3D worlds full of characters, enemies, dungeons, items, spells, powerups, expansive inventories, and big bosses. Shadow’s “riff” on Zelda was to remove almost all of that and boil the thing down to the hero, the world, and the bosses, resulting in a very different kind of adventure.
Minimalism
Gone are the powerups, items, and anything resembling inventory. Your character, the Wanderer, starts the game with a horse, a sword, and a bow, and finishes the game with nothing more, materially speaking. This may not sound like a selling point to many, but to me the whole idea of adventure fizzles out as soon as I see the words “manage inventory.” On an adventure you pack light. You and your provisions are as nothing compared to the world that awaits you, and you don’t waste time scrolling through menus, quantities, or stats. You take what you need for your quest, and little else. This is not just the Wanderer’s approach within the story, but a key to the design philosophy of the entire game.
The story itself is minimalist as well. The Wanderer and his steed have ventured to a forbidden land, with the body of a woman he loves. The relationship is unexplained, but this love is the Wanderer’s sole motive force: he has heard that one can be resurrected in this land. He enters the temple, the only pathway into the forbidden land, and is told by Dormin, a mysterious voice from above, that he must slay all sixteen colossi in the land to achieve this. The Wanderer is willing to do anything and to pay any price to complete his errand. And apparently he has already stolen the mystical sword that can help him find and kill the colossi.
Meaning
This is all established beautifully at the outset, with more show than tell. As with any masterwork of literature, there is lots of room for imagination, interpretation, and wonder when it comes to the story and its meaning. Themes of sacrifice, faith, and commitment are powerfully presented, but never in a way that is overwrought or preachy. Both the themes and the scope of the adventure are biblical, in every sense of that term. Dormin, for instance, is simply an inversion of the name Nimrod, a menacing and mysterious character—a “mighty hunter before the Lord” who might even be a giant—from the book of Genesis, and the temple in the center of the forbidden land looks an awful lot like a recreation of the Tower of Babel. I could write a whole separate entry on these connections, but I think it best to leave them in the mists of mystery.
Speaking of mists, the game was remade in 2018 for the PlayStation 4, with updated visuals that look quite good. But it somehow doesn’t capture the ethereal world of the original release, which remains the definitive version of the game as far as I’m concerned. The PS2’s technical limitations led to the liberal use of fog so the game didn’t have to render everything in the distance clearly, and this, in combination with the excessive bloom lighting, lent a heavenly aura and mystery to the game world. The remake does not have the otherworldly feel of the original, although I hear it may be customizable. I’m sticking with the original release.
Epic
It's not a long game, but it is a big one. My son Miles recently played through the game in around 12 hours, and loved it just as much as I loved watching him play through it. He’s played his fair share of videogames, and in his words, it was “the most epic game ever.”
Epic indeed. For one thing, the world itself is immense, especially by the videogame standards of 2005. And its openness, seamlessness (no load times at all), and even its emptiness all accentuate the sense of scale. But just as important are the colossi you must do battle with, which in general are jaw-droppingly large and majestic. And the responsive orchestral music, which only kicks in once a colossus is discovered, adds yet another dimension of epic to the experience.
Pacing
The game is paced brilliantly, as it alternates between the monumental heart-thumping life-or-death battles of will and wits versus mountain-sized foes on the one hand, and calm, quiet horse rides to explore the land and find the next colossus on the other. The calms before each storm make the game flow perfectly, and are just as engaging as the battles, for many reasons: the stark beauty and mystery of the landscape as you traverse it, the discovery of new areas, the towers you can climb for spectacular views, the thoughtful and cinematic placement of the camera as your horse Agro gallops across the terrain.
Another reason is the simple mechanic of using the hum and glow of your sword to direct the way to your next victim. This makes finding the next beast easier, but not too easy, as mountains and lakes will often get in the way of the most direct route. Finding the next colossus is often a kind of exploratory puzzle in itself.
But the true puzzles are the battles themselves. Each is unique, with its own themes. Sometimes you have to overcome the raw fear of letting the colossus rush you in order to catch hold of it. Sometimes you must use the environment to your advantage. Sometimes you need to use the colossus’ own attributes against it. There are sixteen unique puzzle-bosses that get more complex as you go, and the learning curve is perfectly calibrated. But most of all is the sheer spectacle of it. As my son put it, epic.
Freedom
The game’s design is linear and straightforward, but nonetheless it gives you a sense of immense freedom. Many adventure games do this, but with Shadow there is a hitch. At any point in the game, you are free to journey anywhere in the beautiful, desolate world, but you will find virtually nothing to do except to locate and slay the next colossus. You can’t skip to one down the line, because only the next colossus in the sequence will show up. At any given point in this vast world, there really is only you and your next enemy. You can explore all you like, but time doesn’t really seem to pass, and there is just one thing—one immense thing—waiting for you.
So you start to realize this freedom you feel is an illusion. Playing the role of the Wanderer, it sinks in that you can do nothing but what he would do next—to go and slay the next colossus that Dormin commands him to slay. (Dormin also will offer hints if you’re struggling to overcome a colossus, which is helpful but also is a clever way of leading the player to suspect Dormin’s own motives.) You can put off the next battle, but you will have to get through it if you want to finish the game.
Shadow
And—spoiler alert—here’s the twist: at a certain point, you start to wish you didn’t have to finish the game. This is not because the game is boring or unenjoyable in any way. You know the next colossus will be an engaging puzzle and an epic and satisfying battle. No, it’s because you start to think, maybe I’m not playing the hero here. Yes, the Wanderer’s motives are unambiguously noble—he is willing to risk everything for the one he loves. But the colossi are majestic and spectacular creatures, and when you fell each one, it hurts to watch it slump to the ground dead. This feeling only seems to grow with each colossus, and the more you enjoy the battle, the worse you feel for the colossus. After all, many of these beasts aren’t even aggressive in the least to the Wanderer, and those that are hostile are merely defending themselves from a lethal hunter.
This is right at the heart of what makes this game so special: it presents you with nothing to do but a long sequence of acts that you will come to look on as morally questionable, and at each one you will feel guiltier than the last. But you are not merely watching the Wanderer do these acts. No, you are him. It is you who is doing these acts.
This increasing sense of moral decay felt by the player is nicely accented by subtle changes to the Wanderer as you progress through the game. His strength and vitality noticeably increase, but at the same time his face and body gradually become ragged, emaciated, scarred. At the end of each battle, a black essence –the shadow—streams from the colossus into the Wanderer’s body, and these seem to be the consequences.
In the game’s opening, Dormin warns the Wanderer that he will pay a high price for all of this, but our undaunted hero simply says “It doesn’t matter.” The Wanderer’s strong will is established right up front, and it is so strong that you, the player, are forced to follow it through to the end. Just as the Wanderer must follow Dormin’s will, you must follow the Wanderer’s.
Control
However, the iron will and unshakable commitment of the Wanderer is best shown not in the story cinematics, but in the central control mechanic of the game: holding on and not letting go. Just as he clings tirelessly to the hope of resurrection for the woman he loves, in the battle against each and every colossus, he has to secure his grip and hold on for dear life. Each colossus has fur, hair, or moss that the Wanderer must grab onto in order to plunge his sword into its hide. As the hero attempts to climb it, the colossus will typically thrash about, often so wildly that it seems superhuman that the Wanderer is able to hold on with one hand.
But hold on he does, but only as long as both he and the player are able. The best part of this is how it is implemented in the control scheme. You hold down the R1 button with your right index finger for long stretches in these battles, literally clamping your grip onto the controller just as if it were hope itself, and if somehow your grip slips off, so does the Wanderer’s. Not only is Wander holding on just as tight as he can, but so are you. The controls for stabbing your sword into the colossus are similarly visceral, immersive, and darkly satisfying.
If you read reviews of the game from the time of its original release, the one complaint that comes up regularly is about the controls. But I think they are executed perfectly. The grip and stab that serves as the climax to each battle is perfectly implemented in the control scheme. But many reviewers thought the controls were too imprecise and clumsy, with some buttons laid out in counterintuitive places.
There is some truth to this, but there is also reason for it: the Wanderer is not made for this. The look of him swinging the sword is quite clumsy, he often seems to trip and stumble while running over relatively easy terrain, and he falls down frequently. This is not a precise action game because the Wanderer is not an action hero who is trained in combat, but just a young man with an absolute commitment to his quest, and no limits to his courage and derring-do. He can do anything, but he won’t do it well. This sets his character apart from the usual hypercompetent heroes of most adventure games, and gives both the character and the game an unusual charm.
Because of the ingrained expectation of getting to play a badass hero, many players complained about the Wanderer’s clumsy animations. Many were also frustrated with the controls of the horse, Agro. “Epona from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time controlled better than this a decade ago,” they would say. “Why doesn’t Agro just reliably do what I tell him to do?” But this was intentional. Agro is his own character, and a very important one at that, with his own will and desires. The player only controls the rider, and the horse, of course, has a mind of his own.
Progress
Despite the Wanderer’s courage and commitment, you are still left with the questionable ethics of his (your) actions. An adventure that started out as a noble quest gradually transforms into a story of power and corruption. By the time you reach the final colossus, the player must sacrifice virtually everything to complete the quest. Interestingly, the last few colossi are not only more intelligent and menacing, but are in settings that increasingly resemble civilization. The final colossus could even be described as industrial.
It's worth noting at this point that there is a resonance with the story of industrialization here, and not just because toward the end of the game the Wanderer looks as though he just got off his shift at an oil derrick. The colossi are not flesh-and-blood creatures, but mystical beings of stone. And every time the Wanderer buries his blade into a colossus, it spews forth a black inky substance that strongly resembles crude oil. With his magical sword, the Wanderer is freeing the black, inky shadow that animates each colossus, but for his own purposes. Or perhaps for some higher power’s purposes. I’m reminded here of Paul Kingsnorth’s idea of the Machine of industrialism as a god with a will of its own. I think Shadow of the Colossus offers its own vision of this.
Unity
Video game reviews have a convention of quantifying a game’s quality by offering not just a score out of 10, but several subscores that go into this from different dimensions of the game: visuals, sound, story, replay value, fun factor, variety, innovation, etc. Well, don’t worry: on that quantified basis, Shadow of the Colossus lays down a fistful of aces. But that’s not what makes it great.
In the debate over whether videogames can be art, Shadow of the Colossus was the first definitive blow struck against the naysayers. This game is not merely a vehicle for artistic visuals or music, or an artful story, although it has all of these. The game itself is a work of art. The central reason is because it couldn’t tell its story through any other medium. If you made this game into a movie, for instance, the essence of it really wouldn’t translate through. Only as a game, where the player takes the Wanderer’s actions, hangs on when he hangs on, stabs when he stabs, feels the pull of his will, and the guilt of his conscience, can this story be fully told.
The fact that it is a game is essential to its story; the two cannot be divided. It is this unity of design that is the hallmark of this masterpiece. Everything about the game—including its very gameness—works toward the themes it relentlessly pursues. Commitment and holding on. Sacrifice and letting go. The slow transformation of one’s character as a result of one’s habitual actions. Shadow of the Colossus puts this difficult question to videogames, as only a videogame itself can.
I’ll close with a quote from my favorite review of the game (which I managed to find again fifteen years later):
In a video game, if there’s a creature, you blast it and don’t waste a thought on its mom or girlfriend.
Shadow of the Colossus demands that you not only think about it but endure the agonizing last moments of frightened and dying things. And it cruelly rubs salt into the wound by forcing you to commit the murders. There is no “other way” in Colossus, there are no other solutions to the problem, other than turning the game off.
It is not an indictment of game violence. Its meaning is broader than that. Shadow of the Colossus reminds us that violence has consequences that ripple out well beyond the initial act. As Dormin warns at the beginning of the game, employing death as currency to purchase life can mean a very high price indeed.