yeses… huge posts posts.
I rather understand, and kinda see it in my choice of words. As I mentioned to Felix when he explained to me in a much… tighter way (uuuuh, feeling so kinky saying it). However I liked you way of explaining it a bit more, your verbose makes me more comfortable reading and replying, as Felix way feels more… non-friendly (not unfriendly, just more compact which I see as a norm for people who deal with code a lot, even if they are very active readers to separate monkey language from people’s language, and I still love you with a big chunk of the male love I have to give).
But it is rather unrealistic for a guy like me, who is not a child (for reasons of brain being a sponge), to change over night. I kinda understand the principle, and I always try to look if it would hurt me (don’t do to other what you wouldn’t like to be done at you - I think it is a rather nice rule of thumb). But… feeling it, specially when I’m getting a bit over excited (not mad, I was actually excited about discussing the subject in a mature way)… I pretty much lose most of my compass on “wording sensibility”.
Like I also mentioned to Felix, if I was being aggressive, I would go full verbose and say something very approximate to the description he wrote (I get very verbose when being aggressive, nervous, or excited, but very short on making a point much like a “check mate” on a friendly game of chess… but using logic).
But changing aspects of my personality, or details of it, to accommodate and easy conversations with others is not something I’m a stranger about. Done it and been doing it for many years (strange enough, the more I do… less friends I have, but I blame my own seclusion tended personality). And I don’t intent to stop any time soon (I would even like to start writing a thing or two for my own purposes that I want other to read and not bleed from their eyes).
Still, discussing it and reading about it probably is helping me much more than just going around the forum, read what people right, and try to guess and fail miserably (like I did on that instance right there).
That show must be really interesting, specially for member of 2 cultures that have so much in common on their historical origins. I have also heard about those “uncomfortable words” in german from various german people I met through my life, and specially in barcelona (I DO NOT know german, again languages are not my thing, it is actually pretty painful for me to learn them).
That is actually a subject that is mentioned by germany natives much more often than one would think. I always felt a bit of a sense of cultural lost when they mentioned, even with you (a tiny bit). That makes me a bit sad specially now that I live in central europe and understand how cultural heritage is hugely important. Even in people’s daily lives to a surprisingly moderate degree.
Still… languages are alive, and words live and die.
We’ve pretty much been doing it here tbh. I like to believe that we taken this change to discuss the concept of “wording sensibility on today’s infrawebs” or just “… today’s SB”.
It’s a rather low level (in terms of pure abstract philosophical thinking), and it is from my part a gross over-simplification of what a philosophical discussion is, but it is still there and it is usually done when discussing abstract concepts without turning into a flame war (I guess even small jabs are allowed… maybe… again humans relations -_-).
Which is the big reason why I simply don’t stop replying because… I’m rather excited about it.
Fun with it… sure. I think people overuse that term too much these days. I think that many times that’s just simplifying, or even wrongly naming, other forms of pleasure. Or just pleasure itself… as if it was wrong naming it that way. Probably is.
Specially in video games, reviewers can write a huge post on their feeling about the game, but then it comes to get out of an overly description of how you felt, and cornering the term, they end up saying “it’s fun”.
That usually throws me off from a video game. SERIOUSLY.
I want something else beyond just a childish feeling of fun.
But that would again theme for another topic, because how I deny the existence of good and evil (not good and bad which can be applied to physical things like… a table’s design), “reducing” those to “pleasure and pain for fools who can’t think for themselves, like religion” (not believe).
In that… train of thought =D… we can enter SofC.
I actually came to SB1 all mad and shouting when I finished SotC.
I got the same old stuff: “how can the main character be a good guy if he is willing to kill those amazing beautiful creatures”.
Since I played the game years after it came out (mid PS3 gen), and I purposely kept myself away from anything that was descriptive of the game, I guess I came out with a different opinion.
Just a small side step, I didn’t played ICO before I played SotC.
First thing the “killing” of the creatures. Were we?
Probably yes, but I didn’t see it that way when I was playing. Saw the colossi more like huge automatons that had pieces of “energy” that were sealing a god-like entity. Like… just because they have a face doesn’t mean they are alive, buildings can also have them.
Always thought it was a pretty big jump to assume that the entity, or the protagonist, were evil because the game was happening to save someone the protagonist obviously loved. Under that POV the he was destroying some pretty amazing… “constructions”. I consider the destruction of cultural marks not good. But far from how bad it is taking a life.
But that girl died. HER DEATH is where I was focused.
I can’t shake the feeling that she died “unfairly”. In a way that the protagonist couldn’t come to terms with, in any imaginable way. It always seemed to me that her death was for the protagonist something that should not happen.
Like… if she died from sickness, if she died slipping in the bathroom and hitting the head on a bidet, I do believe the game wouldn’t have existed. As far as my experience goes, people go through that kind of rejection over someone’s death, mostly when that person is killed (maybe I’m coloring it because my father was a detective since I was born, and I grew up hearing to him telling stories about his work to his friends over a glass of wine). If we established she was killed, then the question “by who” arises?
Leaving that for a moment, because the game is not known for giving away everything at every given time, I kill all the colossi and enter the final part of the game (I wasn’t mad till then).
Eventually “they” shows up.
I assumed, the incoming group were part of his people from his village/settlement/town. One of them in richer garments, and with authority to say what was good and evil.
That character immediately seemed to me as a religious leader, not exactly an exclusively political one, but probably both.
Now… when I see a rich-er guy calling things good and evil, it really triggers me.
Maybe it is because portugal is a pretty religious country. In a quick pass through, inquisition were their worst in iberic peninsula (NOT JUST SPAIN, I don’t even recognise spain under the context of multiple languages and territories of the peninsula), but smaller countries really had it hard in comparison with… lets say germany and poland who could actually overthrow rome in a week (military, and after getting there). One small example of this is how many more historical artefacts of paganism exists in the central europe area, compared to the southern countries. That system of believe was as wide spread in the south (not much proof of the contrary), but it was persecuted to the point of eliminating almost all proof of existence, because there was no fear of military consequence (or so goes what “they” say).
So immediately I thought:
“That guy (rich dude) did it… some sacrificial death of sorts. I would be as mad and as dedicated to right that wrong as this guy (protagonist) would. SPECIALLY over someone I love”.
Those actions could not only resurrect her, but definitely would break the taboo of the guilty. One stone, two birds.
Finally I arrive to the final part of the game… and the “evil” is released and absorbed by the main character.
I also can’t shake the feeling that on that exact point in the game… the creature we control is neither the entity nor the character completely (mind/soul fusion thingie). I guess that was reinforced in me by the fact that you can’t properly control the huge shadow beast. As if the main character was being emotional, strongly emotional, and wanted to kill the guilty for revenge (not a good thing, mind you). These strong human emotions were keeping the “evil”’s mind at bay, not giving it full control over the body. To my opinion, the entity just wanted to get out of there so the religious zealots couldn’t catch/seal it again.
Then the ending of the game happens, and the girl lives.
So… The “evil”… even after it’s objectives were completely destroyed, it still keeps it’s word.
The agreement was “destroy the colossi, and the girl will live” and not “make me free and the girl will live”.
Right there, on that point of the story, the main character no longer existed. The zealots were far away without any means to get in, and the Evil was sealed again. The Evil had nothing to gain from resurrecting the girl… yet he did.
Not lying goes a very, VERY, VERY, VERY long way in my book to like a person (jokes, mockingly lies, overall jerking around with lies is acceptable… but this was not the case). Some would say it is the base of trust.
If I couldn’t think of the entity as “evil” before, and pictured the religious/military men (I don’t think a patriarchal reference in here would be totally lost, even if not on purpose) as just a bunch of monkey who decide good and evil for their own purposes. From that point onward I simply couldn’t, till this day, believe in any other interpretation (slight deviations allowed) from the story.
The game had finished, the ending was out there. Then came those 15 minutes of madness around my rented room, in a house with 6 people living, at the center of barcelona, before I posted on SB1.
So that rich dude who thinks to have the authority to tell everyone else what is evil and good, what is wrong and right, killed the girl (BAD). He triggered such strong dedication, perseverance, and strength on a single individual (protag) motivated by love, that instead of going after him for revenge (rich dude, also his friends who were probably more than 16), went in the desperate quest of destroying 16 beautiful automatons, divine constructions (but killing creatures that are not fully sapient also fits here), to “solve the problem” of her death. I find this ability of focus on solving the problem, constructing over the destruction, very admirable and human.
In the end the protagonist is so beaten, so much “infected” that only pity and admiration comes out of me for his sacrifice for the task (hanging on edges is HARD on your… index left finger? maybe right).
In the end, those same dudes who say they know everything kill the protagonist. Maybe not his soul and body, but since I don’t believe in that, and they did destroyed his gathered knowledge and life experiences… to me is killing.
I cried.
I cried so much. I was mad at those bastards that in the end run away and were allowed to keep living and doing idiotic stuff like that.
I cried over the protagonist not deserving none of that fate prior to the game, and still being human enough not to pursue revenge (till they came again to bother him) but instead to react pursuing a way of “life”, and to restore it.
He sacrificed himself in every imaginable way (if you believe in soul, even that, but it makes harder for me to believing that “he” ended there, and those were the final moments of his life), and he couldn’t enjoy the company of his love… for even one second.
And that is pretty much how the game makes me SO MAD every time I play it, and how I can’t feel sorry and wooshie over the colossi “dying”. The human drama involving the main character (in my head) is far greater than an aesthetic reaction to scale, with a face.
Playing ICO afterwards didn’t changed my opinion at all, in fact reinforced it.
Shame is that everything I read from the authors after that, that didn’t went with my interpretation, I wasn’t able to properly digest.
Always felt like “they are saying what the public wants to hear because that’s their responsibility”. Specially because many of those interviews (if not the smashing majority) came after public opinions were formed.
The hype over “poor dead colossi” over the internet was too great for them to say anything else (imo).
BTW, @SUPERSONNICK, how the bleeding hell do you get to do those beautiful huge blank spaces on your posts?
I’ve been trying to get those for the longest of times and I am never able to do them >_<.
This approach provides a nice canvas to pinpoint plot-points provided by the game, the setting of the game can be nicely categorized … so maybe that’s why i like it so much?
…), and escaping while the sole path out of this barren landscape is closed off forever(?).