3rd strike:
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Regarding the strong feelings you had when finishing this game:
I would say that’s as justified as any interpretation of the game.
I agree that Dormin has kept his word and fulfilled his end of the bargain, whereas the sage&his guards “only” turn up to kill the hero, sealing away the resurrected Dormin, leaving the girl deliberately behind (come to think of it, they probably didn’t realize she was resurrected, since she woke up after they left iirc? … no/yes? … guess it’s time to add another +1 to my playthrough-count
…), and escaping while the sole path out of this barren landscape is closed off forever(?).
The fact that you then felt such strong feelings about this game underlines that, imho, this game worked as least as good for you as for anyone else that enjoyed it in a way that seems to resemble more the “official™” interpretation… in the end, I’d see that also as some kind of catharsis, i.e. meaning that you could experience such pure emotions in a “controlled” environment - i assume that not many games managed to make you feel as intensely as SotC did? -
regarding the public perception of poor dead colossi vs. those bastards which were allowed to run:
i touched upon it shortly in the upper post, since each colossus does show some traits that are reflected in their behavior, we are led to believe/interpret them being “alive” - kind of in the same way as we don’t look at pets in terms of a state machine with finite transitions, but more of a … mysterious(?) being that “has its own mind”, and with the owners being happy when/if the pet behaves in a way they expect. Thus I would say that the game did its job if people think about their actions, instead of just putting another x into a check-box on their way through a theme park ride … and I also was quite surprised about the amount of discussion back then whether it is OK to kill the colossi or not (iirc, one of the toupses stopped playing the game since he couldn’t justify killing them?), since I wouldn’t have expected that players would question their actions so critically - otoh, that’s what I liked about the game even back then, namely that you had to commit to doing what was asked of you, you couldn’t just kill one of them by accident, you had to work for it, i.e. really want to do it. OK … before I go off and do more unrelated rambling about things in this game, time to tying up some loose ends here, in a kind of tl;dr-way:
OK then, this game … different motives, clashing interests, a conflict that is resolved in a (tragic) way with one side inevitably forced to lose out … and, as I’ve now learned, leaving enough room for a totally different interpretation. Just writing about it makes me wanna play it again!
re: I’ll touch upon the other aspects (our hero, modern times etc.) in the “real” sotc-topic, i.e. here
and we can then let this topic … train … run its course.