TheMinxTail
2011-03-29, 05:56 PM
The ultimate point of the below ranting is that I don't think anyone can do Ico justice outside of video games, and I challenge someone to prove me wrong - and I won't take offence if my contention as to the impossibility of a good adaptation is proven patently misled.
So after playing Ico, I found a half-quote from the creators saying they tried to distance the game from all other games, likely with the intention of it being taken seriously compared to the traditional image of games being mindless arcade games at the time. For those of you not in the know, let me clue you in; a Japanese game from the early days of the PS2, Ico was a bleak, artsy puzzle platformer depicting a young boy and girl attempting to escape a labirenthine castle that seems to consciously hate them, all teh way badgered by strange monsters composed of shadow against whom their only defence was a stick. Most of the gameplay revolved singularly around the girl, Yorda with whom you share no common language; you weren't in any real danger of personal death in combat unless you fell a hundred feet down a pit, so the real challenge was defending Yorda, and although areas were fairly easy for you to traverse, the challenge was always finding a way to get her and her dainty, vulnerable frame from one side of the chasm-riddled room to another. So basically, almost the whole game was an escort mission with the additional total hour if not more being hung up on a simple puzzle because Yorda's AI was a tad too buggy for you to instinctively to rely on it AND YET it was good. The game was wonderfully minimalistic - pulling a few Silent Hill-like tricks to squeaze the most out of the processor; the camera was pretty far back, with threefold results of making the old graphics less noticable for our HD-priviledged eyes, it generally shows you what you need to see despite being fixed angle, and it contributes to the artistic statement of being trapped in an unfeeling world much bigger than oneself.
The story itself did a lot with so little - over the course of the course of the game which I could probably run through in 6 hours now, there's about 5 minutes of dialogue, TOPS. A simple, perhaps archetypical story, told in the compelling fashion of interaction - keeping cutscenes and a cinematic quality to a bare minimum throughout most of the story, only really using them for something taht would have been entirely non-interactive, or that needed to be up close to the characters faces to carry a tad more dramatic weight; it fully utilised the medium of gaming, it was considered art above many other games for the precise reason that, even if you liked the story in say, recent Final Fantasy games, it was hardly an interactive experience (and before FF fans get rabid, know that I levy this complaint against a lot of games, many that I myself adore) - for they are not utilising the major advantage of gaming that makes stories work in an at least more interesting fashion than another anime or a movie. It is the same reason that when someone who never sat down and contemplated the game for a good hour or so wouldn't be able to explain WHY they liked the game; it fully utilised what it meant to be a game, using a story precisely tailored for the interactivity of the players. To that effect, everything in the game demands it and rewards it, right down to the rumble function adding appropriate force feedback not only in combat but also when running around hand-in-hand with Yorda to add an extra basting of immersion. Don't interact or get stuck for a while, and even the almost-mute Yorda will start giving you some gibberish hint, pointing out a box or something. And there was at leats one very good moment that sticks out in my mind as being far better to have included even shortly in gameplay rather than making it all cutscene, though I feel if I even alluded to a single one of them beyond this you would be well within your rights to throttle me.
Video games may not be art in general, but some of them CERTAINLY are, and the medium has plenty of potential to expand the repetoire of similar emotional experiences - perhaps in the coming days that some gaming-cultural-analysists have predicted will finally kill the sequel-infested stagnation taht we currently face and force some innovation of creators. Until then, Ico has given us hope, and Ur-Example of the artsy, bleak puzzle-platyformers that are coming into some popularity now (A Shadow's Tale, Limbo, half teh independant market, etc.) and of the many games that people can point to as a real example of how one properly wields the medium to tell an emotionally involving story instead of trying to be "cinematic". After all, too many games these days just use their gameplay to pad out teh time between completely disjointed fragments of story told entirely through cutscenes - instead, Ico tells its story 99% through gameplay, embracing the medium to its full potential.
Which brings me down to a great old sulk when I hear tell there is to be an Ico graphic novel. I just don't see it. I'm sorry people, I dont think it can be done. Oh, I'm sure it will be a just fine stand-alone work, but it won't measure up, it CAN'T measure up. I do not say this lightly - by removing the interactivity, you are left with an extremely minimalistic plot and two lead characters who don't technically share any dialogue. Having some experience with writing, I can tell you that's an incredulous handicap, and WHILE the visuals may capture some of Ico's environment and what have you, the vital soul of interactivity is removed. While getting stuck for a half hour one one damned room could be annoying, it was not so much as other games where you were just spraying bullets on everything between youself and your next cutscene; the story WAS teh gameplay, it WAS the being pathetically lost for some time - I daresay it was intended that the sometimes confusing mechanics and camera confuse your porgress for some time. And that feeling of isolation, of solitude barely held back by your partner, there's no way to bring that across nearly as WELL in a non-interactive medium. And part of me hopes that such is not the case and that the adaptation is ultimately something worthy of the game, but I just doubt it.
I was going to rant one something I found on Wikipedia - a proposal for a Shadow fo the Colossus movie, but since my disc broke just after the eighth boss, I don't feel in too good a position for a full blown rant. Just, see above and then add about 2000% more indignation because adapting it to film is an even worse idea. What the **** can one fill the dead air with, Wander conversing with his goddamned horse like Daniel Radcliffe?
Anyway, there was a point here, and it is this; does anyone think that there is a way to tell these stories in a non-interactive medium, and how would you do it? I've mulled it over repeatedly, and I can't figure out a way - certainly not a good one.
So after playing Ico, I found a half-quote from the creators saying they tried to distance the game from all other games, likely with the intention of it being taken seriously compared to the traditional image of games being mindless arcade games at the time. For those of you not in the know, let me clue you in; a Japanese game from the early days of the PS2, Ico was a bleak, artsy puzzle platformer depicting a young boy and girl attempting to escape a labirenthine castle that seems to consciously hate them, all teh way badgered by strange monsters composed of shadow against whom their only defence was a stick. Most of the gameplay revolved singularly around the girl, Yorda with whom you share no common language; you weren't in any real danger of personal death in combat unless you fell a hundred feet down a pit, so the real challenge was defending Yorda, and although areas were fairly easy for you to traverse, the challenge was always finding a way to get her and her dainty, vulnerable frame from one side of the chasm-riddled room to another. So basically, almost the whole game was an escort mission with the additional total hour if not more being hung up on a simple puzzle because Yorda's AI was a tad too buggy for you to instinctively to rely on it AND YET it was good. The game was wonderfully minimalistic - pulling a few Silent Hill-like tricks to squeaze the most out of the processor; the camera was pretty far back, with threefold results of making the old graphics less noticable for our HD-priviledged eyes, it generally shows you what you need to see despite being fixed angle, and it contributes to the artistic statement of being trapped in an unfeeling world much bigger than oneself.
The story itself did a lot with so little - over the course of the course of the game which I could probably run through in 6 hours now, there's about 5 minutes of dialogue, TOPS. A simple, perhaps archetypical story, told in the compelling fashion of interaction - keeping cutscenes and a cinematic quality to a bare minimum throughout most of the story, only really using them for something taht would have been entirely non-interactive, or that needed to be up close to the characters faces to carry a tad more dramatic weight; it fully utilised the medium of gaming, it was considered art above many other games for the precise reason that, even if you liked the story in say, recent Final Fantasy games, it was hardly an interactive experience (and before FF fans get rabid, know that I levy this complaint against a lot of games, many that I myself adore) - for they are not utilising the major advantage of gaming that makes stories work in an at least more interesting fashion than another anime or a movie. It is the same reason that when someone who never sat down and contemplated the game for a good hour or so wouldn't be able to explain WHY they liked the game; it fully utilised what it meant to be a game, using a story precisely tailored for the interactivity of the players. To that effect, everything in the game demands it and rewards it, right down to the rumble function adding appropriate force feedback not only in combat but also when running around hand-in-hand with Yorda to add an extra basting of immersion. Don't interact or get stuck for a while, and even the almost-mute Yorda will start giving you some gibberish hint, pointing out a box or something. And there was at leats one very good moment that sticks out in my mind as being far better to have included even shortly in gameplay rather than making it all cutscene, though I feel if I even alluded to a single one of them beyond this you would be well within your rights to throttle me.
Video games may not be art in general, but some of them CERTAINLY are, and the medium has plenty of potential to expand the repetoire of similar emotional experiences - perhaps in the coming days that some gaming-cultural-analysists have predicted will finally kill the sequel-infested stagnation taht we currently face and force some innovation of creators. Until then, Ico has given us hope, and Ur-Example of the artsy, bleak puzzle-platyformers that are coming into some popularity now (A Shadow's Tale, Limbo, half teh independant market, etc.) and of the many games that people can point to as a real example of how one properly wields the medium to tell an emotionally involving story instead of trying to be "cinematic". After all, too many games these days just use their gameplay to pad out teh time between completely disjointed fragments of story told entirely through cutscenes - instead, Ico tells its story 99% through gameplay, embracing the medium to its full potential.
Which brings me down to a great old sulk when I hear tell there is to be an Ico graphic novel. I just don't see it. I'm sorry people, I dont think it can be done. Oh, I'm sure it will be a just fine stand-alone work, but it won't measure up, it CAN'T measure up. I do not say this lightly - by removing the interactivity, you are left with an extremely minimalistic plot and two lead characters who don't technically share any dialogue. Having some experience with writing, I can tell you that's an incredulous handicap, and WHILE the visuals may capture some of Ico's environment and what have you, the vital soul of interactivity is removed. While getting stuck for a half hour one one damned room could be annoying, it was not so much as other games where you were just spraying bullets on everything between youself and your next cutscene; the story WAS teh gameplay, it WAS the being pathetically lost for some time - I daresay it was intended that the sometimes confusing mechanics and camera confuse your porgress for some time. And that feeling of isolation, of solitude barely held back by your partner, there's no way to bring that across nearly as WELL in a non-interactive medium. And part of me hopes that such is not the case and that the adaptation is ultimately something worthy of the game, but I just doubt it.
I was going to rant one something I found on Wikipedia - a proposal for a Shadow fo the Colossus movie, but since my disc broke just after the eighth boss, I don't feel in too good a position for a full blown rant. Just, see above and then add about 2000% more indignation because adapting it to film is an even worse idea. What the **** can one fill the dead air with, Wander conversing with his goddamned horse like Daniel Radcliffe?
Anyway, there was a point here, and it is this; does anyone think that there is a way to tell these stories in a non-interactive medium, and how would you do it? I've mulled it over repeatedly, and I can't figure out a way - certainly not a good one.