Shadow of the Colossus Proves Video Games Can Be Art
In the years since I first wrote virtually Roger Ebert'due south disdain for video games, he's been in the back of my mind each fourth dimension I've picked up a controller. He believed, and argued quite strenuously, that video games could never exist art. At the height of the firestorm of controversy he unleashed with this statement, Ebert went so far as to declare that no game could ever achieve the same level of artistic transcendence as the slap-up films and novels and paintings from around the earth, all of which stood head and shoulders higher up such a hopelessly shallow medium.
It's a ludicrous, haughty, even arrogant proclamation. And yet, as I discussed with Robbie Dorman on the Serial Fanaticist Podcast, in the years since his death, I've tried to at least sympathize where Ebert was coming from. He is a giant in the world of criticism and a smart and generally open-minded critic at that, fifty-fifty if he has a detail view of what'due south required to create "smashing art." That makes his critiques, however frustrating, worth unpacking, even if they're not necessarily worth accepting.
Many of his arguments swivel on the relationship betwixt creator and audience. He had a very rigid view of that relationship, one that demanded a sure level of isolation between the ii sides of it. Ebert saw a purity in that, a mode in which an writer or managing director or auteur could put their soul into a piece of work, and then and only so imbuing it with something transcendent and making it ready to exist received by an audience that is wholly separate from this process. He viewed this sacred human activity as something impossible, at least in theory, given the interactive nature of video games.
And yet, several recent critically-acclaimed works play in the space between audience and creator. Wolf of Wall Street, Inglorious Basterds, and The Sopranos each spend fourth dimension luring in the viewer, getting them to root for, maybe fifty-fifty get enticed by, the life and lifestyle on display.{{1}} And then they aim to shame us for it. They say, "Look at the boundless luxury, at the cruel vengeance enacted against bad people, at the unrestrained ability of a mobster." They invite usa to live these fantasies and and so allow them run ashore on the harsh realizations, on the ugliness at the core of these things, that the creators use to indict both the subjects of these films and also the objects of them — united states of america.
"Now I'd simply like to take a minute to tell you most the pool rubber ruuuuuuuuuuules!"
Shadow of the Colossus, a 2005 video game from creator Fumita Ueda and Team Ico, is that same thought realized in a video game setting. The way the game uses the unique elements of its medium to achieve this, but is too constrained by the medium'due south limitations, prompts us to one time once more consider Roger Ebert'southward pronouncements about what art can and cannot be.
* * *
The game is a subversion of the usual formulas and unspoken rules that virtually games bide. It nonetheless embraces the basics and offers a certain familiarity, playing like a stripped downwards version of a Zelda game. Firmly present are the sword and bow and horse, with monsters in the offing who must be slayed to save the princess. Just gone are the dungeons and the collectibles and the colorful cast of enemies and allies alike that brand the world of the game feel live and whole. Shadow of the Colossus is, instead, a game of isolation, where your just company are the creatures you kill and the disembodied vox that guides yous forth the way.
That disembodied voice and similar tropes SotC employs are a staple of these action-adventure games. It represents an unseen guiding force, there to help the player become acclimated to the game's setting and its mechanics. By and large, it serves to establish the lore of the realm and the terms of the quest. It's a voice of authority, one that has, throughout gaming history, been a reliable source of instruction. Whether the instructor is realized as a fairy companion or a talking gunkhole or unproblematic text boxes delivered on high by the game creators themselves, those lessons and the beings who deliver them accept so often been taken for granted equally good and trustworthy. They're in that location to assist y'all on your fashion and confirm that your struggle is a righteous one.
That, however, is the rub of Shadow of the Colossus. So much of what makes the game unique is the atmosphere it creates — the minimalist, expansive landscape; the soothing, and in-turn soaring soundtrack; the awe of the beasts, melded from mankind and fur and the ruins of a lost world. But the jarring feature of SotC is that information technology uses these aesthetics to lure you in and only then, little-past-niggling, reveals an awful truth.
If you can't trust a mysterious voice coming from a hole in the top of an ancient temple, who tin you trust?
You are the bad guy, or at least a bad guy, and that disembodied phonation led you to evil, rather than to justice.
* * *
What starts every bit a fairly standard video game quest — slay the beasts, save the princess — eventually unveils a hidden dark side. The truth is that you are not Link. Yous are not the guileless hero on a noble journey. You lot are, if non selfish, than at the very to the lowest degree myopic as you fulfill the game's commands.
Shadow of the Colossus gives subtle hints in this direction earlier the large reveal. Despite the fact that the game's massive enemies resist and at times attack you, there is desolation in their deaths each time you lot prevail confronting one of them. Eventually, you lot discover that the disembodied phonation that's been giving you lot clues and leading you into the fray with these beasts is an ancient evil, goading you into freeing information technology unwittingly.
Each impale y'all brand on its behalf brings you closer to your goal, to resurrecting a lost soul, but yours becomes stained in the process. Each towering monster defeated results in visible changes to your grapheme's appearance: paler skin, dark marks across your face, and a look of utter weariness. Somewhen, by your actions, the evil is unleashed, and it consumes yous, while one of the game's few other human being presences admonishes you to absolve for what yous've done.
"You'll take to forgive me for rushing through this a little. I'm late for the Court of Owls."
In essence, Shadow of the Colossus pulls the aforementioned play a trick on that those championed works of picture and television set practice. It uses the medium and the tropes of the genre to lull you into a false sense of security, and mayhap even righteousness, before pulling the rug out from underneath you. Only as Braid uses the template of Mario games to startle the player when it departs from expectations and plays around with that blueprint, SotC uses the traditions established by Zelda and similar games to make the player unquestioningly complicit in a grave wrong
After all, you have to heed to the voice, correct? Of course yous're going to keep slaying these immense creatures even if their deaths brand you a trivial uneasy. What else are you going to do? Just not play the game? Lay down your sword? Requite up?
* * *
That is the challenge for, and the reward of, video games like Shadow of the Colossus as compared to The Wolf of Wall Street and its ilk. Scorsese can use the glamorizing hues of pic to rouse your admiration for Jordan Belfort's glitzy lifestyle and use that to comment on how our culture idolizes and absolves people like him despite their misdeeds. Tarantino can use the movie theater's power to propagandize to tempt his audition into cheering for brutality from "the correct people" in 1 breath, while prompting them to scorn the villains for the same brutality. David Chase can use the audience's natural impulse to want to see the protagonist succeed in order to brand them silently complicit in Tony Soprano'south lamentable acts.
Just Fumito Ueda tin one-up each of these auteurs. The bad acts of Shadow of the Colossus, the ones that threaten to harm the innocent and unleash a terrible curse unto the world, are your acts. You lot are not an observer in these events. Yous are a participant, and that magnifies the forcefulness of the game's reveal.
"Cool belly tat, bro."
It also makes the guilt conveyed by the climax of the game more than visceral and personal. Ebert'southward line in the sand against the idea of video games every bit art came downwardly to the problem of player pick. To his fashion of thinking, the potential for the player, rather than the author of the work, to drive the story is a fatal flaw. And yet, in Shadow of the Colossus, that is the element of the game which makes the themes, the impact of the story, nearly keenly felt.
While the game does establish certain win conditions and sets the histrion on a particular path, you lot choose whether to follow the dictates of that disembodied voice; you cull to impale these incredible beasts, you choose to continue on this quest despite the creeping suspicions the game fosters. That autonomy serves Ueda'due south purposes with Shadow of the Colossus. Information technology helps him to make meaning, to spur on the sort of empathy that Ebert values and and then plough information technology against the player to explore how participating in these horrible acts tin taint an individual, even one with seemingly noble aims.
* * *
And yet, playing Shadow of the Colossus gave me a new appreciation for Ebert's perspective. I still firmly believe that video games tin can not only be art, but that they can exist "cracking art," by any reasonable definition.{{2}} But playing Shadow of the Colossus gave me a greater agreement for why he refused to budge on this result.
Ebert's basic beef is this — video games are, true to their name, games, in the same category equally chess, football, and hopscotch. And games, no matter how well-designed or how elegant the rules are, are not art on his business relationship. You can win a game, Ebert says, but yous cannot win art.
"Over here! Over here, Mr. Ebert! Give united states the thumb! Would you give us the thumb please?" "Certain, I'd exist but thrilled to."
Video games, all the same, are more than just a exam of skill. They do include those types of cognitive or reflex-based challenges that Ebert seems to anticipate every bit the sum full of what it is to be a "game." The player usually has to jump onto a platform or solve the puzzle or push the right button at the right time. Merely video games tin and do marry this aspect of the experience with the traditional elements of cinema and other forms of visual art. There'due south storytelling, aesthetics, music and sound design, and host of other artistic choices that get into video games that brand them more than merely gussied-up versions of solitaire.
Despite that, at that place's a grain of truth to Ebert's criticism, considering that "exam of skill" element of a video game does, in fact, make it harder for a given game to reach the level of "great fine art." It adds withal another dimension upon which a game must be keen in order to be peerless past acclaim at the level of a Denizen Kane or The Great Gatsby.
Later all, creating a swell novel is no minor feat, requiring virtuosity in language, in storytelling, and in developing memorable, well-rounded characters, among other vital elements. Creating a bang-up moving-picture show tin show even more challenging, because information technology requires most of those aforementioned elements, merely also needs to succeed in its visuals, in its performances, in its score, and a number of other areas of presentation that are unique to movie house. Merely video games take to go a stride further. They take to have all of those same elements from literature and film and also evangelize a satisfying test of skill that, ideally, melds with the other parts of the work in a natural, immersive manner.{{3}}
* * *
Only even if a video game manages to include a test of skill that matches its creativity and artistry in other areas, there's still another obstacle to overcome. The "game" portion of a video game, the chemical element that tests your reflexes and puzzle-solving abilities, adds yet another level of subjectivity to the experience, making the sort of veneration Ebert speaks of all the more hard to accomplish.
"Darn it, Billy! Did you forget to walk the dog again? He's getting all antsy."
Subjectivity, of class, is an outcome for art of all stripes. How immersed someone is in the history of picture, or music, or abstract art will greatly affect how they receive a particular piece of work or even an entire genre. But simply as the interactive aspect of gaming gives artists in the industry another avenue in which they can make an experience feel affecting and real in means unmatched by other mediums, it also creates another space between creator and consumer where the ideas and the impact of the work can exist lost in translation.
This all warrants a confession — I'm non very good at video games. Despite having played them since before I could read, my aptitude for them has never quite matched my enthusiasm, and the learning curve has always been a fleck steeper for me than for my peers. The issue is that, despite the interesting mechanics and creative challenges Ueda and his squad crafted for Shadow of the Colossus, my own ineptitude hindered my power to truly appreciate and feel the game as fully equally intended.
Which is to say that I felt a sense of relief, not shame, when I finally felled some challenging monster whose weaknesses I'd divined, but through my own lack of skill, been unable to conquer despite hours of attempts. It'due south harder to appreciate the ancient artful of the game's setting or the self-cogitating isolation of the long journeys between boss fights when I found myself simply frustrated at getting lost forth the way. Different players come to these games with vastly dissimilar levels of skill, and that means at that place's one more dimension where their experiences may differ markedly. That makes it harder for creators to account for and tin can carve up the player from the world of the game.
The all-time video games, similar the best films, can brand y'all forget that you're not genuinely a part of the story. At their top, such experiences get truly immersive. The effect is hard to sustain in any medium. But as Ebert warned, it's even more than hard when it's not solely dependent on what the writer offers, but also on what the histrion brings to the experience.
"Marge, is this a pimple or a boil?"
That difficulty is magnified in the confront of simple bug with things like the mechanics of the game that can stymie immersion. The frustrations of wonky controls or problems with the camera occasionally emerge in Shadow of the Colossus and hinder its ability to create a seamless feel. Some games build that potential frustration with the tests of skill into the thematic richness of the work — Braid certainly achieves this — but it's tough to do well.
* * *
At the same time, the autonomy and interactivity granted to the player creates another unique hurdle for video games. Sometimes the player tin can foresee where a story is headed, but is effectively powerless to alter the outcome. This is a notable, merely less salient concern for movie, because with a movie, the viewer is simply forth for the ride regardless of whether they may judge the ending. For a video game, on the other hand, the thespian has at to the lowest degree the illusion of choice. And as a result, the thespian's inability to avoid a detail fate or work around some given plot point exposes the artificiality of the exercise in a mode that movies and T.V. shows don't have to contend with.
This arose for me about halfway through Shadow of the Colossus, when I predicted the contours of the game'southward big reveal, if not the exact details, and my feel was altered accordingly.{{iv}} Now, spoilers are as much{{5}} an result in motion picture as they are in video games, merely for a game like Shadow of the Colossus, knowing, or at least suspecting the twist, presents a greater threat to that endeavour to lure yous in, considering of how games work.
What if, earlier the finish of the game, you have the intended signal that slaying these monsters is incorrect? What are you supposed to do? If you lot're not seduced by Hashemite kingdom of jordan Belfort's lavish lifestyle, then Scorsese's try in Wolf of Wall Street may take less of an bear on on you, just it doesn't affect the experience so severely, because you can still appreciate the story as an observer. Or to utilise Ebert'due south ain case, Shakespeare can tell united states of america from the opening stanza that Romeo and Juliet are destined for tragedy, just nosotros are passengers in their story, unable to take the cycle and steer the star-crossed lovers to greener pastures, and that is every bit it has been for centuries. The kind of player control available in video games represents a radical shift in that equation.
In a work similar Shadow of the Colossus, it ways that even if the player can suss out the reveal ahead of time and embrace the vaunted themes of losing oneself piece by piece even in service of noble aims, the just options are to go along going anyway or just quit. Either choice serves as a reminder that you're simply playing a game.
You want something to differentiate it from all the giant monsters you lot fight in real life.
Chances are you lot're not going to finish playing despite the thematic implications of continuing with the quest. Perchance playing through the residual of Shadow of the Colossus with the knowledge of where it's heading (or at least a good judge) is not dramatically different than reading the rest of Romeo and Juliet despite knowing that information technology ends in tragedy. In both instances, you're simply fulfilling the demands of the work, albeit more than actively in one case than in the other. Simply in the instance of Shadow of the Colossus, that knowledge, and the lack of real choice in the game, creates a distance between the gamer and the game, something that is supposed to exist the antithesis of what makes video games unique as an art form. It's a difficulty that plays right into Ebert's easily.
* * *
Nevertheless, I wanted to be moved past Shadow of the Colossus. I wanted to experience the weight of its reveals and its themes. But I also wanted to simply beat the damn thing.
That's a far shallower reason to become on, regardless of any attendant fears that you're aiding and abetting something "evil," than the in-game rationale of saving a dead loved one. I wanted to primary the test of skill that Ebert was so worried most, to jump through the right hoops, find the right places, beat the right baddies. Maybe that desire dovetails well enough with the graphic symbol's in-universe determination, despite the signs that he's succumbing to a expletive, considering he too wants to attain his goal. But the fact that I take a choice, that I realize what'southward happening and persist in trying, not to save someone's life but because I just want to get to the stop of the game, muddies the waters.
Because it notwithstanding amounts to a divide between the player and the story being told. At some point, whether it'southward because of setbacks that come from my own limitations as a role player, or the cognition that sets my existent motivations for standing this quest apart from those of my avatar, the affect of the game, of the feel, is blunted.
That is the double-edged sword of telling stories in this medium. The interactivity of video games allows designers like Ueda to create experiences that are more than visceral, more personal, and more immersive than tin be offered past any other art grade. Simply information technology also provides one more than mode in which there tin exist a disconnect between writer and audience, and between how the work is intended and how information technology's received.
Actually, a double-edged sword would be pretty useful correct most now.
Roger Ebert saw that obstacle as insurmountable, as a difficulty that would forever forestall video games from reaching the heights of films or novels or other cracking works of art. I don't agree, and I don't condone his myopia, but after experiencing both the peaks of the medium and its inherent difficulties in Shadow of the Colossus, I at least ameliorate understand his perspective.
Shadow of the Colossus represents the summit of gaming as an art course. More than than almost works in the medium, it uses the implements in the cinematic toolbox to create its meaning, to make the player a part of the choices their character makes and of the larger story beingness told. Only at the same time, it also represents the greater difficulties that come with gaming's greater possibilities.
Making the player a role of the proceedings can create a form of immersion unmatched by any other fine art course, just that interactivity, and the puzzles and quests that make information technology a game and not but a story, tin can besides serve every bit a reminder of artifice, of separation, and of subjective experience. Great auteurs tin can still use these things to artistic ends, simply they nowadays one more than challenge for video games when trying to match the greatness of their creative brethren.
As I said, Ebert is himself a giant. He is not apt to unleash the same sort of evil that Shadow of the Colossus'due south disembodied vocalization implores you to assist in freeing. But his ideas, the mistake lines between mediums that he exposes, even if he cannot fully grasp them, are non as hands overcome every bit the lumbering creatures who lurk in the cute recesses of the game's mural. Video games are art. They can even be great art. Only the claiming is steeper and more hard than we, the champions of the medium'southward artistic possibilities, are ofttimes willing to admit.
[[1]]In fact, I would debate that Inglorious Basterds is, at its cadre, most the power of cinema to do this type of matter, change our sympathies in a way that Ebert, I think, would appreciate.[[1]]
[[ii]]And, what's more, I think it's outright foolish to declare an entire medium defective when, equally Ebert did, you refuse to actually appoint with it.[[ii]]
[[3]]Which is not to say that to truly exist "not bad fine art," a work need be great in every respect or must be wholly lacking in flaws. (An issue I've examined in the context of The Simpsons and whether information technology's enough to just exist actually funny.) Merely it would be foreign, to say the to the lowest degree, to accept a video game that soared in all the areas in which video games overlap with films, merely which was middling in terms of the skill-based challenges information technology offered to the player, and nonetheless consider information technology "great." If a video game is superb at everything except beingness a game, information technology's hard to phone call it a success, creatively or artistically.[[3]]
[[4]]These are the pitfalls of coming to a game a decade afterwards its release having picked upward through cultural osmosis that there's some sort of of import reveal at the end.[[4]]
[[five]]Or as piffling, depending on your view.[[5]]
Source: http://www.theandrewblog.net/2016/10/13/colossal-divide-shadow-of-the-colossus-roger-ebert/
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