Why Shadow of the Colossus is Overrated

To celebrate the release of The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, we thought we would proclaim this: Shadow of the Colossus is overrated.

[smashcrashbash]

Huh? I think you are way over thinking this game. Just play it and have fun.

[Gandalf]

"Post by Ramunas Jakimavicius"

This guy does NOT seem to be legit.

[JellyJelly]

Because you can't pronounce his name? :)

[Iroquois_Pliskin]

wait, isn't the other way around? in its time, Shadow of Colosus along with Ico were essay underrated

[humbleopinion]

@Iroquois_Pliskin
Undersold perhaps? But not underated. Both games were critically acclaimed and won multiple awards. And SOTC actually performed quite well sales-wise, with a big ad campaign behind hit.

[BinaryMind]

Um yeah, I could care less why some random guy thinks SotC is overrated. And if you gotta make something this long just to explain it you know it's a lost cause.

[Undeadwolfy]

Couldn't care less****!!! Seriously, what do schools teach nowadays?

[ReservoirDog316]

I think this guy's getting mixed emotions.

Wander has no real instinct of self preservation outside of wanting to survive to kill the next colossi. He knows from the beginning he won't survive and he's obviously stepped on a few peoples' toes to get to the land and get the sword.

He's halfway selfless and greedy. He's doing all this for a girl he loved (or loves) but he's not stopping at anything to bring her back, including breaking a few rules. He's actively hunting the colossi even though, besides a few arguably, they aren't really looking for a fight. But he kills them again and again and again.

And even in his quest for what he wants, he loses his horse. He's easily the most faithful friend despite how Wander nearly kills him while fighting colossi repeatedly and then basically gets him killed on the last one.

So the general feeling of unease surrounding the who mission and Wander is expected, encouraged and felt throughout. And when you look at it all, you can't help with sympathize with him because, well, we'd arguably do it too for someone we love.

He was doomed just as soon as she died. Dormin lays it all on the table. He won't survive but he says it doesn't matter. So the argument against his self preservation is moot. He just wants to see the job through.

All in all, everything I took from this is on face value. Like you said, they're waaaay over analyzing to the point of ridiculous.

[solar]

great game, and i dont use the term great as loosely as 98% of gamers on this site. bought the collection today and been having fun :)

[LOGICWINS]

I thought the game was cool. Played through the PS2 version twice and sold it soon after. Kind of short for my tastes. I also wish the story was more fleshed out. Theres virtually no background to the situation at hand or the characters.

For example, What makes this guy so special that he can take down all these colossi by himself? What is his relationship with the girl? In fact, the game doesn't even answer why the girl was sacrificed in the first place..which is the WHOLE point of the game since the guy is killing colossi in order to resurrect this chick!

[jc48573]

is it really necessary? You may end up with the same cliche.

Some would go that far to save their loved ones. If you have a goal, you wouldn't want to let go of it that easily w/o putting some effort into it. Sometimes it's best to take action than to sit down and explain everything.

This is just another method of story telling where a simple action or emotion can lead to many outcomes. There's also the imagination part, which is very strong in this game.

Edit: @Logicwins
Sometimes you don't "need" to explain everything in detail. I could simply watch the Discovery channel if I wanted to understand how animals breed. Do you need a reason to love a person? Not necessarily.

[LOGICWINS]

Even imagination has a factor of explanation to it. Harry Potter is clearly imagination, but everything is explained so that it makes sense as to why certain things happen and why characters do what they do. I didn't get that from Shadow of the Colossus.

[-Alpha]

It is never the intention of the game to answer those questions. This is exactly what makes the game powerful. That is a very generic word, but I mean that with great impact. SotC is powerful in its simplicity. It told a better story with such few lines of dialogue than any other AAA game I've played this gen or last.

I have a strong bias for SoTC, I admit it. I'll probably get very assertive when defending it, so forgive me if I come off as defensive

I wont bother going into a detailed argument, but it's, in my opinion, perfect the way it is. Everything you point out as a flaw is intentionally done and asking the questions you do and expecting an answer to be straightforwardly given misses the entire meaning of the story (no offense)

[NewMonday]

@LOGICWINS

its just like what Alpha says.

and story can be told without everything spelled out in dialog or text. you can piece most of it out by the events and actions alone.

as for the guys powers, they are just love, bravery and determination.

[dead_eye]

Interpretation is a big part of this game.

newmonday sees the guys powers as love, bravery and determination.

And I see them as a single minded, selfish obsession.

[DaTruth]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is 540,000 pictures worth!(avg. 5hour game at 30fps- I don't really know how long the game is)

540,000,000 words!

[Hufandpuf]

the kid you played as basically goes through hell and back to save a girl you know nothing about. And when he gets back from hell, he becomes demonized into a little child practically releasing the demon soul that was contained in the colossi.

End of Story, wonderful game.

[-Alpha]

You are faulting the game for all the wrong reasons, IMO.

[mastiffchild]

Hemmingway is credited with saying it but, whatever, SotC's narrative is definitely a huge success n the "less is more" school.

It's biggest strength is the moral dichotomy of making a murky deal for, ultimately , selfish reasons and how that's likely to end badly-kind of making a deal with the Devil, y'know?

Adding more explanation would make the story trite and leave so little magic for your imagination that the game would be a shadow of the force it actually is in it's current state. It's the closest games have come, imho, to genius. Not in any ONE sense but as a package that insists games can be more than most people imagine. SotC, and Ico, are amazing.

Had Ueda felt the need to colour in all the blank space for us he would have killed the special feelings the game manages to squeeze out of the player.

[Peaceful_Jelly]

what do you think about this? http://upload.wikimedia.org...

Overrated right? It needs more color and stuff...

[rjdofu]

Can't believe that you got a disagree for this. Some people these days... sigh...

[Hicken]

You really don't know when to quit. I'll respond to the ignorance in all your posts here.

First, there isn't always a need to have more "flesh" on the story. Speculation is a big part of gaming, the "what ifs" that unknowns cause you to think of.

Wander isn't special. The Sword is. His relationship with the girl is something you don't know, nor do you need to. You play as Wander, but you are not Wander. Ditto with why the girl was sacrificed. All YOU need to know is that, for some reason or another, Wander is willing to do ANYTHING to bring Mono back.

Harry Potter is clearly FANTASY. It uses the imagination, yes, but not yours so much as the writer's. SotC leaves the whys up to your mind, for you to puzzle over... as you have done, and yet somehow you don't seem to understand that THAT was the point.

The game isn't about the story behind your actions. The game is about YOUR ACTIONS. That's why there's so little dialogue, so little background. It's why you ride across these open, empty areas and fight these giant stone behemoths: to give scale to your actions. The story, as you have pointed out numerous times, is barely there, so how can you call it cliche? How can you name Mono a princess, when she could as likely have been a girl he grew up with, or a traveler he just so happened to know? At every turn, you keep deciding what the game is about, and yet you don't see that you're proving the game did exactly what it was supposed to do.

There was background enough for the Colossi that we know exactly what they were. And the ending only didn't make sense to you because you were too busy trying to force the game to show you things that weren't there.

I spent years playing the game, myself, and never once did I care what the actual story was. Hell, I'd love for them to make books that tell what led up to it, and that bridged the gap between it and ICO. But I can do without it, too, because the game is just that good.

You were unsatisfied because you were looking for more than the game had to it. And in doing so, you missed the real content of the game.

Once again, your logic fails.

[Inception]

@logicwins
This is about you, the girl you love, and the collosus who will ressurected you'r girl if you can kill them all. Simple as that. If you don't understand simple logic like that than you play the wrong game dude.

[trouble_bubble]

What's the backstory on the Mona Lisa? Who's she looking at? What was she thinking? Where did she work? Is that a UFO in the background?" *head asplodes*

lol, it's bitching like this that gave us half-arsed answers to questions no one reasonable asked, like midi-chlorians in Star Wars. Leave it to fanfic. This Romanus guy and his 50 paragraphs too many need a girlfriend. Too much time on his hands pseudo intellectualizing about something he's too dumb to grasp. And he's not the only one...

[jc48573]

I always thought Shadow of the Colossus was underappreciated. I don't know if you guys remember back then when this game was getting an average score of 8 and when people started playing this game, they were complaining about how the game wasn't really all that great. Maybe people didn't really quite understand the whole point of the game or maybe they were over thinking it.

[LOGICWINS]

Apparently the point of the game was to put you in situations where you have these epic battles...even though there wasn't a meaningful story behind it.

Its a cliche story of average guy going through trials to save a princess. I thought the battles were cool, especially the one where you have to get in top of the bird and fight it in the sky...but as I said, there should have been a better story to back up the action.

There was barely any background story on the colossi themselves, the stars of the show. Also, the ending didn't make much sense in regards with what happened to the protagonist.

[smashcrashbash]

I think like this guy you are over thinking this. The simplicity of the game is what makes it good. Just like in Ico you just had to save the girl. Simple as that. We didn't have to hear where the boy came from or how he was trained to fight the monsters or why he could fight the monsters or what kingdom the girl belonged to.

Look at Flower. Who cares why you were making the flowers bloom or why you were doing it? It was just a simple game.To go into too much explanation would bog down the whole game and ruin the mystery of it. Your just a guy fighting the Colossi for someone you care about. Not every game has to have some complex story behind it.

[Unicron]

SPOILERS

What more do you need? Dormin was split into multiple colossi to hold his power in check. You kill them, release him, he corrupts you. The priests do their best to purify you, but it's obvious that your bloodline is now tainted.... leading to the horned cursed boys in Ico.

Done and done.

[GamersRulz]

I'm really surprised by this Logicwins...but if you think SOTC story wasn't meaningful then What's a meaningful story in your book ? and please don't say a bunch of steroids guys fighting aliens.

[Hufandpuf]

the author thinks its overrated, I think it's underrated. But I'm not surprised to hear it from someone who writes articles at nightmaremode.net

[GamersRulz]

anything in this world can be overrated except SOTC. So I disagree with the writer.

[cobblestone19]

Agreed 100%

[TheKindRoost]

The saying " complexity lies in simplicity" goes well with SOTC no...also in ICO. The concept of these games are very simple, so simple that many tends to over-think fails to grasp it. A point made by the author.

@ logicfail
Ever heard of the saying "less is more"( I highly doubt it)? A concept that is understood well by Ueda-san and his team.

[Wintersun616]

Why does everything need to be the same? Leaving room for imagination and the simplicity of this game is the very reason I loved this story. It didn't need explaining, because not all stories need to be explained in detail. You also don't need choices in this game, that would ruin the whole thing. One of the best parts of this game that it made you feel sad for what you had done yourself. How many other games have accomplished that?

All those fancy words and theories, but yet you seem like a whining toddler because you didn't want to use your imagination and feelings to learn the story, but wanted it explained to you in detail.

"Wander starts and ends a flat character, never fazed by his physical corruption, never pausing to reflect on the ruination he creates, and certainly never wavering from his idealized and self-justified goal."

Don't you realize that it's not Wander who's supposed to be fazed by his corruption or reflect on the ruination he's created, it's you! I just don't understand how someone could not understand this and come to respect it. Don't you realize the brilliance of this concept of feeling bad about destroying the colossi, but not being able to do anything about it? It's all connected to the desperation Wander has for saving Mono, and that desperation need not be explained, because the point is to use your imagination to build the story and make you feel bad. How many other games have accomplished this? NONE. This is the very reason why Shadow of the Colossus is not overrated, but underrated, because it truly is a very unique experience and it just saddens me when someone like you writes this wall of text, trying to be clever but failing miserably because you just don't get it.

[Patricia]

He could respond if you posted these thoughts oooon the article, y'know. ;)

[Blaine]

@Winter

Agreed.

I felt bad for every magnificent colossi I killed. They were peaceful, and seemed like godly and irreplaceable creatures. Killing them seemed like a huge sin in itself, let alone wiping all of them from existence forevermore to save one mortal woman. Yet I did it, because Wander's self-sacrifice was noble.

I can't think of any other game, so minimalist in story, that could tell so much with its actions. SotC underrated? Only a fool would think that--one with delusions of genius in this case.

[garos82]

blaine i wish i could give you a bubble for "extremely" well said.

i felt the same way when slaying the collossi. "what did they ever do to me" was ringing in my head as i watched their black blood flow into a gorgeous orchestrated song at the end of the fights

this game is not overrated the author of this article is overrated

[Bathyj]

Don't you realize that it's not Wander who's supposed to be fazed by his corruption or reflect on the ruination he's created, it's you!

Exactly. For all his clever wording and seemingly self proclaimed intellectualisms he sure wants things spoon fed to him. He just sound pretentious to me.

Anyone seen Shutter Island?

SPOILER sort of.

Wasnt the ending so cool because it didnt spell out for you in black or white, what was what, but left it for you to interpret?

Bottom line is SotC and Ico are games about heart, not logic. Stop over thinking things, it doesnt make you look smart. Quite the opposite.

[RJ815]

I think you're going for a strawman here. I'm not saying (or at least I didn't intend to say) that the game needed tons of explanation. I am, however, saying that it opted for the other extreme and had way too little. ICO didn't have much explanation either, but it worked fine since, for instance, there were actually interactions between the main human characters.

[JellyJelly]

The only bad thing about it is the camera which can be jerky while riding and trying to shoot your bow. To its defense most games in that age had pretty bad cameras.

[SageHonor]

I think some people talk about it a little too much. I enjoyed some of the boss fights and it was sad but with the exception of some of my favorite games, I never like when people talk about a game too much. This author is asking to get flamed though lol

[Inception]

overrated? you mean CoD right?

[Blaine]

Author fails because he thinks he's smarter than he is.

The author doesn't realize that some games let you play the story the way you want, and others want you to play out the character's story the way it's meant to be. SotC is the latter. So, despite the fact that the author of the opinion piece realizes Wander is causing himself harm, he failed to grasp both the fundamental concepts that:

1- Wander's desire to rescue Mono is greater than his desire for self-preservation.

2- You don't get to choose whether Wander goes through with it or not, you just have to do it.

You especially shouldn't get to choose if you didn't grasp #1. And if you did, then you would have chosen to go through with it.

[RJ815]

I grasp #1 just fine despite what your presumptions may lead you to believe. And that did not lead me to choose #2. A hardcore junkie's desire for drugs may override his or her self-preservation, but that doesn't mean I automatically sympathize with the situation and would choose (if I had the capacity to) the same result if I were in that situation.

[HappyWithOneBubble]

Overrated! They just looking for hits. Don't give them any.

[FEARprototype]

go kill yourself.
you have to take in your account that the game is old and if you didn't like it it's probably is not your kind if game.
stop bashing on games you don't like and find something better to do with it instead of filling your life with misery for playing a game you don't like and spare yourself the hate.

[FEARprototype]

oo..alot of grammar mistakes..T_T

[xX-Jak-Xx]

overrated !!!!!!

Really

[Minato-Namikaze]

Beat SOTC twice and loved it. Never played ICO :( I don't care what this author thinks, I'm picking this up today right after work. Good times ahead

[josephayal]

SOTC is MASTER PIECE

[Nada Nuff]

If you believe it's overrated, then why wait until the re-release to say so? Your opinion is overshadowed by the assumption that you're more concerned with taking away from the sales of the game than giving an objective opinion about it.

[RJ815]

By the time I wanted to write about it way back when, it had faded from the public consciousness quite a bit. The rerelease brought it back for both myself and the game-playing public.

Also, "objective opinion"? Isn't that an oxymoron?

[IAmTheTruth]

nightmaremode.net is overrated.

[DarkSymbiote]

Shadow is heavily overrated. With only 12 enemies and nothing else to do, I'd say it's the most overrated game of all time.