Talking Ico: Part 2 - The Beginning - Video Game Chat Fansite

Let us agree on one thing before we begin. As we move along the story I want us to assume for the talk's sake that we are seeing it unfold for the very first time. That is, I want us to pretend that this is our first run through the game. In fact let us pretend that we have not even read the introduction in the manual. In this exercise all our knowledge about ICO comes from the screen and the screen alone. But if you have not completed the game yet, be kind to yourself and read no more until you have.

(First written 15 May 2003)

So let us talk about the opening sequence. It is long but like the rest of the game it contains little speech--all seventeen words. The opening still tells us quite a few things.

Because the modern audience is an impatient crowd, opening a story with an unforgettable sequence or paragraph has become rather important. The storyteller wants to make sure as far as he can that once the story begins the audience will feel driven to see it to the end and not get off midway. A stock strategy of ensuring this is to drop the audience in the middle of the action and leave them to figure out what is happening--to forgo introduction and begin the story in the middle. Accordingly ICO plunges into the tale without showing us so much as a title screen.

The narrative opens with a view of a forest--green, lush and warmly lit by the sun, with birds chirping in the trees. It is a beautiful, pristine landscape. As it happens it is the only shot in the entire game wholly free of suspense or melancholy. We are shown next a group of horsemen making their way through the forest. Evidently these are fighting men, wrapped from head to toes in armors. Their beasts are burdened with traveling articles, which tells us the men are on a journey of some distance. From their knightly garbs we may expect a distinctly Medieval flavor in the story that is about to unfold.

Impressive as they are the knights do not command our attention for long. A member of the party stands out like a lamb amongst wolves: a young boy, seated before one of the knights. Next to the ironclad frames of the men the boy is tiny, and conspicuously unarmed. His puny form catches our eyes because his presence in this outfit does not make sense. He is the only anomaly in an otherwise consistent pattern. Had someone asked us a moment ago what we were seeing, we should probably have answered "a party of knights on horseback." Now the answer might be "a little boy in a party of knights on horseback." The child has completely got our attention. And he keeps it through the opening. How could he not, when he is the only one in the company who has a face? The knights are hidden behind iron masks, and barely distinguishable from one another. They are thoroughly anonymous--faceless, nameless, and as we will soon learn, without personalities relevant to the tale. They are instruments, not men; their job is to fulfill a function and make themselves scarce so that the characters that do matter can get on with the story.

Our curiosity turns to alarm once we have observed the boy, which we can hardly help. He raises his hands to wipe his brow in the heat of the sun, and we see that the hands are bound. So he is not here because he wants to be; he is a captive. What is more, he appears to sport a pair of bullhorns on his head. And these appear to be genuine unlike the metal horns adorning some of the men's helmets. Who is this boy who looks harmless enough apart from the oddities poking from his head? And where is he being taken to against his will?

We find the answer soon enough. The forest path terminates and with it the land. The ocean stretches before the party, and jutting from the waters is an island of singular appearance--a colossal column of solid rock. A fortress sits on it half shrouded in the morning mist. It dwarfs the men and the horses and the trees and everything else in sight. The screen fades to the title shot. I should like to place the end of the prologue here.

Next part will treat the other half of the opening. In the meantime I hope I have aroused your interest enough to stay with me the rest of the way. I would also like to mention that I do not intend to go through every puzzle in the game like I did here. That would make this a walkthrough and not a very good one.