Talking Ico: Part 2 - A Magnificent Prison

It would be a mistake to think ICO is neatly divided between the story and the puzzles--that the cinematic interludes take care of storytelling while the puzzles pad out the spaces between. I suppose the puzzles could be enjoyed more or less on their own. But the narrative would collapse without the puzzles. This is because the puzzles are only parts of the whole, whereas the narrative is the whole. Now the term narrative can be--ought not to be, but can be--misleading since it hints at something spoken or written, and ICO is almost entirely nonverbal outside the interludes. But we have all heard that a picture tells a thousand words. Where they are sparing in words the scenes and the actions are rich in other kinds of information.

But a word before we go into that. The next three segments are concerned with everything between the pair's meeting and the first appearance of the villain. On that note I may have oversimplified the matter when I so stressed the puzzles in my last ramble, since the gameplay contains a good many things besides puzzle solving. But for the talk's sake let us agree that by puzzles we mean everything the children must do in their quest for freedom, outside the interludes--in other words every action which is left to our control.

Now I cannot take the puzzles apart the way I have done the opening because they do not have plot elements except one: they show us that the children are progressing from one part of the castle to the next. Therefore the narrative functions of any one puzzle are much the same as all the rest. (Does that mean if we have seen one we have seen all? No; there is such a thing as cumulative effect.) For our purposes it would be pointless to look at each puzzle in depth. So I am only going to articulate a few statements that apply to all the puzzles in their narrative capacity. These are:

1. THE CASTLE IS HOSTILE GROUND.
2. THE CHILDREN MUST EXPLORE THE CASTLE.
3. THE CHILDREN ARE NECESSARY COMPANIONS.

I imagine some of you would like to expand these. Someone pointed out after reading the last section, for instance, that the puzzles help us immerse ourselves in the environment. He was very right. But since this is more an aesthetic quality than a narrative tool I have here left it out. I will however mention it briefly when I talk about the second statement. Let us then look at each of the statements. Today we will consider only the first of the three.

1. THE CASTLE IS HOSTILE GROUND.

At this time it may be helpful to summarize what we already know on the castle. We know it is absurdly enormous and must have demanded absurd amount of manpower to put together. We know it is in disrepair and probably very ancient. We know that parts of it are operated by mysterious spells. We know that Ico has been brought here to die like others before him--and this by no accident nor by whim if the caskets and the horned effigies are any signs. Add to these the awful gloom that haunts every corner of the castle, and the picture we have is one of decidedly sinister character. The picture is of course blurry since we have not one solid bit of information about the castle. Yet we begin the game convinced beyond doubt that the castle is no friendly place. We are right to assume so. That is what visual storytelling is: getting us to believe certain things without telling us to. We will be seeing a great deal of that in this tale.

Once the pair starts exploring the castle in earnest we learn that the place is not merely unfriendly or indifferent; it is hostile. I am not here thinking of the lurking black wraiths, though they are certainly a part of it. I am thinking of the fortress itself. After all what is this fortress to the children? For her it is a prison. For him it was very nearly his tomb, and may still be that if he is not careful. For both it is the chief obstruction that stands in the way of their object--freedom. It is the cause of their suffering; it represents everything they must overcome.

People erect buildings in order to domesticate the environment--to make a domain of comfort and convenience out of an uncomfortable, inconvenient wilderness. But this castle almost seems to exist to make life miserable. Instead of putting things within easy reach it hides them from you and makes you work to find them. It makes you circle a building three times at three different levels just to get to the roof. It is full of high places from which you could easily fall to your death, made doubly dangerous since the place is falling apart everywhere. On top of that it will not let you go through a door unless by some cryptic reason it deems you fit to pass. It would be a nice place to live if you had wings and could walk through walls--a splendid dwelling for fairies but hardly habitable for mortals. The set-up smacks of a maze created to confound.

You might say "Well, of course it was created to confound. This is a puzzle game, for crying out loud." I realize that. I am only saying that the castle's labyrinthine character has something to contribute to the story as well as to the game. That is, given the story's premise it makes good sense that the castle should be so full of riddles. What is the story's premise? Well, a pair of children want to run away from a big, mysterious and frightening place. And the big, mysterious and frightening place doesn't want to let them get away. It is determined to block them, to frustrate them and to slow them down. To move through the castle the children must outwit it-- must meet and prevail against every challenge this dangerous maze throws at them. But wait a moment here. "Outwitting" the castle almost sounds as if we were treating it as a person. In fact it very much sounds like the castle has assumed an adversarial role against the children. And it has. The real antagonist of the story, the foe Ico and the girl must fight more than any other, is the very prison whose ground they tread. Every scene in ICO is a silent reminder of that. We are always looking at the young heroes at a distance so that the castle rises colossal and dominating in all directions around them--breathing down on them, making them appear in comparison utterly puny and utterly lost. Now, we may marvel at the castle for its sheer magnificence. But that is mostly because we are not in Ico's shoes. None of us would in reality enjoy being trapped inside a deserted citadel in the middle of nowhere. We can afford to be delighted because for us this is mere entertainment. For him it is a matter of life and death. When he looks around he does not see the enchantingly beautiful edifice we do. He sees the bane of his existence which at any moment may prove his doom. There he is never assured of surviving another hour. Delighted is the last thing he is.

There are many terrors in life, but the terror of being lost is surely the greatest--alongside its twin, the terror of being alone. The fear the castle arouses is of a subtle and pervasive sort. It rarely jumps you from behind. Rather it is always before you and around you, daring you to ignore it. To be sure there is great serenity throughout the castle. But anyone who has been lost in a quiet, deserted place knows that serenity is no equal of peace. There is no peace in this place, only desolation. And mute malice. For we sense that there must be a malicious mind behind the malicious plan. Every painting has a painter behind it and every book an author. Someone arranged this mystery for a purpose less than innocent. As yet we do not know who that someone is and what purpose. We do know that until we have left this castle behind we shall not be relieved of the dread.

Here I stop. I will be back with thoughts on the second statement.