Talking Ico: Part 2 - Some Thoughts on the Puzzles

I said at the beginning that gameplay falls outside the scope of this exercise. I think I have made an unreasonable claim. ICO's story takes some hours to unfold, and we spend the majority of those hours solving puzzles. If I am to talk about those puzzles at any length I will after all have to treat gameplay even if I do not call it by that name. (I admit I am not very comfortable with the term; it is not in any dictionary, and I hesitate to make use of a word I could not define.) Let me say again that I make no pretense at anything like expert knowledge about games. Common sense is all I have got to guide myself on the subject. Please bear with me.

Having played through the game you know that everything I have talked about thus far is only the introductory stage of the game. We are barely past the opening scenes. Ico and the girl have only just now met. That is not to say that we have not learned quite a lot of information already, because we have. But all we really have done so far is watching, not playing. And a game is supposed to be played. In that sense the game has hardly begun. For we have only solved the first and the simplest of the puzzles. There are many more challenging puzzles to come. And the puzzles are the substance of this game, are they not? Of course they are. If we had no puzzles we should have no game. The puzzles must therefore be the one absolutely indispensable part of the game. And if they are the one absolutely indispensable part, they must be the most important part. That is true to logic, isn't it?

Clearly I do not believe so. I will explain why not. Without a doubt the puzzles are the most prominent feature of the gameplay. Yet most ICO fans seem convinced that the puzzles are not its real stock. If you are inclined to disagree, recall some praises you have heard people say about the game. Are they chiefly about the enjoyableness of the puzzles? Or are they about something else entirely?

It is a rather obvious question. People mention things like "awe-inspiring visuals," "heartwarming tale," "art" and "beauty" and what not. But some would say all these fine qualities are nonessentials to a game. Pac-Man may lack them, but that does not keep it from being a classic game. So one could argue ICO is a beautiful tale but an impoverished game. For there is exactly one way for us to complete the game. And once we have completed it, the element of challenge is all but gone. Puzzles we know the answers to are no longer puzzles. No wonder so many deem ICO worth no more than a rental. But we ICO fans are strange. We insist that ICO is not only competent but positively amazing. Can we justify that claim?

Now I already said this exercise is not about how good a game ICO is, and I stand by my word. But I think I do need to say something about how the game works its magic on us if the next segments are to make any sense to you. (As to how well it works, I will leave to you to decide.) Recently I exchanged some e-mails with a very devoted fan of ICO. He loves it so much that he has written a fifty-page essay on it. He surprised me by saying that he had not played it in months. He said that the experience feels more real when he seldom plays it. About then I was similarly surprised to hear another veteran say on this board that she was only then playing through the game for the second time; I know how she adores it. But I really should not have been surprised. I have myself played the game to completion just three times. Now we have got a bit of a paradox here. Here we are, three diehard admirers of the game who confess it to be their all-time favorite--and we hardly play it at all! A paradox is calling it politely. Either we are lying when we say ICO is our favorite game, or we have deluded ourselves that we like it more than we actually do. Isn't that right? No? Well, why not?

At first glance it seems perfectly reasonable that we should spend the most time on the games we enjoy the most. But it seems to me that people have been conditioned to think this way ever since they popped their first quarters into an arcade machine long before video games were a part of the home entertainment system. If you were a good gamer you got your quarter's worth of time and then some. If not you needed lots of quarters or you would not be playing very long. An idea took shape that in video gaming you invested money to be rewarded in time. That idea has stayed through the years. I think that is what the so-called replay value is about. It stems from the notion that a game's function is first and foremost to help us pass time. And though we may not have to pop quarters in every ten minutes anymore, we do have to pay hefty amounts for the system and the software. Economics cannot help but remain a factor especially given the age bracket most gamers fall into. But in the end that is all it is: economics. You may very well play through ICO just once a year. That is a sound financial reason not to purchase the game. It is not a sound reason to detract from its intrinsic worth. It does not keep ICO from being someone's fondest and fullest memory of a game.

Speaking of intrinsic worth, let us return to it. I apologize for digressing, but I felt it was necessary before we could place the puzzles in the proper context. I do not want anyone to suppose that I think the puzzles unimportant. On the contrary I think they are the muscles of the game. What I want to emphasize is that these muscles are meant to do two distinct sets of work. The first and more obvious set is of the conventional sort, which applies to any puzzles. We solve them because they are fun and because they help us pass time pleasantly. But is that all the puzzles do in ICO? I must say no. I have already given my reason: a puzzle is no longer a puzzle once it is solved. And since every task in ICO has exactly one prescribed solution, it is pointless to go back and try to work it out differently. By this logic ICO's puzzles ought to lose all capacity to entertain once the game has been completed. But at least for me that is hardly the case. That I have exhausted all technical possibilities in the game but my thought continues to dwell on it and be fascinated by it, tells me that its real strength is not in puzzle solving. Depending on our approach the experience can retain a great deal of their potency. That is where the second set of work, the narrative work, comes in.

And that is what I will be back with.