Talking Ico: Part 2 - A Ghostly Beauty - Video Game Chat Fansite

Ah, Princess Yorda--that enigmatic, aloof, captivating maiden! Some seem to find the passivity of her character frustrating and even infuriating, but apart from her alleged flaws it is rather obvious that any lasting pathos of ICO is to be credited entirely to this soft-spoken damsel. Without her we should have a good-looking puzzle game. With her presence we have got a tale that pulls at our heart long after the puzzles have ceased to amuse. But I am getting ahead of myself. We still have not got Ico out of his prison.

So that hapless boy has been abandoned in the crypt by some diabolical design. The exact nature of this design we do not yet know, except that it has driven the knights to the outrageous act of entombing a child alive. (The manual's synopsis explains why, but remember we are assuming our ignorance and taking things as they come on the screen.) After the knights leave Ico tries to break out of the stone casket. The masonry beneath is crumbling, probably from age, and this causes the sarcophagus to topple and burst open. Out tumbles Ico who promptly knocks himself out.

Next follows a brief sequence that may only be described as a dream or a vision. Ico is walking along a spiral path inside a tower. A storm rages outside the windows. He is startled to see something. A dark cage of iron hangs from the ceiling. A mysterious black substance begins to pool at the bottom of the cage, overflowing to drip. From the pool emerges a slender figure--so completely black that it seems a shadow come to life. It sits there limp and unmoving in the cage while the boy watches transfixed. A shadow opens up behind him and swallows him whole. He awakens from the vision on the chamber floor. Things are getting stranger by the minute.

The game is finally in our hands. Before we take leave of the crypt we might as well explore it a bit. The chamber is filled with dozens of sarcophagi like Ico's own. Presumably each one has been the end of an innocent victim. If we were allowed to peek inside we might perhaps glimpse the ghastly remnant of the atrocities that took place therein. Thankfully the game does not go that far. At one end of the crypt is a door of statues just like the one that the knights had opened with the magic sword, but it is inaccessible. So Ico leaves through the door at the opposite end. He passes through a nondescript room adjoining the crypt, and finds himself at the bottom of a very, very tall tower.

The only way out of the tower is, again, a door that requires the magic sword. He does not have the magic sword. He is doomed. But let us examine this door first, since we will be seeing a great many of them soon. It is made of four (usually two) identical statues, each of which contains a smaller statue inside. This latter is in the shape of a crouching horned child who hugs his knees, head buried despairingly in his arms. It bears an eerie resemblance to our boy; it is as if he were himself turned into stone and put inside the door. We are now doubtless that the castle is somehow connected with Ico's horns. With that thought behind us let us climb the tower. After all there is nowhere else we can go.

The tower begins to look familiar as we near the top. We have seen this place in Ico's vision. Does it have the cage hanging from the ceiling also? Sure enough, there it is. Does it likewise have the same black figure within? There we are surprised. Crouching inside the cage is a young girl of almost blinding pallor. Ico calls out to her but she is unresponsive. She looks, in a word, miserable. Before lowering her down to freedom, take a careful look at her posture. It is the mirror image of the horned child inside every statue-door. The only difference is that she has no horns. Meanwhile the view from the terrace by the cage confirms the boy's fear--outside, a blue ocean stretches as far as the eyes can trace, offering no means of escape. If he is to leave the castle his only choice is to find a way back to the shore whence he came.

And so the two children are introduced to each other, after a fashion. Ico does not know it, but she is the only friendly soul he will see in the castle. Who knows?--perhaps she is the only friendly soul he has ever known. It would not surprise us if she is.

I have only a few more things to say on this first meeting. The children speak different languages and are unable to understand each other. From the boy's bumbling attempt at self-introduction we finally gather that he has been brought to the castle as a sacrifice, an evil fate reserved for children with horns. Of the girl's speech all we can discern is that she speaks the language of the castle. We know this because her speech is spelled in characters identical to the inscriptions we have seen on the elevator and on the caskets. The girl must therefore belong to whatever civilization that built the castle. Unlike Ico who was brought in from the outside, she must be from this place originally. Ico does not know this yet but we do. And while we are talking about things he does not know, let us go a little farther. From our second run through the game we understand the girl's speech. Her first words to her rescuer are: "Who are you? How did you get in here?" What do these words tell us about her, if anything at all? Well, they tell us that even though she lives at the castle she is dreadfully uninformed about what goes on in it. She appears to know nothing about the horned children and the practice of sacrificing them. Keep this in mind because this ignorance of hers will be important later as we try to understand what she is about.

The maiden displays touchingly guileless curiosity about her liberator, but the moment is cut short by the sudden appearance of a hideous demon. This newcomer looks rather like the entity from Ico's dream; it too is wholly black and rises out of nowhere. It seems to have one aim in mind: claiming the girl. Ico will not have that, so the liberator becomes the protector. He decides to get himself and his newfound companion out of this terrible place. His altruism yields an unexpected benefit: the girl can open the statue-doors. In a heartbeat she goes from a tagalong to an indispensable ally. Curiously enough she seems surprised by her own ability. (At least that is what I think; you can observe her open the door for the first time and judge for yourself.) How does she do this? We will have a fairly convincing answer eventually, but for now let us concentrate on the obvious. If the magic sword can open the doors, and the girl can open the doors, then the likeliest explanation is that the two of them share a certain pertinent property. Let us leave it at that for the time being.

With the aid of the girl's power Ico leaves the northern island. The pair now faces the main keep where the bulk of their adventure and toil will take place. The demons lurk everywhere. They only want the girl, but they will fight Ico if he proves a hindrance. And that brings this section to a close. To review what we know so far regarding the mysterious beauty: (1) she seems to have a bearing on the vision Ico had; (2) she has been imprisoned for some time; (3) she speaks the language of the castle; (4) she is in danger of being captured by shadowy demons; and (5) she shares the magic sword's ability to open the statue-doors. To this we may tentatively add: (6) she seems to be rather ignorant of the goings-on at the castle and (7) she seems at least amenable to the idea of escape since she cooperates with the boy's lead. To all these we shall return as more information becomes available.

Next we will shift our attention to the castle and try to clarify the puzzles' relevance to the narrative--if they have any.