![]() It oozes atmosphere through its visuals and soundscapes, but also via a number of clever design choices, such as the camera system. You’ll sit and wonder, “Where the hell even is this place? Who built it? And where did they all go?” You’ll see the sun bouncing off the distant cliffs as the birds soar across the sky, listen to the piercing breeze, and for a moment, you’ll swear you can almost feel it. You’ll gaze out across the impossible bridge that leads to the distant mainland and feel hopelessly trapped, lost, and alone. Its purposeful arrangement of interconnected rooms, chambers, courtyards, and bridges all make for an unparalleled sense of place, and as you delve deeper into its heart, you’ll climb high atop its battlements, see its walls sprawling off into the distance, and look back on towers that you’ve already scaled. It’s not simply a hodgepodge of fragmented, claustrophobic rooms, or a linear series of closed-off, one-and-done areas with invisible walls, hastily pieced together. It doesn’t hide behind smoke and mirrors. Everything about its design, construction, and implementation is so staggeringly perfect that it genuinely feels like a place that exists in the real world. For a game that’s literally about holding hands, ICO couldn’t be much less of a handhold-y experience.Įxploring the castle is instantly captivating. You simply wake up within its dungeons, and are left to your own devices to uncover its mysteries. There’s no 20-hour pre-amble leading up to a dramatic siege. You aren’t told of its existence through hushed legend or passed-down tales. ![]() It’s simply the most believable video game world I’ve ever inhabited. Thankfully, history has looked kindly upon its more subtle sensibilities, and it’s since gone on to become a cult classic, a defining game of its era, and one of the most influential games of all-time.ĭark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki said it awakened him to “the possibilities of the medium”, acting as the catalyst for him to pursue a career in game development, while Guillermo del Toro heralded it as a “masterpiece”. It was pretty, it was unique, but it wasn’t – mechanically speaking – anything that couldn’t have been done before. Its use of keyframe animation and bloom lighting was certainly impressive for the time, but its development roots were firmly planted in the PS1 era. ![]() ICO, for all of its incredible qualities, was none of those things. They were bigger, flashier, more cinematic, and far more ambitious than anything that had been attempted during the previous generation. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2, Grand Theft Auto III, and Devil May Cry were incredible showcases of the recently-released PS2’s power. Regrettably, though, that originality turned out to be to its detriment simply put, ICO lacked the blockbuster appeal of 2001’s heavy hitters. In that sense, Ueda and his team succeeded there was truly nothing like ICO on the market at the time. I also had this feeling that the gameplay needed to be simple.” Whatever genre or type of game I made, I knew I wanted to do something unique. ![]() “I wanted to create something no one had ever created. What remained was beautiful simplicity – a boy and a girl, holding hands.
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