Ico

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Ico (Japanese: イコ, pronounced "ee-ko") is a 2001 action-adventure game exclusively released for the PlayStation 2. The game was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. The game did not sell well in North America upon its release, but was one of the most-honored titles of 2002 in the major game industry awards. As pronounced this way, its name is a pun in Japanese: it means "Let's go".

Synopsis

The player of the game takes on the role of Ico, a young boy born with a pair of horns, who must escort a princess named Yorda safely out of a castle without her being captured by the shadowy figures that prowl the castle or being killed by the castle's numerous environmental hazards. Despite selling only 650,000 copies worldwide, Ico received strong reviews, and has become a cult hit among video game enthusiasts.

Ico is noted for its highly individual artistic style. Key factors contributing to the game's absorbing atmosphere include the absence of any HUD; a bleak and washed-out use of color; low key use of in-game music, played only in selected scenes of the game; and atmospheric, ambient sound effects in the background. It makes effective use of minimal dialogue and story to forge strong emotional connections with the characters and environments in the game. It includes action, adventure and puzzle elements. The game also has a notable fictional language which has been theorized ^* to be backwards Japanese.

Story

The opening sequence of the game introduces the protagonist, Ico, a boy born with horns. Legend has it that when such a child is born, the boy must be sacrificed, or else the land will be smitten by a terrible curse.

Ico is taken by a handful of warriors to a castle, where they make their entrance by boat through a small cave. One of the warriors takes a magical sword from the cave that opens a door leading into a great hall. Inside, stone sarcophagi line the walls. The warriors reluctantly lock Ico inside one.

After the warriors leave, the exit is sealed. This trembling loosens the sarcophagus, and as Ico shifts inside it, it falls over, freeing him. He passes out and dreams of a long spiral staircase in a tall room. Outside the windows are dark storm clouds, and at the top of the room a cage hangs, holding a pitch black figure of a small girl sitting. As their eyes meet, Ico is consumed by shadows emerging from the wall behind him.

Ico wakes up later and eventually makes his way to the room he dreamt of. As he ascends the stairs, he sees the same cage, except now there is a pale girl, clad in white, inside it.

Ico frees the girl and they begin their journey, solving puzzles to progress through the castle. When they finally arrive at the open main gate, they set off happily for it. As they close in, however, the gate begins to close. Ico rushes for the door, hand in hand with the girl. As they near it, the girl stumbles and falls. In a cloud of darkness, a huge figure appears. The dark figure is the queen of the castle and reveals herself as the girl's mother. She tells her daughter: "Yorda, why can't you understand? You cannot survive in the outside world." Her appearance makes it clear that she controls the shadow monsters in the castle. The queen then disappears. The doors stay shut, so the couple seeks another way out of the castle.

After another puzzle-filled journey, Ico and Yorda manage to reach the bridge to leave the castle. The queen reappears and retracts the bridge, separating Ico and Yorda. Ico, determined to save Yorda from the castle, jumps the gap back toward the castle. He doesn't jump far enough but Yorda catches his hand. As she tries to help him onto the ledge, a dark shadow creeps over the landscape, petrifying Yorda. Ico has to let go of Yorda's hand, plunging downwards, towards the sea.

Once Ico recovers he awakens on one of the cages suspended from chains underneath the retracted bridge. After a long journey all the way back to the northern part of the castle, he finds the very cave where the warriors took him. The magic sword is in the same place. The warriors must have put the sword back after they used it to open the doors.

Ico enters the hall with the sarcophagi, to find the petrified Yorda displayed as a statue. Shadowy ghosts of previously imprisoned horned children appear and every time Ico defeats one of them, one of the sarcophagus's magic symbols glow. A stairway that leads out of the hall appears. The stairway leads the boy into a large, seemingly abandoned throne room.

The room appears empty, however when Ico decides to leave, the queen's voice calls him. When Ico turns back to see where the voice came from, the queen sits on her throne. Angry, Ico demands to know what the queen has done to Yorda. The queen replies that it is too late anyway and reveals her plans. The queen is aging and she wants to grant herself another life by seizing Yorda's body. Ico, desperate to undo what has been done, runs at her with his sword drawn. A battle follows, the magic sword shielding Ico from the queen's magic attacks. Finally Ico manages to reach the queen and plunge the sword into her heart. With her final breath, the queen tells Ico that Yorda will never leave the castle. In a magic blast the queen disappears and the castle begins to crumble. Ico is hurled by the blast all the way across the hall and is knocked unconscious.

The sarcophagi start to glow and bolts of magic energy break the curse that petrified Yorda. Yorda however is no longer pale, but dark like the shadows that had tried to kidnap her. She quickly understands what has happened and seeing that the castle is crumbling around her she decides to rescue Ico as he rescued her. She brings Ico to the boat in the cave where the warriors first landed. She chooses not to join him. Ico's boat is then shown floating away from the crumbling castle. Before the whole castle collapses into the ocean, the strange door guardians are shown glowing intensely.

Later Ico awakens, finding his boat washed upon a beach. He travels along the coast until he finds Yorda inexplicably washed up on the shore. No longer black and shadow-like, Yorda is dressed in white like when they first met, yet her face and body have more color then her original extremely pale skin. As Ico approaches her, her fingers curl and she slowly opens her eyes, whispering something, but no subtitles are given. The game ends there.

Characters

Ico

Voiced by Kazuhiro Shindou.

The game's protagonist. Ico is a boy born with horns and is taken out to a castle as a sacrifice since the people of his village see children with horns as a bad omen. Apparently many children born with horns were sacrificed before him.

Yorda

Voiced by Reiko Takahashi.

Yorda is the girl Ico encounters in the castle. Yorda is part of the castle, so her magic powers enable her to open magic doors. She is held captive by her mother inside the castle, it appears that she has no knowledge of the outside world.

The Queen

Voiced by Misa Watanabe.

The Queen is a classic evil fairytale witch. She holds her own daughter – Yorda – captive in the immense castle. She controls a magic dark force. She resembles Yorda slightly, only she is shrouded with the shadows of the wraiths that Ico fights.

Influence

The gameplay in Ico is often compared to a 3D updating of that found in the original Prince of Persia. Interestingly, a washed-out soft lighting visual style, similar to the distinctive style of Ico, was later used in the critically acclaimed The Sands of Time, a sequel to Prince of Persia whose very production may have been inspired by the cult following Ico picked up.

Since then, the "soft lighting" graphic style has been used in a number of games, from first-person shooter titles like Project Snowblind to stealth games like Metal Gear Solid 3 to Seven Sorrows, as well as Shadow of the Colossus (see below), which was created by the same team of designers as Ico.

Regional variations

Cover Art Comparison

There are major differences between the releases of the game in different locales. The US version was rushed to release to meet an early shipping deadline and as such misses features present in the EU and Japanese releases, such as expanded dialogue (on a second playthrough the subtitles that were indecipherable runes the first time through are now translated) and the option to have a second player control the princess. Another second playthrough bonus is a secret weapon which resembles a lightsaber from Star Wars. There were also a few changes, tweaks and additions made to the game itself, such as the shadow generation points. Most notably, the Waterfall puzzle is more complex in the Japanese and European versions than the US version. The US and Japanese versions were also released in CD-ROM format, while the European version came on a DVD-ROM.

Awards

2002 Game Developers Choice Awards

Excellence in Level Design
Excellence in Visual Arts
Game Innovation Spotlights

2002 5th Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Achievement Awards

Original Game Character of the Year
Nomination in Game Design
Nomination in Level Design
Nomination in Visual Arts
Game Innovation Spotlights

Others:

IGN Editors Choice 09/25/2001 ^*
Official US PlayStation Magazine The Annual Ico Award For Ico
Penny-Arcade: Best Use Of Smoky Shadow Guys Who Try To Steal Your Princess Who Might Be Blind Or Something We're Not Really Sure (Game of the Year 2001) ^*
Electronic Gaming Monthly in their list of the greatest 200 games of their time listed Ico at number 121.

Successors

Shadow of the Colossus

A successor from the same studio, with an atmospheric style similar to that of Ico, was released in October 2005 in North America and Japan; its Japanese title is Wanda to Kyozou which may be translated roughly to "Wander and the Colossus" or (literally) "Wander and Giant Statue". The game is titled Shadow of the Colossus in the United States and Europe. Based on many ambiguous yet deliberate references hidden througout Shadow, some believed that Ico's "spiritual successor" is actually a prequel to the game.

On March 9, 2006, Fumito Ueda, the creator and lead designer of both games confirmed that Shadow of the Colossus is indeed directly connected to Ico and that both take place in the same universe. ^*

Re-release

The game was highly sought after by gamers - the European limited cardboard sleeve edition occasionally fetching from 50 to 80 GB Pounds on eBay. Ico was re-released on 17th February 2006 in PAL territories ^* to tie in with the release of Shadow of the Colossus - Ico's spiritual successor - to enable gamers to "fill the gap in their collection", according to Sony.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, composed by Michiru Oshima, was released in Japan by Sony Music Entertainment. The CD is titled "ＩＣＯ: Ｍｅｌｏｄｙｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　Ｍｉｓｔ" (「ＩＣＯ」～霧の中の旋律～, Iko~kiri no naka no senritsu~). The last song of the CD (ＩＣＯ～Ｙｏｕ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｔｈｅｒｅ～) is sung by former Libera member Steven Geraghty.

Track listing

ｐｒｏｌｏｇｕｅ
ｃｏｆｆｉｎ
ｉｍｐｒｅｓｓｉｏｎ
Ｃａｓｔｌｅ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　Ｍｉｓｔ
ｂｅｇｉｎｎｉｎｇ
Ｗｈｏ　ａｒｅ　ｙｏｕ？
ｄａｒｋｎｅｓｓ
ｈｅａｌ
Ｔｈｅ　Ｇａｔｅ
Ｑｕｅｅｎ
ｃｏｎｔｉｎｕｅ
ｄéｊà　ｖｕ
ｓｈａｄｏｗ
Ｅｎｔｉｔｙ
ｃｏｌｌａｐｓｅ
ＩＣＯ～Ｙｏｕ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｔｈｅｒｅ～

Novelization

In 2004 a novelization of Ico was released (ISBN here) in Japan. It was writen by the author Miyuki Miyabe because of her appreciation of the game. In its first week of release the book made the list of top ten best-selling books.

External links

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