Ico

Hands—the connection (usually) between player and video game. Most video games have you using them to handle the controller, to then control a character, which in turn is probably also using their hands to do something. Hands are where a lot of verbs come into play, and while video games are often an avenue to explore actions outside our everyday, namely violent actions—punching or using a gun, there’s something special when the verb connects to a very relatable or intimate action. In some ways, the fantastical is the norm in the virtual space, and it feels exceptional when our everyday is mirrored.¹

How many games allow you to hold a hand?

In Ico, the player character, named Ico, is guiding Yorda, a girl he encounters in a castle, by holding her hand and pulling her along. There’s a language barrier (and maybe a species barrier), but the handholding creates a bridge. Like the bridge between the player and Ico, it takes a bit of time to familiarize each other with the language of the world. We learn how to move, how buttons work, how the world we’re now immersed in functions.²

In its simplest terms, Ico is one big escort mission³; and yet the game does not have the same sense of frustration found in some of these other games. While Yorda does occasionally make a perplexing move or two, Ico’s relationship with Yorda, and how the game itself positions the player shifts the perception of this game type.

While escort missions are often a break from the power fantasy, a break from running and gunning or when the objective is solely on protecting yourself and eliminating threats, in Ico, that is the whole mission. Ico is trapped in a castle, disoriented from everything he’s familiar with, and vaguely aware of a looming threat from a queen. His weapon of choice for most of the game are just sticks, and while they work well enough to eliminate the shadows, you don’t really become stronger, nor do the looming shadows ever seem any weaker. You might be learning strategies, but the game is not invested in making Ico feel any more powerful. So when the shadows strike, they fit in with the overall existential threat of that in which the game resides in; the stress has a sense of place.

Meanwhile in many escort missions of other games, the frustration comes from the sharp contrast of being a one-person army demolishing any opposition into quick failure screens where a character out of your control gets caught by a stray bullet. The sense of power and control is immediately evaporated, in a way that feels unearned, and that is disorienting and frustrating.⁴

Ico spends the time formulating a bond. You meet Yorda very early in the game, and she is not only a constant companion, but the only non-hostile force presented in the game. Ico might be protecting her⁵, but she provides the incentive to keep going. This is opposite of most escort missions where the player is usually motivated by something external before the escort mission pops up and creates a distraction from the goal.

Perhaps the priorities are best summed up in the brief moments of serenity found in the game’s save spots. After a tough encounter or a confusing puzzle, there is a bench in the grass. It’s a save spot that Ico and Yorda sit in, and then a calm, whimsical tune starts to play. It’s such a sharp contrast from the music-less, large, hallow halls that you are usually traversing, where the only sound is usually the howling wind, or the urgent sound of looming shadows. These benches become an oasis, not only a relief, but a true place of peace. Ico is not a game about fighting shadows or even saving the day, Ico is about these moments. How can we find peace when the threat is still at large, how can we find a moment of sweetness when you are trapped by an all-consuming entity? A lesson in taking the glimmers of utopia in a reality far from it, to soak up the sun while it still rises, to cherish the connections made along the way—not just the nodes at the end.