#shadow of the colossus

maeka:

久しぶりに

maeka:

久しぶりに

questions-within-questions:

The audience responce to The Last Of Us 2 still fascinates me to this day. The ciritism is that the narrative chews out your characters for making choices you, the player, had no agency in.

And it’s a fascinating critism because it can only come from a video game?

Like we don’t and can’t take it so personally when a book’s narrative punishes a protagonist for enacting violent revenge. We can’t say “hay it’s not fair that my protagonist is facing consequences for a decision I had no ability to stop” because that doesn’t make sense - we don’t expect to be given the option to have Hamlet not try to kill his way to justice.

But then I think about it more… if when playing The Last Of Us, you were repeatedly given the option to not start, or even abandon, the revenge quest, it would feel genuinly out of character for the protagonists to do that. The narrative is written well and it makes sense that the protagonists feel like they have to do this awful thing.

But it’s still unpleasant because the narrative does have us empathise with the protagonists who are powerelssly forced to make mistakes. And this isn’t an uncommon thing in “challenging” fiction. But TLoU 2 raises the question of this experience even WORKS in the video game medium.

Like, it might not be possible to make a good video game tragedy.

Funny thing, I watched TLoU 2 as a video and it was popping in that format.

I haven’t played TLoU2 (or TLoU1, though I watched Games as Literature’s analysis of it), so I don’t have a dog in that race, but Shadow of the Colossus is my go-to for videogame tragedies.

It works for me because I can put myself in the protagonist Wander’s shoes and say “Yeah he made some bad decisions, but they’re exactly the same kinds of bad decisions I would’ve made in his situation,” it seems to work for other people because they can say “I understand why the antagonist opposes this guy and I’m glad he got comeuppance in the end,” and it seems to work for everyone who likes it because the vast majority of players felt bad about killing most of the Colossi, at least on their first run.

It creates this interesting disconnect between the player and Wander because it’s not clear what, if anything, Wander himself thinks of killing the Colossi. He’s a nearly silent protagonist, so players can project anything from “he feels bad about it but considers it a necessary evil for a greater good” to “he doesn’t give two damns about them” on him.

I wonder if it’s a question of being unable or unwilling to approach the story the game is telling on its own terms, as being told about someone who is not the player. I also wonder if the way it was delivered (which I again have no direct experience with) made that a harder sell for some folks. Shadow of the Colossus is very hands-off and never directly scolds the player for Wander’s actions, just presents them as happening. The closest is when the antagonist tells him he’s been used, and this antagonist is easy (for me at least) to read as distrustful - I didn’t feel inclined to agree with his assessment of the situation, so it didn’t sting when he said that.