[Guitar Woman]

Finally got Ico. I like to claim that graphics aren't everything, but playing Ico made me realize they actually count for a whole goddamn lot. If characters in a game look and move like real people would, it helps the world come to life, and even today with all of our fancy billions of polygons on screen not enough games take advantage of this. Ico is a first generation PS2 game, for fuck's sake, and it's quite a bit more visually stunning than a lot of current-gen games I've played. I wasn't not expecting this, since Shadow of the Colossus is a game that I consider perfect in nearly every way it is possible to be perfect, visuals being no small exception, but it's still pretty impressive how something as simple as, say, having Yorda and Ico hold hands while she's in standard "Escort character following" mode is just instantly more powerful an image than it would have been if she'd just been tagging behind you like, say, Ashley and Leon. They also made a point of having her run slightly slower than Ico, making it look like she's struggling to keep up as he pulls her along; that, plus her habit of looking curiously at unimportant pieces of scenery, and her default posture, implies all sorts of things, like fear, confusion, uncertainty, and most importantly, a growing sense of trust for Ico/the player, who she follows despite them constantly pulling her into all sorts of hazardous shit. With Ashley, I felt like I was just protecting her because I wouldn't be able to finish the game otherwise; In Ico I feel like I have to protect Yorda because I'll come off as a complete bastard if I don't. All of this is communicated through the default walk-cycle animations.

Oh, and actually playing the game is pretty neat as well. It's like The Sands of Time without any wire-fu tomfoolery. I dunno if I like it as much as Shadow yet, but it is quite good.