Interview
Words of incredible wisdom
Chatting about Team ICO with Derek Littlewood

Last year, I was lucky enough to have Derek Littlewood, Project Lead at Free Radical Design chat a bit about two of his favourite games; ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.

Team ICO Games Magazine UK: In ICO the focus of gameplay was that of holding hands. Everything in the game revolved around this simple action - you, the player, taking care of an AI character by leading her through the various puzzles and battles scattered around the castle. This, subconsciously, made the player actually grow an attachment to Yorda. The same thing can be seen, to some extent, in Shadow of the Colossus with Agro. Do you think that there is still room for improvement and what can be done to take this ‘Player/AI’ connection to the next level?

Derek Littlewood: There’s still enormous room for improvement, but as far as good examples go, Yorda is still perhaps the best. It’s very interesting to look at why that’s the case though, because fundamentally the game mechanics that define your interactions with Yorda are nothing new - it’s about protecting an NPC. We’ve all played ‘protect the NPC’ missions in games before, and they’re usually a bit annoying, so what is it about Yorda that elevates her above these other examples?

For me, the main factor has to be her characterisation. On a very superficial level, her animation is absolutely superb, both on a technical level and in terms of artistic direction. Everything she does, from the slightest glance to her most energetic moments, exhibit the same nervous, vulnerable personality. If you lead her by the hand you feel almost sorry for rushing her, as she stumbles after you, and when you ask her to jump a gap, her halting, nervous steps as she approaches it makes your heart leap into your mouth every time, in fear that this time she’ll fail to make it. Imagine if she was able to navigate the environment effortlessly - it’d make you feel somewhat redundant. Everything about the way she moves and looks screams at you to protect her, and that’s a fundamental part of getting the player to connect with her.

There’s a slightly more subtle, but equally important aspect to her characterisation, too - she’s infinitely patient. She never complains, she never pesters - even when she’s under attack from shadow beasts she manages just the barest whimper as a call for help. And because she’s happy to let you do what you want, at your own pace, she never irritates. Pretty much every other NPC I’ve ever had to protect in a game has spent the entire time moaning at me, telling me I’m doing something wrong or bawling for help, and the usual result is that you’d rather let them get killed than have to listen to their incessant whining the whole time!

It’s impossible not to mention the mechanic of holding hands, too. Just as in Shadow of the Colossus, Fumito Ueda shows us that controls can be used to not only govern the player’s interaction with the world, but also to increase their involvement in it. By holding hands with her, our connection to her is visually communicated, and every time we press the button to take her hand, that connection is reinforced.

As for what could be done to take player/AI connection to the next level, I think there’s a lot that could be done. Much of what determines our connection to people in the real world is contained within the subtleties - a glance here, a touch on the shoulder there - and these are actions that even modern games are painfully ill-equipped to communicate, because our animation systems and control methods simply don’t have the complexity required to do so.

In the short term, it’d be nice to see more developers prioritising animation and characterisation to increase our involvement with their characters, and rather than simply relying on the fact that keeping a given NPC alive is the only way for the player to finish the level as a tool for making the player ‘care’ about the NPC, actually asking what it is about the character that the player will connect with, what it is that will make us care.

TIG: One of the things Shadow of the Colossus is best known for is its minimal approach to storytelling. Instead of assailing the player with cutscenes and plot details, the designer decided to leave almost everything up to the player’s imagination, making the game feel very personal. One of the reasons why there were only two instances where the player was given information as to what was happening (beginning and end), was that more cutscenes would just lessen the time the player has control over the main character. Do you think there is any way to find some sort of compromise where the player is actually briefed about what’s happening while still given control?

DL: Yes there is, it’s just incredibly hard to do. The problem with leaving the player in control the whole time is that the number of possibilities for what they could possibly be doing at any given time escalates at an exponential rate the longer you leave them alone. Cutscenes and narrative sequences generally need the player to be focusing on one event, or piece of information, at a certain time, but players quite rightly do whatever the hell they want whenever they’re in control and so that makes it very easy for them to miss what’s going on - which is why you see so many developers falling back on scripted cameras and control-free cutscenes.

I’m a firm believer that the story of a game is told as much by the player’s experiences in the game as by the narrative exposition in the game, and so personally I think a game world that is rich and interesting doesn’t necessarily need much in the way of ‘traditional’ storytelling to hold it together - as shown in Shadow of the Colossus. But at the end of the day, it all depends on the individual game - Final Fantasy games are always stitched together with lush, exciting cutscenes, and yes, this makes them more movie-like and non-interactive, but hey, movies are fun too!

TIG: Do you feel that ICO and Shadow of the Colossus influenced you in any way?

DL: Absolutely. As both a gamer and a developer, I’m strongly of the belief that every good game contains lessons I can learn from, regardless of whether they share gameplay, narrative or thematic elements with a game I’m working on or not. So from that point of view, both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus have influenced not only what I’m working on now, but also will continue to influence every game I ever make.

But that said, there’s definitely an element of Shadow of the Colossus - the theme of exposing the player to the consequences of their actions, that HAZE touches upon, too.

The fascinating thing about Shadow of the Colossus is that it does something games rarely do - it lies to you. As gamers, we’re very used to carrying out the instructions we’re given, to achieve the goals we’re given, without questioning whether the result will be positive or not; we just assume it will be because we are succeeding at the game.

Videogames are funny like that - real life is rarely so reliable in delivering a defined result of a series of actions, yet in a game we always expect it. And Shadow of the Colossus plays upon this by not only promising something that it doesn’t deliver (in terms of plot resolution), but actually places the player in the position of having caused a negative resolution to the plot because of their blind acceptance that they are doing the right thing.

In HAZE we explore a similar idea, in that we really wanted to put the player in the position partway through the game of asking ‘Am I doing the right thing? Am I even on the right side of this war?’, and as in Shadow of the Colossus, the lead up to that is all about reassuring the player, making them feel like they’re doing the heroic and right thing, before pulling the rug out from under them.

The idea of making the player think more about the consequences of their actions in a virtual environment is fascinating to me, simply because games are traditionally so consequence-free.

TIG: All we know about what Fumito Ueda and the team are working on right now is that they’re doing ’something.’ There was also the rumour that they might be developing not one but two games - one of which would be a PlayStation Network title. What are you expecting?

DL: Y’know, I have absolutely no idea. That’s what I love about it.

Cheers to Derek for his time.

Home | About | Articles | Features | Contact | Subscribe

In-house content © 2008 Team ICO® Games Magazine UK.
ICO® & Shadow of the Colossus™ © 2008 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.