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| The fairytale version reads like this: in late 2001, SCEI's ICO was published in Japan with little fanfare and even less expectation. A few days later the first western importers, whose buying habits are not dictated by taste, but by fervent desperation to 'be there first,' slipped the disc carefully out of its fetishistic Japanese packaging and into their pristine PS2's. Ten hours later they picked their jaws off the floor. To their surprise and delight, this time they'd hit the jackpot: they were there first for something really important. They were the first to experience the Emotion Engine as it was promised, the first to experience a pivotal moment in videogaming's evolution.
From here, everything would be different, because everyone, everyone, would know ICO, and it would surely shape gaming's future. Why? Not because of what ICO was - a delicately weighted hybrid of puzzle game and platformer that set out to do something quite simple and did it with elegance. Nor because of how ICO's faultless world was constructed - minimalist, delicately ethereal, but with so much solidity in its stone-sculpted castle walls that it didn't seem like level design, but architecture. Nor was it really down to the premise - 'escape the castle and save the girl' had kept videogaming in stock storylines forever, though never had it been more tactfully executed than here. ICO's magic wasn't quantifiable, and still isn't. Call it maturity, or call it a soul. Reviewers knew they loved it, but couldn't tell people why. Eight out of ten be damned: ICO is still revolutionary, not in terms of easily expressed stripped-down mechanics, but in the way it makes players feel. It should have sold millions. The end. Of course, there was no fairytale. ICO didn't sell millions. Despite being all of those things and more, despite the soul, it didn't get the one thing that really counts: commercial success. Everyone who bought it loved it, but so few people bought it in the first place. How could the game herald the dawn of a brave new world of emotion-led gaming - emotion that wasn't fear or hate or terror - if no one saw it? Does being the first even matter if no one knows? As minimal stocks became bargain-bin fodder, the importers moved on to finding new firsts, and the oh-my-bleeding-heart critics wept for the death of originality, then returned to evangelising guns and ammo. Plus ca change... |
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| If the ICO team wasn't to change gaming, perhaps gaming would change the ICO team. Fumito Ueda, director of the first game, knew that things had to be different on his new project. "With ICO, it was one of our intentions to make it a critical success," he explains. "On the other hand, the balance might have been too much towards the critical side, including our marketing activity, so that is one of the points we had to review. We wanted to make the new project with more popular appeal." Besides, it'd be difficult to create the same cultural shockwaves with a linear follow-up: "For ICO-like game design, I think that ICO is the culmination. And frankly, although I think that it is possible to exceed the quality level of ICO with the same sort of content, I figured we can't make a bigger impact than ICO did."
As such, ICO 2 - as we'll call it here even though it's only a working title, the game also being known as 'NICO' and 'Wanda and Colossus' at various points in its development - isn't a straight sequel. Thematically, though, it's instantly recognisable. If you consider ICO a classic fairytale brushed in a palette of washed-out greys and greens, you'll be immediately at home in the stonewashed fields of ICO 2. "The game design itself has changed a lot, but visually it is similar because we are using the same designer," confirms Ueda. So far, so pretty. But Ueda's proclamations that the game design has changed aren't lightweight. For a start, ICO 2'a (new, as yet unnamed) hero has no Yorda-style companion. "It's no exaggeration to say that Yorda is the main character of the game ICO," muses Ueda on one of videogaming's new icons. "As a game designer, I have always thought that way. Giving life to Yorda, giving her appeal and presence, was the key to ICO's design success. To protect a non-playable character, like Yorda, and lead her along the way, that was something that was completed in the game design of ICO. But, as a game designer, I'm not as interested in that now. I'm more interested in challenging new aspects." So, in search of a new challenge, Ueda shuns the confines of companion-driven castle exploration for something spectacularly different. In ICO 2, the player rides horseback across a vast tract of open countryside, hunting huge, towering monsters. Silhouetted against the horizon, the creatures are shambling giants carved from giant blocks of stone. There are many different types - we've seen at least 12, ranging from gothic armadillos the size of a tank to skyscraper-tall masonry-ribbed men and mammoth rock dragons - and they are variously intimidating, powerful, magical and ancient. The creatures are ICO 2's core. "We thought that we should avoid creating stereotyped creatures that are commonly used in videogames," says Ueda. "So, for general monster concept design we tried to blend uncommon and common motifs, like taking a building and a real-life animal, or a mask from an ancient tribe and a different animal. We're trying to create creatures that not only convey the impression of simple terror but also mysteriousness, oddness." The creatures are also ICO 2's most concrete link to its predecessor. The physical challenge in the first game was in conquering a castle through logic, dexterity and spatial awareness. Here, the challenge is the same, with the giant monsters acting as huge, moving castles. The player must use acrobatics and timing to climb their way up, across or around the monster's body to reach its weak point and attack. The size isn't just superficial. Every part of the enemy is a part to be explored, as Ueda reveals: "Huge monsters appear in many videogames, but I think the creation of those monsters was a part of presentation. The monsters' bodies are a part of the fields you have to conquer, so monster design and level design are closely related." Climbing a moving surface is clearly a dynamic task, forcing the player to constantly react to new angles and new situations. At some points the hero thrusts his sword deep into his foe's hide, not to attack, but for extra grip. Early versions of the code feature an on-screen friction meter, which indicates how well the hero is holding on to the shifting surface. The meter may not make it into the final game, but that - and other (conceivably placeholder) on-screen furniture, like health bars and the diagrams that reveal the enemy's weak points - reveal another change in philosophy which may upset ICO purists. "In ICO, the reason why we didn't indicate any bars or maps was not only because we wanted to cut off all things that may be in the way of emotional involvement, but because we wanted to make a clear differentiation with other games," says Ueda. "We didn't want to make it look like a videogame." "However, on the other hand, this restricted us in many respects, including game design. This time, we have released all those constraints and are creating a very neutral status. If those indications are necessary to make the game more fun, we will include them. If they aren't necessary, we won't. There may be such maps and bars, and maybe not." |
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| Another element which may be of concern to some is the camera: ICO 2 is switching from the beautifully handled fix perspectives of the first game to a potentially troublesome type of third-person view. Ueda's team has handled the change pragmatically. "There's almost no fixed camera system like the kind used in ICO," he says. "Since the main character freely moves around in 3D space, the camera is set right behind. However, because of where the camera is set up, screens tend to be too flat and symmetrical. So we sometimes try to displace the position of the camera slightly to break the monotony."
Above all that, anything else is speculation. Partly because Ueda is reticent when it comes to plot and gameplay specifics, but also because ICO 2 is still at a flexible stage of development, and things can change when you've got as organic an attitude to game design as his team. For example, it's undecided how the combat sequences will be linked, although it seems there's some freedom of choice on the part of the player, the 'hub' of the landscape being a central building called Hokora. The game universe appears to be same, too, although Ueda refuses to talk about how the two games connect ("No comment, please. All we can tell you now is that we're not thinking of this as a sequel"). Despite that, the inky black evil that pervades the first game can be witnessed flooding from the quivering bodies of downed creatures. Early code shows tantalising glimpses of a small group of boys riding rings around a lumbering, three-storey-high monster. A boy, a red poncho, a helmet, two horns... Yes, it's early code, but maybe, just maybe... |
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| You can speculate further. Creating a startling follow-up to such an impressive debut was never going to be easy, but the team has taken a brave route, sidestepping ICO's legacy by creating something new. Ueda says the biggest challenge, technically, was creating the technology required to let the player move their way around complex dynamic surfaces. More than issues of mechanical design, though, his answer is much more revealing. The most difficult thing about designing ICO 2? "To be released from the spell of ICO. In a good way."
That's the biggest problem Sony will have, and the biggest problem ICO fans will have with the next generation of storytelling. There is no Yorda, no castle, no primitive stick combat with creatures you used to dream lived under your bed. There is no reason we will find out what happened, no reason we'd want to. There's no room for a straight ICO sequel and no point, since it was a dream, perfect, shining, self-contained and now over. But that game can still have its fairytale ending. If Ueda and his team achieve what they've set out to - if ICO 2 is as big a critical success as its older brother, if it successfully transports the essence of the original into a completely new dynamic, and if, if, that big, ugly, beautiful if, it succeeds at retail - then ICO becomes relevant again, and gaming can start to learn everything about storytelling, maturity and the soul, everything it should have learned the first time around. Until then, we close the book, and wait. |
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