ICO Preview
Read about Sony's hidden first-party gem.
ICO is the first-party Sony title that has gotten the least amount of attention from the North American media. Ironically, it is perhaps the console giant's most interesting game. Much of this is definitely Sony's own fault. The clever adventure has enjoyed nary a push from the company's advertising department, and members of the press have only recently (about a month before the game is due to ship) gained access to full playable copies.
And it's a shame. This is precisely the type of game that gets heralded as a sleeper hit, and, years after its initial, unappreciated release, a classic. The game is subtle, seamless, and engrossing, and it is, in many ways, the most visually interesting PlayStation 2 game yet to emerge. ICO stars a young boy (named Ico) with an odd mutation--growing from his head is a set of bull-like horns, and this has caused him all manner of trouble. See, every generation, a child is born in Ico's village with the aforementioned deformity. The people of the village maintain the brutal practice of banishing, and subsequently sacrificing, those very children. They're taken to a remote castle, in which they are locked and left to die.
The game begins with Ico being carted off to the castle by a gang of horsemen. Everything is depicted by means of a relatively nonintrusive in-game cinema, which serves as an exposition of the game's action and as an introduction to its inspired visual style. Sound is used subtly throughout the intro sequence, and the action spans many natural scenes. Halfway through, you're given a shot of the imposing structure in which the game is set: the frighteningly huge castle that Ico finds himself trapped in. After a series of shots depicting various details of the compound, the scene shifts to a body of water beneath and around the castle. Ico and the men who're transporting him are on skiffs, and they're languidly rowing. Ico himself sits dejectedly in the middle of one of the skiffs as the group approaches the landing. What follows is a series of scenes illustrating Ico's imprisonment in the castle's central chamber. The vault of the chamber in question is extremely high, and placed all around its walls are man-sized egg-shaped pods. The men--who used an enchanted sword to unlock a magically locked door--lead Ico into the chamber and lock him into one of the many pods, bidding him to not "think badly of them," as their actions are performed for the "good of the village." With his hands shackled to a block, Ico seems resolved to his fate, resolute as a man on the gallows. But then the ground begins to shake. The camera presents a view of the chamber outside of Ico's pod, which seems to be going through an odd metamorphosis--the ground beneath is actually rising, coming closer to Ico's isolated pod. All this crazy activity causes the foundation beneath the pod to buckle a bit, eventually tipping over. Ico manages to slip out before getting smashed by the heavy stone pod, though, very convincingly taking a spill on the stone floor, headfirst. He lies unconscious on the ground for a second, rocking his sacrificial wrap, before coming to. Once he's up, you're allowed a look at the game's focus: an enchanting, almost spectral young girl, whose interactions with Ico will set the tone for the game's pacing and define much of the action you'll engage in. Held in a giant birdcage-like cell way up above, the girl's form seemingly materializes out of shadows. Then, however, a very similar set of shadows animate on the wall behind Ico and cart him off. But not before allowing him a glimpse of the girl that he will invariably rescue.
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