Part One: Some Explanation and History

Part Two: The Tale Proper

I. The Beginning

in which we are introduced to the young hero

II. Entombment

in which his predicament is made apparent

III. A Ghostly Beauty

in which he discovers he is not alone

IV. Some Thoughts on the Puzzles

in which the next three chapters are introduced

V. A Magnificent Prison

in which the castle's role is discussed

VI. Reluctant Explorers

in which the pair's quest is defined

VII. Companions

in which the nature of their companionship is

defined

VIII. The Mistress of the Keep

in which Ico is forced to make an unpleasant

acquaintance

IX. Reorienting

in which the recent revelation places all in a new

light

X. The Gate Once More

in which the children stand on the verge of

freedom

XI. The Last Battle

in which the tale concludes

XII. Retrospect

in which we attempt to make sense of it all

XIII. Final Retrospect

in which we must make up our minds

Part Three: Art or No Art?

Part Four: Last Words and Acknowledgments

Webmaster's Notes: Resources and Technical Information

ICO fans are few in number not because few liked it but because few tried it. But I am

glad that those few have continued to talk about it and kept it from fading. Though

neglected it will never quite be forgotten. The thought is not satisfying but it is at least encouraging.

People often use words to describe ICO which they would not use for any other games,

perhaps even for those games they like better than ICO. Few ICO fans will go so far as

to declare it the best game ever made, but nearly all will agree it is a special experience

the likes of which they have not seen elsewhere and do not expect to see again for a

long while. The word special is to be stressed--not merely unique, not just odd, but

special. I do not want to belabor why it is special; if you agree with me you must already

know why, and if you don't I doubt I will be able to explain it to you. The following was

written for all those (including myself) who enjoyed ICO a great deal but had trouble

making sense of it. I wrote it because on the ICO message board at GameFAQs I saw the

same questions come up again and again. I often answered them but rarely liked my

own replies. The reason was that the questions were always treated out of context. I

tried whenever I could to establish a basic context before replying, and this tended to

make my posts rather lengthy. And after a few weeks the posts would be automatically

purged from the board, forcing me to repeat myself when similar questions were posed

later.

I decided therefore to write an annotation of sorts to the story from the beginning to the

end. I posted the first part on the aforementioned board on May 15, 2003 and concluded

it on August 25. In March of the following year I compiled the posts, with substantial

changes made to some places, into a plain text commentary. Both that commentary and

the original message thread are still available in the ICO section of GameFAQs. And now,

over two years after the first posting, the work is available in this pleasing new version thanks entirely to Clover's effort.

Let me clarify exactly what I am setting out to do. ICO is at once intriguing and

confusing because it insists on holding silence on its own narrative. It shows and

suggests enough to convince us that something big is going on but will not tell us what it

is. So I propose an exercise: I am going to take a walk through the story and point out

noteworthy elements that may help us make sense of what is happening. I will not be a

neutral observer; I will advance my thoughts on what I observe. I of course realize that

what is sense to me may well be nonsense to you. I make no pretense at authority; you

are welcome to disagree with me if you find my reasoning flawed or groundless. Nor do I

believe for one moment ICO cannot be enjoyed without some sort of post-mortem

examination. If you think an exercise of this sort will only spoil its charm, you should

dismiss it.

Allow me also to stipulate what this exercise is not. It is not meant to explain what

makes ICO such a fabulous game. I do believe it is wonderful entertainment, but my

knowledge about games, electronic or otherwise, is very shallow and I would not

consider it my business to debate what makes a game better than another. I will leave

that question to real aficionados. My attention is on the story, not the gameplay. Nor am

I trying to show why ICO is a great story. Again I do find the story charming, but I

assume you and I are agreed on that point and need not argue over it. I am not here

interested in how good a story it is. I am only interested in determining what the story

is.

As I said these posts were written over three months' time. I have revised them for

compilation, but I have left the journal-like expressions ("Last time I said...," "Today I

should like us to look at...") unchanged. Each segment will be marked with the date on which it was first posted.

One last thing: when I refer to the game title I will spell it as ICO in capital letters. Ico,

on the other hand, refers to the story's hero.

If you wish afterwards to discuss any part of this exercise, find me at the GameFAQs board or e-mail me at egmont76@hotmail.com.

PeterEliot

Let us agree on one thing before we begin. As we move along the story I want us to

assume for the talk's sake that we are seeing it unfold for the very first time. That is, I

want us to pretend that this is our first run through the game. In fact let us pretend that

we have not even read the introduction in the manual. In this exercise all our knowledge

about ICO comes from the screen and the screen alone. But if you have not completed the game yet, be kind to yourself and read no more until you have.

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(First posted 15 May 2003)

So let us talk about the opening sequence. It is long but like the rest of the game it contains little speech--all seventeen words. The opening still tells us quite a few things.

Because the modern audience is an impatient crowd, opening a story with an

unforgettable sequence or paragraph has become rather important. The storyteller wants

to make sure as far as he can that once the story begins the audience will feel driven to

see it to the end and not get off midway. A stock strategy of ensuring this is to drop the

audience in the middle of the action and leave them to figure out what is happening--to

forgo introduction and begin the story in the middle. Accordingly ICO plunges into the tale without showing us so much as a title screen.

The narrative opens with a view of a forest--green, lush and warmly lit by the sun, with

birds chirping in the trees. It is a beautiful, pristine landscape. As it happens it is the

only shot in the entire game wholly free of suspense or melancholy. We are shown next

a group of horsemen making their way through the forest. Evidently these are fighting

men, wrapped from head to toes in armors. Their beasts are burdened with traveling

articles, which tells us the men are on a journey of some distance. From their knightly garbs we may expect a distinctly Medieval flavor in the story that is about to unfold.

Impressive as they are the knights do not command our attention for long. A member of

the party stands out like a lamb amongst wolves: a young boy, seated before one of the

knights. Next to the ironclad frames of the men the boy is tiny, and conspicuously

unarmed. His puny form catches our eyes because his presence in this outfit does not

make sense. He is the only anomaly in an otherwise consistent pattern. Had someone

asked us a moment ago what we were seeing, we should probably have answered "a

party of knights on horseback." Now the answer might be "a little boy in a party of

knights on horseback." The child has completely got our attention. And he keeps it

through the opening. How could he not, when he is the only one in the company who has

a face? The knights are hidden behind iron masks, and barely distinguishable from one

another. They are thoroughly anonymous--faceless, nameless, and as we will soon learn,

without personalities relevant to the tale. They are instruments, not men; their job is to

fulfill a function and make themselves scarce so that the characters that do matter can get on with the story.

Our curiosity turns to alarm once we have observed the boy, which we can hardly help.

He raises his hands to wipe his brow in the heat of the sun, and we see that the hands

are bound. So he is not here because he wants to be; he is a captive. What is more, he

appears to sport a pair of bullhorns on his head. And these appear to be genuine unlike

the metal horns adorning some of the men's helmets. Who is this boy who looks

harmless enough apart from the oddities poking from his head? And where is he being

taken to against his will?

We find the answer soon enough. The forest path terminates and with it the land. The

ocean stretches before the party, and jutting from the waters is an island of singular

appearance--a colossal column of solid rock. A fortress sits on it half shrouded in the

morning mist. It dwarfs the men and the horses and the trees and everything else in

sight. The screen fades to the title shot. I should like to place the end of the prologue here.

Next part will treat the other half of the opening. In the meantime I hope I have aroused

your interest enough to stay with me the rest of the way. I would also like to mention

that I do not intend to go through every puzzle in the game like I did here. That would make this a walkthrough and not a very good one.

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(First posted 16 May 2003)

So the knights have brought the horned boy, Ico, to a mysterious offshore fortress. Well,

what is the deal with this fortress? We will not know for a good while but the opening affords us a number of things to observe about its mystery.

We left Ico and his captors gazing on the castle from a handsome if somewhat run down

stone platform, sporting Greek style colonnades, at the edge of a shoreside cliff. Next we

see that same platform from below. The camera traces the cliff down to the sea, where a

mean-looking wooden dock extends from the shore. The party, now horseless, crosses

the channel to the island on a very small boat. This ought to strike an observant viewer

as being rather odd. To explain let me show you some screen shots I have borrowed

from Vincent Lam's fine fan page.

You should recognize this shot from the title screen. Near the lower right corner is the

portico-like platform we just left behind. Here is another shot of much the same from a frontal view.

This shot presents the castle as Ico and the knights must have seen it from the cliff. In

both pictures we can plainly see the front gate, flung wide open. Now why would they

not enter through it? Why would they go to the trouble of climbing down the precipice

and braving ocean waves on a tiny boat you would not want for a fishing excursion on

the village lake? We of course know that the bridge is not yet available. But remember

that we are pretending to see all this for the first time without any prior knowledge

about ICO. Imagine, in fact, that you are the boy himself who just saw the castle for the

first time in his life. Would you not be surprised to see an open gate a hundred yards

ahead, only to learn that you are not to enter that way?--that a gate exists but it is

useless because there is no way for you or anybody to get to it? That the knights do not

have the option of using the main entrance and are forced to use a back door (if you

will) informs us that they are treading a territory not their own. They are setting foot on someone else's turf, someone evidently more powerful than they.

Now if you please, take one more look at the images above. Suppose now that a castle

just like this one actually existed somewhere. What about it would surprise you the most?

If you have an inkling of what it took to erect a castle a thousand years ago, the most

striking thing in these pictures is undoubtedly the geography. People simply did not build

a castle that big on that sort of terrain. For starters the island is hundreds of feet tall. It

is so steep that climbing it on foot would be a task only for daredevils. Imagine now

having to haul many millions of tons of bricks to the top of that island. And there isn't

just one island. There are four. I might have fancied the bricks came from the islands,

but another look at the castle suggests differently. The structure is so humongous that if

it was removed the mass of the islands would shrink by half. It occupies every available

square inch of the islands so that there is hardly any surface that is not built on. The

islands could not have supplied the needed quantity of materials. They do not even have

space enough to allow so massive a construction work. Medieval architects, who had no

mechanized cranes to raise stones to great heights, erected the frame for a castle by

first mounting up an artificial hill much broader than the finished edifice. That would not be a possibility here.

Now of course this castle is as fictional as the rest of the story. Such a fortress as this

does not exist and could not exist. It is quite silly to speculate how a nonexistent

building might have been built, since it never was built. I am only trying to impress upon

you that, granting for the story's sake that the castle existed, it would have to be a

staggering feat of engineering on the par with the pyramids in terms of labor involved. It

would leave us wondering who in the world built it. That is if human hands could build

something like that at all. But if not human hands then what? Would it be the work of

whomever the castle belongs to? If so that person must be, or must have been, a mighty

lord indeed.

Let us move on. I said that the castle stands on four islands. Here let me for a moment

waive my proposal that we use on-screen information only for our exercise. Below is a map of the castle which shows the layout of the islands.

The islands are arranged in an unnatural symmetry. The tiny strip of land at the bottom

is the shore from which the party sets out on the boat. Directly facing the shore is the

main keep, and to its left and right are the two buildings that house the "keys" for the

gate. The fourth and smallest island is at the top of the map. It is hidden from the view

ashore. Later we will see that this island is the heart of the fortress. It is also where our

boat is bound. The knights sail halfway round the islands and bring their prisoner to the

point farthest from the shore. A cavern opens into the island. Its entrance is marked by

rows of immense stone pillars that appear to be rooted in the seabed, another

remarkable feat. Some of the pillars are on the verge of collapse. Like from the ruinous

stone platform atop the cliff we get a sense that the castle, though majestic, has not

been terribly well cared for of late. The lattice barring the cavern is lowered and we are finally inside the island. The party stands directly underneath the castle.

"Get the sword," a knight in a pointy mask--it looks ominously like an executioner's cap-

-tells another man. The man departs with the order while the rest of the company leave

in the opposite direction. So the knights have not brought "the sword" with them, whatever it is. It was already here on the island--whatever it is.

Next we see the knight rejoin the company, having secured the sword. Here another

detail ought to strike us as curious, though we only see it briefly. Ico and the men are

presumably still in the bowel of the island. But the space surrounding them is not the

jagged and coarse interior of a natural cavern. They stand inside a vertical circular vault.

And it is gigantic--especially when we consider that it is underground. The island's rocky

core has been hollowed out like a macaroni noodle, yet another example of the awesome

labor that created the castle. Later we will have a far better opportunity to appreciate the scale of this vault.

The sword is unsheathed before a pair of statues at the center of the vault. An eerie

flash crackles and the statues part to reveal a recess. Inside is a sort of elevator which

takes the party to the crypt above. Now I admit that I did not like this elevator the first

time I saw it. It seemed much too mechanical--much too modern--and seemed out of

place in the ancient setting of the castle. I revised my opinion somewhat after

completing the game. For now the only thing about the elevator I want to note is the

switch that controls it. It is in the form of a glowing character whose meaning escapes

us. When thrown off the switch turns to form a different character, causing the platform to rise. What is that about?

The knights have reached their destination: a rounded chamber reminiscent of an arena.

Rows of stone caskets are arranged round the arena. One of them gapes open. The men

deposit Ico in it and close shut the lid. They bid the child farewell. Their words betray

that they do not enjoy what they do. Then they are gone. Ico is left alone inside the

casket. We see that strange characters are carved on it. They look much like the ones

we saw on the elevator and glow with the same cold blue light. The casket also features

two kneeling figures, their hands outstretched to each other. An arrow points from one

to the other as though a transfer of some sort is taking place. Make of that what you will, but here I stop. Next time we will look at Ico's first meeting with the princess.

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(First posted 18 May 2003)

Ah, Princess Yorda--that enigmatic, aloof, captivating maiden! Some seem to find the

passivity of her character frustrating and even infuriating, but apart from her alleged

flaws it is rather obvious that any lasting pathos of ICO is to be credited entirely to this

soft-spoken damsel. Without her we should have a good-looking puzzle game. With her

presence we have got a tale that pulls at our heart long after the puzzles have ceased to amuse. But I am getting ahead of myself. We still have not got Ico out of his prison.

So that hapless boy has been abandoned in the crypt by some diabolical design. The

exact nature of this design we do not yet know, except that it has driven the knights to

the outrageous act of entombing a child alive. (The manual's synopsis explains why, but

remember we are assuming our ignorance and taking things as they come on the

screen.) After the knights leave Ico tries to break out of the stone casket. The masonry

beneath is crumbling, probably from age, and this causes the sarcophagus to topple and

burst open. Out tumbles Ico who promptly knocks himself out.

Next follows a brief sequence that may only be described as a dream or a vision. Ico is

walking along a spiral path inside a tower. A storm rages outside the windows. He is

startled to see something. A dark cage of iron hangs from the ceiling. A mysterious black

substance begins to pool at the bottom of the cage, overflowing to drip. From the pool

emerges a slender figure--so completely black that it seems a shadow come to life. It

sits there limp and unmoving in the cage while the boy watches transfixed. A shadow

opens up behind him and swallows him whole. He awakens from the vision on the chamber floor. Things are getting stranger by the minute.

The game is finally in our hands. Before we take leave of the crypt we might as well

explore it a bit. The chamber is filled with dozens of sarcophagi like Ico's own.

Presumably each one has been the end of an innocent victim. If we were allowed to peek

inside we might perhaps glimpse the ghastly remnant of the atrocities that took place

therein. Thankfully the game does not go that far. At one end of the crypt is a door of

statues just like the one that the knights had opened with the magic sword, but it is

inaccessible. So Ico leaves through the door at the opposite end. He passes through a

nondescript room adjoining the crypt, and finds himself at the bottom of a very, very tall tower.

The only way out of the tower is, again, a door that requires the magic sword. He does

not have the magic sword. He is doomed. But let us examine this door first, since we will

be seeing a great many of them soon. It is made of four (usually two) identical statues,

each of which contains a smaller statue inside. This latter is in the shape of a crouching

horned child who hugs his knees, head buried despairingly in his arms. It bears an eerie

resemblance to our boy; it is as if he were himself turned into stone and put inside the

door. We are now doubtless that the castle is somehow connected with Ico's horns. With that thought behind us let us climb the tower. After all there is nowhere else we can go.

The tower begins to look familiar as we near the top. We have seen this place in Ico's

vision. Does it have the cage hanging from the ceiling also? Sure enough, there it is.

Does it likewise have the same black figure within? There we are surprised. Crouching

inside the cage is a young girl of almost blinding pallor. Ico calls out to her but she is

unresponsive. She looks, in a word, miserable. Before lowering her down to freedom,

take a careful look at her posture. It is the mirror image of the horned child inside every

statue-door. The only difference is that she has no horns. Meanwhile the view from the

terrace by the cage confirms the boy's fear--outside, a blue ocean stretches as far as the

eyes can trace, offering no means of escape. If he is to leave the castle his only choice is to find a way back to the shore whence he came.

And so the two children are introduced to each other, after a fashion. Ico does not know

it, but she is the only friendly soul he will see in the castle. Who knows?--perhaps she is

the only friendly soul he has ever known. It would not surprise us if she is.

I have only a few more things to say on this first meeting. The children speak different

languages and are unable to understand each other. From the boy's bumbling attempt at

self-introduction we finally gather that he has been brought to the castle as a sacrifice,

an evil fate reserved for children with horns. Of the girl's speech all we can discern is

that she speaks the language of the castle. We know this because her speech is spelled

in characters identical to the inscriptions we have seen on the elevator and on the

caskets. The girl must therefore belong to whatever civilization that built the castle.

Unlike Ico who was brought in from the outside, she must be from this place originally.

Ico does not know this yet but we do. And while we are talking about things he does not

know, let us go a little farther. From our second run through the game we understand

the girl's speech. Her first words to her rescuer are: "Who are you? How did you get in

here?" What do these words tell us about her, if anything at all? Well, they tell us that

even though she lives at the castle she is dreadfully uninformed about what goes on in

it. She appears to know nothing about the horned children and the practice of sacrificing

them. Keep this in mind because this ignorance of hers will be important later as we try to understand what she is about.

The maiden displays touchingly guileless curiosity about her liberator, but the moment is

cut short by the sudden appearance of a hideous demon. This newcomer looks rather

like the entity from Ico's dream; it too is wholly black and rises out of nowhere. It seems

to have one aim in mind: claiming the girl. Ico will not have that, so the liberator

becomes the protector. He decides to get himself and his newfound companion out of

this terrible place. His altruism yields an unexpected benefit: the girl can open the

statue-doors. In a heartbeat she goes from a tagalong to an indispensable ally. Curiously

enough she seems surprised by her own ability. (At least that is what I think; you can

observe her open the door for the first time and judge for yourself.) How does she do

this? We will have a fairly convincing answer eventually, but for now let us concentrate

on the obvious. If the magic sword can open the doors, and the girl can open the doors,

then the likeliest explanation is that the two of them share a certain pertinent property. Let us leave it at that for the time being.

With the aid of the girl's power Ico leaves the northern island. The pair now faces the

main keep where the bulk of their adventure and toil will take place. The demons lurk

everywhere. They only want the girl, but they will fight Ico if he proves a hindrance. And

that brings this section to a close. To review what we know so far regarding the

mysterious beauty: (1) she seems to have a bearing on the vision Ico had; (2) she has

been imprisoned for some time; (3) she speaks the language of the castle; (4) she is in

danger of being captured by shadowy demons; and (5) she shares the magic sword's

ability to open the statue-doors. To this we may tentatively add: (6) she seems to be

rather ignorant of the goings-on at the castle and (7) she seems at least amenable to

the idea of escape since she cooperates with the boy's lead. To all these we shall return as more information becomes available.

Next time we will shift our attention to the castle and try to clarify the puzzles' relevance to the narrative--if they have any.

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(First posted 20 May 2003)

I said at the beginning that gameplay falls outside the scope of this exercise. I think I

have made an unreasonable claim. ICO's story takes some hours to unfold, and we

spend the majority of those hours solving puzzles. If I am to talk about those puzzles at

any length I will after all have to treat gameplay even if I do not call it by that name. (I

admit I am not very comfortable with the term; it is not in any dictionary, and I hesitate

to make use of a word I could not define.) Let me say again that I make no pretense at

anything like expert knowledge about games. Common sense is all I have got to guide myself on the subject. Please bear with me.

Having played through the game you know that everything I have talked about thus far

is only the introductory stage of the game. We are barely past the opening scenes. Ico

and the girl have only just now met. That is not to say that we have not learned quite a

lot of information already, because we have. But all we really have done so far is

watching, not playing. And a game is supposed to be played. In that sense the game has

hardly begun. For we have only solved the first and the simplest of the puzzles. There

are many more challenging puzzles to come. And the puzzles are the substance of this

game, are they not? Of course they are. If we had no puzzles we should have no game.

The puzzles must therefore be the one absolutely indispensable part of the game. And if

they are the one absolutely indispensable part, they must be the most important part. That is true to logic, isn't it?

Clearly I do not believe so. I will explain why not. Without a doubt the puzzles are the

most prominent feature of the gameplay. Yet most ICO fans seem convinced that the

puzzles are not its real stock. If you are inclined to disagree, recall some praises you

have heard people say about the game. Are they chiefly about the enjoyableness of the

puzzles? Or are they about something else entirely?

It is a rather obvious question. People mention things like "awe-inspiring visuals,"

"heartwarming tale," "art" and "beauty" and what not. But some would say all these fine

qualities are nonessentials to a game. Pac-Man may lack them, but that does not keep it

from being a classic game. So one could argue ICO is a beautiful tale but an

impoverished game. For there is exactly one way for us to complete the game. And once

we have completed it, the element of challenge is all but gone. Puzzles we know the

answers to are no longer puzzles. No wonder so many deem ICO worth no more than a

rental. But we ICO fans are strange. We insist that ICO is not only competent but

positively amazing. Can we justify that claim?

Now I already said this exercise is not about how good a game ICO is, and I stand by my

word. But I think I do need to say something about how the game works its magic on us

if the next segments are to make any sense to you. (As to how well it works, I will leave

to you to decide.) Recently I exchanged some e-mails with a very devoted fan of ICO.

He loves it so much that he has written a fifty-page essay on it. He surprised me by

saying that he had not played it in months. He said that the experience feels more real

when he seldom plays it. About then I was similarly surprised to hear another veteran

say on this board that she was only then playing through the game for the second time;

I know how she adores it. But I really should not have been surprised. I have myself

played the game to completion just three times. Now we have got a bit of a paradox

here. Here we are, three diehard admirers of the game who confess it to be their all-time

favorite--and we hardly play it at all! A paradox is calling it politely. Either we are lying

when we say ICO is our favorite game, or we have deluded ourselves that we like it more than we actually do. Isn't that right? No? Well, why not?

At first glance it seems perfectly reasonable that we should spend the most time on the

games we enjoy the most. But it seems to me that people have been conditioned to

think this way ever since they popped their first quarters into an arcade machine long

before video games were a part of the home entertainment system. If you were a good

gamer you got your quarter's worth of time and then some. If not you needed lots of

quarters or you would not be playing very long. An idea took shape that in video gaming

you invested money to be rewarded in time. That idea has stayed through the years. I

think that is what the so-called replay value is about. It stems from the notion that a

game's function is first and foremost to help us pass time. And though we may not have

to pop quarters in every ten minutes anymore, we do have to pay hefty amounts for the

system and the software. Economics cannot help but remain a factor especially given the

age bracket most gamers fall into. But in the end that is all it is: economics. You may

very well play through ICO just once a year. That is a sound financial reason not to

purchase the game. It is not a sound reason to detract from its intrinsic worth. It does not keep ICO from being someone's fondest and fullest memory of a game.

Speaking of intrinsic worth, let us return to it. I apologize for digressing, but I felt it was

necessary before we could place the puzzles in the proper context. I do not want anyone

to suppose that I think the puzzles unimportant. On the contrary I think they are the

muscles of the game. What I want to emphasize is that these muscles are meant to do

two distinct sets of work. The first and more obvious set is of the conventional sort,

which applies to any puzzles. We solve them because they are fun and because they

help us pass time pleasantly. But is that all the puzzles do in ICO? I must say no. I have

already given my reason: a puzzle is no longer a puzzle once it is solved. And since

every task in ICO has exactly one prescribed solution, it is pointless to go back and try to

work it out differently. By this logic ICO's puzzles ought to lose all capacity to entertain

once the game has been completed. But at least for me that is hardly the case. That I

have exhausted all technical possibilities in the game but my thought continues to dwell

on it and be fascinated by it, tells me that its real strength is not in puzzle solving.

Depending on our approach the experience can retain a great deal of their potency. That

is where the second set of work, the narrative work, comes in.

And that is what I will be back with.

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(First posted 27 May 2003)

It would be a mistake to think ICO is neatly divided between the story and the puzzles--

that the cinematic interludes take care of storytelling while the puzzles pad out the

spaces between. I suppose the puzzles could be enjoyed more or less on their own. But

the narrative would collapse without the puzzles. This is because the puzzles are only

parts of the whole, whereas the narrative is the whole. Now the term narrative can be--

ought not to be, but can be--misleading since it hints at something spoken or written,

and ICO is almost entirely nonverbal outside the interludes. But we have all heard that a

picture tells a thousand words. Where they are sparing in words the scenes and the

actions are rich in other kinds of information.

But a word before we go into that. The next three segments are concerned with

everything between the pair's meeting and the first appearance of the villain. On that

note I may have oversimplified the matter when I so stressed the puzzles in my last

ramble, since the gameplay contains a good many things besides puzzle solving. But for

the talk's sake let us agree that by puzzles we mean everything the children must do in

their quest for freedom, outside the interludes--in other words every action which is left to our control.

Now I cannot take the puzzles apart the way I have done the opening because they do

not have plot elements except one: they show us that the children are progressing from

one part of the castle to the next. Therefore the narrative functions of any one puzzle

are much the same as all the rest. (Does that mean if we have seen one we have seen

all? No; there is such a thing as cumulative effect.) For our purposes it would be

pointless to look at each puzzle in depth. So I am only going to articulate a few statements that apply to all the puzzles in their narrative capacity. These are:

1. THE CASTLE IS HOSTILE GROUND.

2. THE CHILDREN MUST EXPLORE THE CASTLE. 3. THE CHILDREN ARE NECESSARY COMPANIONS.

I imagine some of you would like to expand these. Someone pointed out after reading

the last section, for instance, that the puzzles help us immerse ourselves in the

environment. He was very right. But since this is more an aesthetic quality than a

narrative tool I have here left it out. I will however mention it briefly when I talk about

the second statement. Let us then look at each of the statements. Today we will consider

only the first of the three.

1. THE CASTLE IS HOSTILE GROUND.

At this time it may be helpful to summarize what we already know on the castle. We

know it is absurdly enormous and must have demanded absurd amount of manpower to

put together. We know it is in disrepair and probably very ancient. We know that parts of

it are operated by mysterious spells. We know that Ico has been brought here to die like

others before him--and this by no accident nor by whim if the caskets and the horned

effigies are any signs. Add to these the awful gloom that haunts every corner of the

castle, and the picture we have is one of decidedly sinister character. The picture is of

course blurry since we have not one solid bit of information about the castle. Yet we

begin the game convinced beyond doubt that the castle is no friendly place. We are right

to assume so. That is what visual storytelling is: getting us to believe certain things without telling us to. We will be seeing a great deal of that in this tale.

Once the pair starts exploring the castle in earnest we learn that the place is not merely

unfriendly or indifferent; it is hostile. I am not here thinking of the lurking black wraiths,

though they are certainly a part of it. I am thinking of the fortress itself. After all what is

this fortress to the children? For her it is a prison. For him it was very nearly his tomb,

and may still be that if he is not careful. For both it is the chief obstruction that stands in

the way of their object--freedom. It is the cause of their suffering; it represents

everything they must overcome.

People erect buildings in order to domesticate the environment--to make a domain of

comfort and convenience out of an uncomfortable, inconvenient wilderness. But this

castle almost seems to exist to make life miserable. Instead of putting things within easy

reach it hides them from you and makes you work to find them. It makes you circle a

building three times at three different levels just to get to the roof. It is full of high

places from which you could easily fall to your death, made doubly dangerous since the

place is falling apart everywhere. On top of that it will not let you go through a door

unless by some cryptic reason it deems you fit to pass. It would be a nice place to live if

you had wings and could walk through walls--a splendid dwelling for fairies but hardly habitable for mortals. The set-up smacks of a maze created to confound.

You might say "Well, of course it was created to confound. This is a puzzle game, for

crying out loud." I realize that. I am only saying that the castle's labyrinthine character

has something to contribute to the story as well as to the game. That is, given the

story's premise it makes good sense that the castle should be so full of riddles. What is

the story's premise? Well, a pair of children want to run away from a big, mysterious and

frightening place. And the big, mysterious and frightening place doesn't want to let them

get away. It is determined to block them, to frustrate them and to slow them down. To

move through the castle the children must outwit it-- must meet and prevail against

every challenge this dangerous maze throws at them. But wait a moment here.

"Outwitting" the castle almost sounds as if we were treating it as a person. In fact it very

much sounds like the castle has assumed an adversarial role against the children. And it

has. The real antagonist of the story, the foe Ico and the girl must fight more than any

other, is the very prison whose ground they tread. Every scene in ICO is a silent

reminder of that. We are always looking at the young heroes at a distance so that the

castle rises colossal and dominating in all directions around them--breathing down on

them, making them appear in comparison utterly puny and utterly lost. Now, we may

marvel at the castle for its sheer magnificence. But that is mostly because we are not in

Ico's shoes. None of us would in reality enjoy being trapped inside a deserted citadel in

the middle of nowhere. We can afford to be delighted because for us this is mere

entertainment. For him it is a matter of life and death. When he looks around he does

not see the enchantingly beautiful edifice we do. He sees the bane of his existence which

at any moment may prove his doom. There he is never assured of surviving another

hour. Delighted is the last thing he is.

There are many terrors in life, but the terror of being lost is surely the greatest--

alongside its twin, the terror of being alone. The fear the castle arouses is of a subtle

and pervasive sort. It rarely jumps you from behind. Rather it is always before you and

around you, daring you to ignore it. To be sure there is great serenity throughout the

castle. But anyone who has been lost in a quiet, deserted place knows that serenity is no

equal of peace. There is no peace in this place, only desolation. And mute malice. For we

sense that there must be a malicious mind behind the malicious plan. Every painting has

a painter behind it and every book an author. Someone arranged this mystery for a

purpose less than innocent. As yet we do not know who that someone is and what

purpose. We do know that until we have left this castle behind we shall not be relieved of the dread.

Here I stop. I will be back with thoughts on the second statement.

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(First posted 11 June 2003)

2. THE CHILDREN MUST EXPLORE THE CASTLE.

I had to scrap the first draft of this section because while I was mulling over the castle's

role I got too deep into gameplay and lost sight of the narrative. Then I lost the second

draft also when my laptop got stolen along with all the writing in it. More to set my own

thoughts straight in all the rewriting confusion than anything else I should like to begin

with some very basic considerations. I think I set down pretty clearly last time that the

castle is exceedingly important. Very well, it is important. But how precisely is it important to the story--rather than to the gameplay or the sheer visual artistry?

To answer that I want to consider briefly what a story is. It is a popular mistake to

confuse a "story" with "fiction." The two are not synonymous. For instance if I said

"There is water on the moon" that would be fiction insofar as I made it up, but it would

hardly qualify as a story. On the other hand a biography of Abraham Lincoln would not

and ought not to be fiction, but it would certainly be a story. Similarly when I say "This is

a story of my life" I do not mean "This is a story which I made up about myself." I mean

"This is how my life unfolded and became what it is now." To tell a story therefore means

to give an account of something, whether true or imaginary. The act of giving an account

usually requires that we keep track of three things. These are characters, setting, and

conflict.

Characters are a set of actors, who need not be people necessarily, that we see more or

less from the beginning to the conclusion of the story. Setting refers to the sum total of

circumstances under which the characters operate--the times, the places, the conditions.

The last ingredient, conflict, is anything which drives the characters to abandon inactivity

and do one thing or another. Examples of conflict in fiction may include outright fighting

or competition, solving a murder mystery, falling in love, or a Coke bottle dropping out

of the sky. A biography of Lincoln is a story since it has all three ingredients. The gibberish about there being water on the moon is just that--gibberish.

Let me see how the castle fits into this scheme. I immediately recognize it as the key

element of the setting since it provides the environment for the story. But it is also the

apparent source of the conflict; the children want freedom, and the castle keeps it from

them. And since the castle is the greatest obstacle in the children's quest, it is not a

mere arena in which to confront the enemy: it is the enemy. It thus behaves almost like

a character also, and a crucially important character at that. The puzzles are its means

of keeping the children imprisoned. That is why I said the narrative would collapse

without the puzzles. They are the substance of the main conflict in the story. And a story without conflict is like pea soup without peas. It is gibberish.

I think I am ready now to take up the second statement, which states that the children

must explore the castle. In place of "explore" we might substitute "deal with" or

"overcome." The children must deal with the castle if they are to be successful. They

must overcome its cunning with their own. But I used "explore" because that word has

implications which the others do not. To explore a place is more than simply to visit it.

You may visit Grand Canyon as a tourist, but until you have invested time and risked

bodily harm to wrestle with its wilderness you cannot say you have explored it. Similarly

it would be ludicrous for someone to boast of having explored the canyon when in fact

he has only dealt with a negligible fraction of its vastness. Claims like that belong to

committed folk whose scope of exploration extends far beyond popular hiking courses.

Now the children must explore the castle in that sense. They must; they have no choice

about it. One might explore some great wonder because he wants to learn, because he is

curious, or because he wants excitement. Our young heroes do not want to learn about

the castle, they are not curious about it, and they are most certainly not looking for

excitement. What they want is to get out of it as fast as they can. They do not want

anything to do with this dreadful place, do not want to stay in it one second longer than

they have to. They are on the run for their lives. Sightseeing is the least of their

priorities.

Let us imagine ourselves now in the children's place. Suppose we really were trying to

escape from a ghoul-infested castle. Suppose we just entered a courtyard. We are

surrounded on all sides by beautiful and wondrous sights. Should we take a moment to

explore and enjoy? Not unless we are very dumb. We see an exit in plain view. We

should make a beeline for it. But we cannot. The pathway is blocked. We must find a

way around the obstruction. We have no choice but to explore. That is, we are forced to

investigate places we would rather bypass and fiddle with contraptions we would rather

let alone. We want the quickest shortcut out of here--but what we are offered instead is

an endless string of detours within detours. That is what the puzzles amount to: an

elaborate, grueling succession of detours which will eventually take the children through

each and every area within the castle walls. They could not care less about seeing each

and every area. They want a shortcut direct to the exit and to freedom. There isn't one.

If there were, the children would be happy but the story would lose its conflict. It would

lose its peas--lose its taste and become insipid and uninteresting. The poor youngsters

have got to do things the hard way, and all for our enjoyment's sake. This sentiment is at the heart of every adventure ever written.

At this point let me bring in a previous poster's comment as I promised I would. I mean

about the puzzles helping us immerse ourselves in the environment. How do you

suppose they do that? Well, I said already that the children want as little to do with their

prison as possible. But the puzzles require that they become intimately acquainted with

it whether they like it or not. Let me use the illustration of Grand Canyon once more.

Millions visit that national park every year. Most of them go no farther than

contemplating its majesty from a safe distance, much like enjoying the ocean from the

beach. But if you wanted to immerse yourself in it, if you truly wanted it to come alive,

you would not be satisfied with that. You would venture into the canyon and put your

hands and feet, not just your eyes, into the experience. You would want to cover as

much ground as possible so that you would be able to appreciate the canyon from on

high, from deep below, from the east, from the west, from within, from the extremities,

at dawn, at midday, at sunset. Now this is just what the puzzles make us do. They make

us encounter the castle from all points. And we have to do this every time we play

through the game; we cannot say "Oh, I already know what that place looks like, so I

won't bother to go that way this time." The game will not allow us to complete it until we

have turned the castle inside out.

I spent four years at the university where I graduated not long ago. You would think I

am thoroughly familiar with the campus of my own alma mater. But in truth there are

facilities there I would not be able to give you directions to because I never had the

occasions to make use of them. If you asked me what our business school building looks

like inside you would only get a blank stare from me. In four years I was never in it. I

would bet most people have similar memories. That is, they develop a routine and as a

result remain surprisingly ignorant about some fixtures in their lives. They may only

frequent certain parts of their hometown so that they feel like strangers in a foreign

country when they venture beyond them. Or, when asked the name of the middle school

they have driven by every day for ten years, they may realize with a start that they

never learned it. You get the idea. But the castle is an entirely different story. I have

spent only a few hours "inside" it. Yet its memory is vividness itself. I know it like the

back of my hand. How is that? Well, I have been everywhere in it. I have been to, and

have had to contend with, every chamber, tower, bridge, courtyard and weather-beaten cliff. I left no stone unturned. The game would not let me proceed otherwise.

And leaving no stone unturned is just what the puzzles are about. They demand that we

experience the castle to the fullest. There is exactly one spot we wish to be, but to get

there we must pass through every other spot in the whole godforsaken fortress. This is

true in our first run through the game and in our seventh. There is never any shortcut.

That we already know the solutions to the puzzles does not shorten the distance we

must cover. In this the castle differs from a typical maze. In most mazes there is one

correct path and ninety-nine false paths. But in ICO there is to begin with a single

excruciatingly long-winded path and no other. In this way solving ICO's puzzles is less

like answering riddles and more like climbing a steep slope or crossing a deep canyon.

No one solves the same crossword puzzle twice for the fun of it. But there is plenty

sense in revisiting a summit one has already conquered, and in fact many climbers do

just that.

You may think I am putting you on. Playing a video game is of course quite unlike

climbing a mountain. We do not exert our limbs or risk our lives when we play a video

game. It is Ico rather who exerts his limbs and risks his life. And we imagine that for him

the labor and danger are very much real. We make the same concession whenever we

read a book or watch a film. We know perfectly well that we are ourselves in no danger

of falling as we watch James Stewart hang on for his life in VERTIGO. But we do imagine

that the danger is real for his character, or the scene would lose all suspense. Now if we

have seen the film before, we know how it ends. But while that reduces the suspense

greatly it does not destroy it altogether; we know what happens but we still watch it with

interest. Something similar is at work when I play ICO. The puzzles are at best minimally

entertaining now since I have solved them before. But the impact of watching those two

youngsters struggle against the pitiless environment remains potent. Knowing the

answers to the puzzles has reduced my labor greatly, yes, but it has not reduced Ico's

labor nearly as much--for his labor is physical as well as mental, whereas mine was

never more than mental. Though all is plain and easy for me now, it is not so for the

children. Every time we play we put them through a fiendish ordeal. That is the great

illusion the game weaves in our minds--an illusion I have not seen reproduced nearly as

convincingly in any other games. And for me that is how the game continues to

command my attention, if to a somewhat lesser degree, when the puzzles have ceased to present challenge.

So we now understand why things like realistic lighting, an accurate sense of scale,

height and distance, and complex character animation are crucial in ICO. Aside from

giving the game its pretty looks, their job is to create an illusion that these are real

children in a real place and consequently in a real trouble. Is it silly, I wonder, to

sympathize with computer-generated characters? Perhaps it is. But then it ought to be

equally silly to sympathize with Disney's Bambi or his ill-fated mother; they are also

mere pictures after all. The only way we can put up with animated characters is by

imagining--that is, by pretending--that they are real after their own fashion. ICO is no

different. It is an experience which rewards an imaginative audience.

In summation the puzzles force the children to explore every nook and cranny of the

castle, which is akin to keeping them in constant clash with their archenemy. Do not be

confused by the term archenemy here. Some of you are thinking "Isn't another character

entitled to that role?" By archenemy I mean the enemy the heroes must deal with the

most. Palpatine may rule over the empire, but one doesn't have to know much about

STAR WARS to see that the place of archenemy belongs to Darth Vader. He is only a

subordinate in the grand scheme of things, but he is the pain in the neck the heroes

have to deal with at every turn. That is, he is immediate unlike the emperor who is

usually beyond sight and reach. The castle too is immediate. It is always in your face. It is the presence you cannot ignore, the hand of the real foe who as yet remains unseen.

I will treat the third and final statement on the puzzles next time.

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(First posted 15 July 2003)

3. THE CHILDREN ARE NECESSARY COMPANIONS.

By that I mean they are companions by necessity. They both want to escape from the

fortress, and neither can do it alone. Each suffers from limitations that make escape an

impossibility. Since their predicament is in the form of a prison--in other words

restriction of movement--their limitations too naturally have to do with mobility. The boy

cannot pass through the idol gates which the girl can open. She cannot negotiate certain

terrains which he can. What is more, she will be captured by the wraiths if left

undefended, and he will be petrified once she has been claimed. Someone on the net

said of the situation "If you die, she dies. If she dies, you die." That about sums up the

arrangement. In a biologist's book this would be called symbiosis, and in a sociologist's,

partnership or alliance, but I prefer to call it simply companionship. After all it is not as if

the two of them sat down and discussed the rotten fix they are in and came to the

mutual understanding that since they seem to complement each other's handicaps they

might as well stick together. For them the symbiotic arrangement is essentially a happy

coincidence. (On the storyteller's part it was of course a deliberate choice.) Ico decides

to take the girl with him while he is ignorant of her ability. They are companions before they become cooperators.

C. S. Lewis, whom I recently began reading and who is fast becoming my favorite

author, wrote a slim wonderful volume on the nature of love titled THE FOUR LOVES. The

four loves are Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity. The companionship between our

protagonists falls under Friendship by Lewis' estimation. Writing of Friendship he opined

"Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side,

absorbed in some common interest." He meant that the chief concern of lovers is

themselves, that is, each other--but friends come together when there is something

outside of themselves in which they take a shared interest. Hence lovers are always

looking at each other while friends are side by side looking at, and moving towards, that

other thing. In short a friendship needs to be about something, be it a hobby, a taste in music, a political vision or a profession.

Therefore Friendship according to Lewis--between true bosom buddies, not just any

"friendly" acquaintances--typically forms when a person looks at another and says

"What? You too? I thought I was the only one." This fully applies to the children. Left to

die, Ico doubtlessly thought himself quite abandoned. In the mysterious girl he has

found not only an age peer but a fellow prisoner. The moment he recognizes her as such

the thought of parting becomes unbearable; it would mean returning to total solitude.

And I do not mean unbearable just for him; it becomes unbearable for us also. We

recognize at once that these two are in a common plight, that they are a match, that

they ought to be together. The need to reclaim the captured girl is not mere male

heroism, you see. Certainly there is a good deal of "rescue the damsel in distress"

mentality in play. But that is not the part of our imagination the game appeals most to.

If it were, I doubt very many thoughtful female players would have enjoyed it. What it

really appeals to is our desire to get back to a friend--the desire to banish the horrible

solitude which her absence has imposed upon us.

One more observation, and I have done with this segment. As we make progress and

solve more puzzles, the two children's respective roles become clearly defined. We come

to categorize in our heads the list of things the boy can and cannot do, and likewise for

the girl. But she is a curious creature. In appearance she is elegant and full of natural

grace, but sometimes she acts as if she has not quite got all her wits about herself. It

becomes increasingly evident that her limited prowess is more than a case of feminine

frailty. She is not only weak; she is timid--not only inept; helpless. She seems to be

unacquainted with the very notion of fending for herself. And she continues to

demonstrate her ignorance about the castle which has been mentioned earlier; she

makes for the most part no contribution to clearing paths, leaving it as Ico's burden to

figure all out. The castle--presumably her home--is just as baffling to her as it is to him.

Only, he has the facility to tackle it and she apparently does not. And all the while the

curious fact is that she is the older of the two if looks mean anything. Ico is a little boy

and behaves like one. The girl on the other hand is on her way to womanhood but not

half as resourceful as her diminutive companion. He acts his age. She does not. By all

logic she, who is older and has spent more time inside the castle walls, ought to be the

sensible one who figures things out for them both. Yet Ico has to look after her and lead

her by hand as though she were his little sister in this somewhat lopsided, though indissoluble, partnership. Why?

I am not going to answer that just yet. We need to learn more about the girl before

accounting for her character, and we have not got that far into the story. In the next

part we will look at the first appearance of you-know-who.

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(First posted 24 July 2003; resumed August 5)

What we have got so far along the story are lots of facts and little by way of explanation.

We do not know why Ico almost got sacrificed in the crypt, only that he in fact did. (By

now we know better than to believe the excuse that horned children are ill omens.) We

do not know why the castle is crammed full with puzzles, only that it in fact is. We do

not know why the girl was imprisoned in the cage, only that she in fact was. We do not

know how she can open the gates, only that she in fact can. And we do not know why

the ghouls want her, only that they in fact do. These questions will largely be put off

until the climax, but in today's segment we at last get the first glimpse of an answer.

The children's meandering journey through the ruins of the castle brings them to a great

multi-leveled courtyard. Here a fierce battle ensues. If I recall right the fight must have

gone on for a half-hour in my first run. The creatures come after the pair in such

numbers that we cannot help but wonder if there is something special about this place--

something the enemies want to keep the children away from. We can fight them to the

last or we can save time and effort by running to the idol gate. This is a good place to

mention that opening an idol gate destroys all nearby enemies. An intriguing morsel of

information, this. The demons haunt the castle, but they appear powerless against the

magic which operates that castle and which responds to the girl's presence. There is

something at work here that is far superior to the demons. And the girl has access to it,

is able to activate it, is able to use it--say it however you want. It is strange that she

who can wield a power greater than the demons' is helpless in defending herself against them. One more thing for us to ponder until we have a clearer picture of the mystery.

As soon as the door is open, the girl rushes in ahead of Ico. It is the first time she has

done anything of the sort. He follows her in and finds a colossal open gate. It is the very

same he saw but could not use in the prologue. Gleeful for a moment, he is dismayed

next to see the doors begin to drag themselves shut. He grabs his companion's hand and

runs for it. She trips, and falls down. When he turns to help her up he is astonished to

witness a dark figure, a woman, materialize behind her. The woman addresses the fallen

girl in their speech. We infer therefore that she too is an inhabitant of the castle. Translated, her first words are "Come back, Yorda."

The girl's reaction to the stranger is telling. She returns no answer. She looks terribly

dejected--she makes no attempt to pick herself up, and she keeps her face averted. In

fact she has not once glanced back since falling, as one might be expected to if someone

popped out of thin air not three steps behind her. She does not look back because she

knows without looking precisely what has happened. She knows without looking

precisely who stands behind her. It was perhaps inaccurate to say she is dejected. She is

resigned. She has done something she was not supposed to do, and now she has been caught.

Let us take a closer look at the dark stranger who has mortified the poor girl so. Clearly

no ordinary woman, she is regal, austere, and even beautiful and dignified in an icy sort

of way. She is not monstrous like the demons we have seen. Yet she does not strike us

as any less dreadful. If anything she inspires deeper dread. The demons were scary, but

this woman is imposing. The demons were nasty brutes, but she has got something that

goes beyond nasty or brutal blazing in her stern gaze. In some ways she does resemble

the demons. Or rather the demons resemble her, albeit in pale imitation. In place of

their smoky loose flesh she sports a cloak of swirling, crackling black which is

indistinguishable from her flesh and which engulfs all but her face. Instead of crawling

out from the ground she has leapt into form like black flame igniting. She betrays no

violence of demeanor as the creatures did--does not make threatening gestures, does

not raise her voice, in fact does not move a finger through the interview, but simply

stands there calm, erect, immovable, unassailable. She stands in authority--and

therefore she is fearsome. No one understands that better than little children.

And that stranger now turns her attention to Ico. She speaks to him in his own tongue,

rebuking him for dragging "her Yorda" about. She identifies herself as the girl's mother.

She expresses contempt for the horned child who in her eyes has no place beside her

beloved daughter. The words sadden the boy. Why, I am not going to guess. She warns

him to stop his futile effort and to leave the castle, and vanishes as abruptly as when she appeared.

He runs to the girl. "I have angered her," she murmurs fearfully. The woman's

disembodied voice comes then: "Yorda, why can't you understand? You cannot survive in

the outside world."

And so the children are left by themselves once again, and allowed to continue their

quest for freedom. The word to keep in mind here is allowed. We receive a distinct

impression that the woman has decided to humor the pair for the time being, and just as

she authorized that liberty she is liable to revoke it when she pleases. We are doubtless

that we will be seeing her again.

Now let us consider some immediate implications of this brief, dramatic encounter. There are many, but the first two will be more than enough for today.

(1) First and foremost it is abundantly plain that this woman who claims to be the girl's

mother is the proprietor of the castle. We should realize that even if we had no manual

to tell us who she is. (For the game itself is quite silent on her exact identity.) We have

in our memory a far superior and more persuasive authority: the stories we read and

heard as children, and the images they conjured into our collective imagination. Thanks

to them we need no more than a glance at the newcomer before we are able to declare,

with total confidence, "That is the villain of the story."

You see, ICO is not just any story but a fairy tale. And the dark woman is not just any

villain either; she is a fairy tale villain. That means she has features which identify her as

such--features which we recognize instantly. Call her the queen, the evil fairy, the

sorceress, the witch, or whatever catches your fancy; it does not really matter; she is all

those things. Some have compared ICO's queen to well-known Disney villains, heedless

that those villains are themselves derived from long-standing traditions. The queen is

that mystic, dark, all-powerful antagonist in our childhood imagination who is evil and

who does evil, and whose overblown counterpart is the "dark lord" in modern fantasy

fiction. She is that someone responsible for the mysterious enchantment which needs to

be undone. She is the queen who poisons Snowdrop; the fairy who puts Briar Rose to a

hundred-year slumber; the ogre who hoards treasure in his castle and enjoys eating

little children; the witch who turns young maidens into songbirds and keeps them caged;

the hag who puts Rapunzel up the tower and doesn't let her out. She is an embodiment

of all those classic images. That is why she feels familiar though we have just met her. We may not know her per se, but we recognize her place in the story in a heartbeat.

And just what is her place in the story? Let me see now. In some of our best- loved fairy

tales, it is the villains who typically dictate the setting and the conflict. So without them

there would be no adventure, much as there would have been no Second World War

without Hitler. Adventure here is something of a euphemism. Ordeal probably better

describes the sort of things a fairy tale hero goes through. We may therefore define the

queen's breed of fairy tale villain as "the one who is responsible for the hero's ordeal."

And insofar as the hero's ordeal is the substance of the tale, the villain is absolutely

pivotal. Snowdrop's adventure begins only when the queen becomes jealous of her

beauty and tries to have her killed. Cinderella should have had no need of glass slippers

had her nasty stepmother not kept her from attending the ball. And Jack's beanstalk

should have led nowhere without the ogre's castle for it to reach up to.

But this central element of the story, you see, has been thus far missing. And all of us

have been wondering about its absence consciously or unconsciously. All of us have been

asking ourselves "We are up against something big here-- but what the deuce is it?" So

when the queen finally makes her belated entrance we immediately realize "She is the

one behind it all." No further introduction is necessary. (And none is given; when the

story has ended, we will still not know even her name.) We know nothing about the

stranger but we understand what she means to the story. She is the queen. She is the

witch, the enchantress. The castle is hers. She rules over it and always has ruled over it.

She is the children's enemy. They will have to fight her. What is more, they have been fighting her.

This is also why the queen does not get much time on screen. She does not need it. That

is, she does not have to show up a great deal and do many things in order for us to

grasp her character. Her character is more or less complete in our imagination. We have

a wealth of valid ideas about fairy tale villains already established. So all she has to do is

show up once and, with her darkly majestic appearance, announce to us "I am that

villain." That is why in this scene she rears her head just long enough for us to take a

good look at her and promptly disappears, not to be seen again till practically the

conclusion of the story. The point is that we have seen her. And now that we know she exists she automatically becomes the focal point of everything.

From here on we must reorient our queries around the queen. We no longer ask "Why

were horned children to be sacrificed at the castle?" but rather "Why did the queen want

them sacrificed at her castle?" Similarly not "Why was Yorda put in the cage?" but "Why

did the queen cage her?"; not "Why do the creatures come after her?" but "Why does

the queen send them after her daughter?" The queen has not entered the picture just

now, you see. She has been at its center all along, only she was not visible until now.

Hers is the face behind the hostile presence we have sensed ever since entering the castle.

(2) A fairy tale villain in the queen's particular vein is invariably the most powerful being

in the tale. Not all fairy tale villains are royal or magically endowed; some are fairly

humble, like a scheming maidservant or an abusive stepmother. But regardless of their

status with the rest of the world, the villains always exercise godlike powers over the

protagonists. They are always the ones holding all the cards--thus forcing the hapless

heroes to resort to wit and subterfuge to prevail against overwhelming odds and

seemingly invincible foes. The queen too holds all the cards against the children.

Therefore we infer, without being told, that the castle and its maddening contraptions

are her work. The wraiths that come after Yorda are under her command. She is

responsible for Yorda's imprisonment. And if the pattern means anything the practice of

sacrificing horned youths is likely her idea also. How can I be so sure? Honestly I can't.

These are speculations, some more so than others. But I think them reasonable. A fairy

tale villain tends to be responsible for all evil that is found in the story. This is because

the tales, with their small cast of characters, rarely have room for two villains. They

prefer a single diabolical antagonist who represents the sum of all menace to the heroes.

Consider also how the pair is united in a common quest. It makes excellent sense that

they should have a common enemy as well. For these reasons, among many others, I

must assume that the person responsible for Ico's entombment is one and the same as

she put Yorda in the cage. But we will talk more about this later.

(Remainder of this section was posted on 5 August 2003)

(3) The queen commands extraordinary magic. The castle and the legions of demons are

proof enough of her capability. Able to appear and vanish at will, she seems all but free

of bodily limitations. Her impeccable timing in intercepting the pair also suggests she is

aware of all that goes on in her domain. That would explain why opts to humor them for

now; she knows she can surprise them whenever she wants. She may have hidden

herself, but she is still there watching the children's every move. She may even be enjoying it; let the stubborn lass learn her lesson the hard way if she insists on it!

(4) Suddenly we understand why the girl, Yorda, can do the things she can. She has

inherited her mother's nature and is able, to an extent, to exercise a queenlike power

over the castle. The idol gates are a sort of security doors; like sentries guarding their

posts, they will not let just anybody pass. But in Yorda they recognize something of their mistress and so make way for her.

We recall however that Yorda is not the only one thus authorized to open the gates.

There is that sword we saw in the opening sequence. If Yorda can open the doors thanks

to the queen's power she inherited, would that mean the sword too wields a power akin to the queen's? Let us add that to the list of things we must come back to.

(5) Unlike her daughter the queen is fluent in Ico's language. So she is knowledgeable

about the outside world. Perhaps she has, or had, ties with it. If she indeed arranged for

the horned children to be brought to the castle, she certainly should have required, or coerced in any case, the cooperation of outsiders.

(6) Yorda is a sharp contrast with her mother in this regard. She is just as ignorant

about her companion's language as he is of hers. We may safely guess that he is the

first and only contact she has had with the world beyond the castle walls. And if we had

any doubt that she wants to see that world very badly, the queen's parting words have

removed it. For they say in effect "Not this nonsense about leaving the castle again! How

many times do I have to tell you that you can't survive there?" So it seems the girl has

in the past expressed her desire to leave the islands. I could not say if she wanted

freedom because she was caged or if she was caged because she dared to want freedom. Take your pick; I do not think it makes much difference in the end.

(7) But let us spend a little time on the queen's parting words since some people have

pointed to them as evidence for a particular--I believe mistaken-- reading of the ending.

What does she mean that Yorda cannot survive outside the castle? She could be saying

one of two things: (1) the girl physically cannot sustain her life in the outside realm like

a fish that has left the waters, or (2) she is too delicate for the travail of leaving home

and looking after herself. In the former she gives a fact; in the latter, an opinion. Facts

are given to inform; opinions, to persuade. Which is the queen doing here, informing or persuading?

Let us consider her words again: "Yorda, why can't you understand? You cannot survive

in the outside world." Without much affecting their significance we may change the

words to "Haven't I told you already that you cannot survive in the outside world?" That of course means "I have told you already that you cannot survive in the outside world."

If the words are not beginning to sound familiar, let me put them next to some that

should: "I've told you already you are not going to that crazy party." "We've had this

talk before--you are not driving the van." "Haven't I told you a hundred times not to run

with scissors in your hand?"

Our parents had their reasons when they told us these things. We were not to go to the

crazy party because they feared we might drink or mix with a wrong sort of people. We

were not to be trusted with the van because in their opinion we were not yet very good

with smaller cars. We were not to run with scissors because they thought... actually I

never quite understood why not. But all these admonitions have a common thought

running through them. They all draw from the same unspoken claim: "This is for your

own good." Which means "I know better than you do what is good for you." And what

that really means is "I have your best interest at heart." This is what all parental

admonitions boil down to.

Now when my mother issued me one of her warnings, I believed she had my best

interest at heart even if I did not always agree with her assessment. But if someone kept

me in confinement for years and told me that I wasn't really missing out on anything

outside the prison because I could not survive there anyway--I think I might have some misgivings about her sincerity. I should think she was trying to secure my compliance.

It appears Yorda herself has reached that very conclusion. She was told more than once

that she could not live outside the castle. She decided to escape anyway. Why? Because

she distrusted her mother's honesty. The queen and the princess are thus divided along

a very simple line: the mother says leaving home is not a viable option for her daughter,

and the daughter does not believe her mother. With excellent reasons.

But that is just half the story. We will probe this subject in greater depth when we get to

the ending.

(8) Now that we know who caged Yorda, we find ourselves wondering afresh why in the

world the poor girl had to suffer that wretched treatment. This being a fairy tale, it could

well be that she was held captive purely for the sake of being a captive--sort of like the

maidens in chivalric lore who apparently have nothing to occupy themselves with except

to get themselves abducted by one man-devouring ogre or another. But that does not sit

right somehow. There must be a reason for her incarceration. Having completed the

game we of course know it already, but supposing that we did not we could still guess it somewhat.

There are just three reasons for which people keep a person--or a thing, for that matter-

-locked up. The first is punishment, as in the case of a convicted felon. The second might

be called containment or quarantine, where someone or something represents a danger

too great to be let loose. Violent lunatics, victims of a contagious disease and, again,

felons are kept confined for this reason. The last is safekeeping; when there is a valuable

which one doesn't wish to let out of his hands, he might opt to lock it up--be it money,

jewelry, livestock, lab rats, hostages or slaves. Therefore Yorda was caged either

because she committed some offense against the queen, or because she was deemed

dangerous enough to warrant confinement, or else because she represented something

valuable which the queen wanted to keep near. Even with the little we know at this point in the story we need not think long to judge the most plausible scenario.

But while we are on the subject let us spare a moment for that other captive in the

story. I mean the boy himself. He too was imprisoned like many others before him. And

unlike with Yorda the story will not explain why they suffered thus. So with the horned

children speculation is all we have got. We have our three choices: either they were

punished for an offense, or they were deemed dangerous, or else they were wanted for some specific design. Which makes the most sense to you?

(9) That Yorda is the queen's daughter means of course she shares her mother's nature.

This raises a disturbing implication. Let us recall Ico's mysterious vision early in the

story. In it we saw a black figure emerge inside the suspended cage. Later we found

Yorda in that very setting. And we were a good deal confused. We had expected to find a

pitch-black creature and instead got a little girl who is so pale she all but glows. The

discrepancy was left unsettled in our minds. But now we have seen the queen who is

dark as midnight and able to appear out of nowhere, so much like the creature in the

vision. And this woman is Yorda's mother; that is, she and the girl are alike in some

essential way. We can no longer doubt the vision. The amoeba-like creature must have

been Yorda. How and why the boy dreamed of her is in my opinion unimportant. The

vision's significance lies in that Yorda is something besides an ordinary human. We have

suspected this for some time. But it is now confirmed, and will become crucial later as

we try to make sense of the ending.

That wraps up this long chapter, though almost every point made here will be brought

up again later. Next I would like to discuss how this new development changes the way we look at the story. Then we will finally address the tale's climax and conclusion.

top

(First Posted 8 August 2003; resumed August 10)

The queen's presence now forces us to redefine everything with regard to it. To be sure

nothing much has really changed. The children's condition has neither improved nor

deteriorated on account of the encounter. What they do after her appearance is the

same as what have done prior to it--exploring, path clearing, fighting. What has changed

is our perception of that condition. We will continue to see much the same that we have

been seeing, but we will not look at it the same way. An easy example is the heroine

herself. Thus far in our thoughts she was a pretty but rather strange girl who could do

some useful things and who seemed interested in escaping from the castle. Now she is

Yorda, the sole daughter of the castle's ruler. But this is the most superficial of the

shifts. Thanks to the queen we now have solider grasp on nearly every aspect of the mystery.

Let us begin with the castle. Until now we were lost and we did not know where we were

going. Well, we are still lost but we do know where we are going. We are going to the

main gate. And since the queen has closed it shut, we need to find a way of unlocking it.

We have got ourselves a definite object of aim. Before, we wandered in blind hopes. We wander with a purpose now.

The way we look at the castle has also shifted. Until now the chief impression we got

from the castle was that it was very, very deserted. Not only that, it was crumbling to

pieces everywhere. It clearly had not been inhabited for a long time. There were some

sinister creatures loitering about, certainly, but we could hardly believe these vile brutes

were the rightful occupants of so magnificent a keep. No, we did not take them for the

castle's original residents. We regarded them as we might house pests--ghostly vermin

that had taken over a fortress built by civilized beings, much as rats flourish in an

abandoned mansion. When we met the queen, however, we learned that the mansion

was not in fact abandoned. The mistress of the house was still living there. The wraiths

were not freeloading pests but rather her servants. But the realization raises a baffling

question. What sort of homeowner would allow her house to fall into such a sorry state?

She would have to be either very lazy, or very incompetent, or else very ill. So it would

seem that the queen, as mighty as she is, has got some deep problems. Her rule must be in decline. The castle's condition bespeaks her own.

The castle testifies a great deal more about its mistress. In fact it is almost the only

thing that tells us anything about her. Let us backtrack here for a moment and recall

what was said about the castle in earlier sections. I said that the castle was hostile to

the children, and they had to fight and overcome it to proceed through its maze. I

concluded that someone, some evil mind, was behind this evil fortress. Well, we now

know who that someone is. But she has once again hidden herself from our senses--

totally. So the only way for us to sense her is through her work, that is, the castle. In

this way the castle, the only available sign of the witch's presence, becomes equated

with the witch herself. That is, what we say about her may also be said about the castle.

She possesses stupendous powers--well, the castle is stupendous. She is in decline--so

is it. She is not willing to let the pair go free-- neither is it. And if she should die--why

then the castle too will die. For all intents and purposes, the castle is the queen. It deals

with the children in her place when she is not there.

Or let me put it this way. You must be familiar with the memory of "the scary old man

down the street." The scary old man down the street did not mix with other people

much. In fact the scary old man hardly ever set foot outside his house. But there his

house stood, three blocks down from yours--dark in the shades, with weird plants in

dense profusion growing on the lawn, and lights glimmering in the windows till late at

night to tell you he lived there. You didn't like going near that house. Kids said he came

out at