"Grandma take me home"

Yes, the title comes from one of my favorite Nirvana songs, "Sliver," which I am currently listening to courtesy of the almighty Bill Clifford. And while it applies not only to the song and the adolescent memories attached thereto, it also finds a slightly less obvious application to the Christmas wish that was granted to me about 13.5 hours ago by the equally almighty Andy Link, namely his delivery of a PS2 and Shadow of the Colossus to my casa.

I've heard nothing but good about this game, and after a couple-three hours of dedicated playing, I myself have nothing but good to say about it, despite any intimations otherwise implied by the following comments.

Shadow of the Colossus makes me incredibly sad. See, from where I stand- early in the game, to be fair- it appears that the storyline so far is nothing more than an exercise in the worst kind of selfishness. You play some dude who wants an unnamed and undelineated female raised from the dead, so you take her to a beautifully ruined temple, where a disembodied voice essentially says "sure, we might be able to do that, if you kill sixteen living embodiments of the idols found here in the temple." Without a second thought, you mount your trusty steed and set out to flat-out MURDER the colossi that are the avatars of the idols.

MURDER. Because that's all it boils down to, as far as I can tell. Sure, they're huge, sometimes armed, and fucking scary, but until you show up, neither of the colossi I as a player has faced seems to be doing anything other than minding its own business. Yet what do I/my character do? Immediately do everything in our power to kill these titans, JUST TO BRING SOME DAME BACK TO LIFE. Climb up their gargantuan limbs, stab them in the head, loose arrows into their hooves, all for the sake of ONE person whose importance to the game's protagonist is presumably important, but not inherently so.

It's like having your girlfriend die, then dragging your ass out to some ancient Eastern temple and having a shining light tell you "hey, dude, go on out and butcher every beast you find that weighs more than four hundred pounds, and we'll bring her back to you."

As I noted, I'm barely into the game, but judging from Andy's reaction to the overall story, and my own awe at facing the colossi and feeling truly shitty at even attacking them, I still feel that Shadow of the Colossus is a cautionary tale, and maybe... hell, I don't know. All I know is that I've never come across a video game that simultaneously saddens me and makes me want to murder innocent, if terrifying, creatures, if only to see how things unfold.

It's the most beautiful game I've ever seen, in the sense that it makes me appreciate life and nature to a degree that so many other things have failed to. It's strange attributing that to a video game, but perhaps that's a sign that the medium has reached the point where it's capable of doing more than providing intellectual puzzles, laughs, and/or gratuitous violence. Games have done more than those things for me before, to be sure, but damn, never have I faced off with an "enemy" and wanted to flee because it was too majestic to slay in the name of a seemingly trite, narcissistic goal.

In some pathetic way, I hope progressing through Shadow of the Colossus will change things, show that the colossi are somehow malevolent and require death at the hands of the character and I... but I doubt that will happen, and in my heart of hearts, I don't want it to happen. Conventional game, and by extension general modern, morality would ruin what only a few hours of playing Shadow of the Colossus has shown me in terms of what games and art- because this is, undoubtedly, art- is capable of.

Back to my original point. "Grandma take me home." I don't want to play video games that make me feel terrible. I want to eat ice cream after dinner, watch TV, and wake up in my mother's arms. I don't want gorgeous, pixelated moral quandaries.

Oh, but sweet Jesus, I really do.

I DO.

I will take difficulties like this over reductionist swill any day of the week. And I'll listen to Incesticide and other brilliant albums the whole time.

But I have no intention of murdering anyone in the name of anyone else, as long as I can do so.


I might append a postscript to this once I finish Shadow of the Colossus, but don't hold your breath.