sexy mutyumu recommended this to me as part of this list thanks dude

de chirico has always been one of my favorite artists of all times and even though i connect a lot with the evocative and dramatic use of chiaroscuro in passionate baroque fashion by caravaggio the surrealist and almost mentally exhausting paradise of nonsense that brimmed with symbolism in dalì or even the impossible geometry and perspective of timeless beauty by picasso among many many others of great painters sculptors and whatnot de chirico still shines of a genius that to this day feels even wrong to talk about in this manner

in the most pure and plain form the metaphysical works of the italian painter show desolate sceneries adorned with strong and sharp lights and shadows that gently embrace everyday life mixed with mythology (trains and statues mannequins and towers modern and ancient objects) and stripped down perspective to evoke a sense of estrangement and emptiness and yet also freedom and power

clearly when i looked at ICOs box art i had a hunch that de chirico strongly inspired the style and composition of this cover and the fact that director Fumito Ueda painted it himself echoing La Nostalgia dell’Infinito made me realize that the game would have the same exact feeling of a de chirico painting and now that i finished it im 100% convinced thats the case

ICO is about a boy that grows horns for some reason that isnt explained here and he is then locked inside of a humongous fortress to rest in peace forever i guess because his home village wanted him the fuck out even though those horns kinda look sick i want them too tbh the villagers were just envious

that being said ico escapes gets a mystical cute girl of some kind that looks like shes made of pure light out of a cage and the two begin this longass trip through this incredibly complex architecture

lemme just put out of the way the stuff that i didnt like so i can go on to talk about the things that made me love this game so much to the point that in this moment im not so sure as to what score i should give it lets see how it goes

i dont like playing this game . here i said it
personally i got frustrated too many times during this experience because of janky as fuck platforming movement that got me falling into the abyss more than one time and deleting like 20 mins of progress honestly this game is a test of patience and i barely passed it
the combat also sucks which ranges from enraging in the first part of the game (poop ass controls enemies that dodge every fucking time and yorda getting kidnapped every 3 seconds) and pointless later when you get the sword or the mace or whatever when you kind of one shot them but they still manage to take yorda away somehow
puzzle games arent for me honestly ive never really gotten into them and will never be able for the life of me to enjoy them as much as id want to because im 1 stupid 2 impatient 3 traumatised so this game was setting itself up for failure in my eyes

and somehow it ended up being an experience like nothing ive ever touched in my life the sheer beauty of every single scenery and architecture is mind blowing for a game like this the castle is intrinsically against you theres traps cliffs rocks bombs waterfalls (very sexy waterfalls and mountainous paths in the later parts id say) everything is trying to kill you (and managed to many times) and it keeps twisting in itself in a labyrinth fashion and still it feels breathing humming and feeling the same dread and longing for freedom that ico and yorda are experiencing

in your escape through this interconnected wonder of architectural might you have to care for yorda in every and any moment she cant jump cliffs or climb ropes or even fight so you have to be there for her 24/7 youre basically her eyes her arms her brain (for a girl locked up in a cage all her life its kind of expected) all together for the entirety of the game and you cant even leave her behind because shes essential to unlock puzzle doors that require her magical powers (apart from the fact that shadows getting her into the dark splotches trigger a game over)
this sounds like a fucking dumb and stressing situation and in some ways it kind of is but it never feels like that i ended up caring for yorda toooooo much i became emotionally attached to her to the point that i would just take her hand every time because i just didnt want to lose her in any way and this sort of sentiment happened throughout the many dangers of the game (when she jumps in the void waiting for you to catch her its so psychologically drenching to me every time i was shaking even tho i knew fair well that its an animated sequence and that she couldnt just fall like that) to the point that i would sometimes just chill with her on the sofa safe point listening to the atmospheric music

this kind of relates to the relationship that these kids share . even tho this is very boy meets girl tropey theres this invisible barrier that separates them theyre 2 completely different beings they dont speak the same language and they have no knowledge of what the other person is like or has been through and somehow they still bond through their similar fate and hardships and cooperate to get the fuck out of this dark and cruel environment and it feels so genuine and so real its just UGGHHHHHHH great i love them this is great they share minimal interactions minimal dialogues minimal everything and they still feel like they cant live without their counterpart and thats just how i felt with yorda i couldnt just leave her alone for more than 3 seconds or id feel physically sick

theres a very important moment during the story where yorda is weakened by the castle dark energy or whatever and so when you walk hand in hand with her again if you pick up the pace too much she cant holp up anymore and falls to the ground . at that point i just took her and gently walked with her because if i made her fall again i would cry and thats just how emotionally fastened to yorda the game made me and this is after like 3 dialogues and 3 hours of wandering in the castle with no sound at all

thats also another interesting aspect of the game . in its goal to make this experience as lonely as possible the music department is stripped to the minimum (currently i can only remember the save point music and the final boss music both excellent soundtracks id say) and all the immersive work is left to astoundingly evocative SFX that really push the experience further into its dreamlike atmosphere

in cooperation with this the glimpses of the world surrounding the fortress enchant and scare you equally youre on a deserted side of the land where a towering castle sits on top of a hill and no way to get to the forest around it but a single bridge that youre trying to unlock and yet it looks breathtaking and youre struck with the beauty of what awaits you after this journey ends

the introduction of the story that i made is literally the entire story i wish i could be joking but thats basically the whole point of the entire narrative + you add a brutal and villainous queen whos trying to nurture yorda as the new vessel for her body and thats the full description so i am gonna talk about the more spoiler ish stuff even if its things kind of foreshadowed from the beginning of the game basically

after you unlock the bridge ico and yorda get separated (i was fidgety as fuck not having yorda around was lethal for my well being) and ico falls to apparent death in a river below soooo he just goes back to the castle sees that yorda got every life sucked out of her and decides to beat the shit out of the bitch queen with a new magical sword

so you go there beat the queen allegedly save dark matter yorda but get in a coma like state because of an intense damage to the head that also breaks icos horns and then seeing him lifeless and almost killed by the ruins falling off of the now collapsing castle yorda decides to put his life before everything else finally take action and save him on a boat and then says goodbye and thank you and then i cry like a fucking baby because shes an entity deeply entwined with the castle and cant leave

then ico gets on a shore and gets watermelon and yorda is there happy ending lets eat watermelons under the scorching sun or something

still deeply traumatized me tho

now that i think i said everything i needed to say do i think ico is an objectively great game ? the fuck not it was tedious as hell almost frustrating and mechanically theres more that i dont like instead of stuff that i like but do i think this is a thematically and atmospherically great game ? absolutely and it probably will feel like that even if other games try to emulate this kind of vibe

i cant explain how this works but this is the closest a game has ever been to a de chirico painting at this point i just know Ueda completely understood the hidden art of the artist and tried to put it into a full length videogame project like nothing else

in all those architectural geometries contrasting shadows and lights lifeless environments and imposing dreads resulting in a feeling of solitude and alienation you are still able to find warmth and familiarity like youve always been accustomed to and still feels like its a completely new experience

now you tell me if this is a description of ico or a de chirico painting

THAT WAS LONG OK ended up playing and logging the ps3 version that has hd graphics or whatever but first and foremost i did that because this page has the ueda cover art and not the highkey unbearable NA version so yeah
ICO good i will be playing shadow of the colossus next and that game looks sexy as fuck can i just say that

also tbh partly liked it this much because it gave me some dangerous the legend of zelda twilight princess vibes which is one of my fav games of all times so you know i may be biased i thought i would hear midna going incomprehensible fictional language and now i want to play tp again thats great

maybe i just do love games with invented languages

anyway the shadow enemies designs were great i loved them they were kind of hot can i say that is this legal

if that cover art were in a national gallery i wouldnt know a thing its just compositionally amazing i cant get enough of it also i did see the shadow of the colossus art concept in the same style of this cover and while i do think its also stellar the ico one is just something else entirely i swear to god i might cry rn

boy do i love ICO overall 11 mins ost