ICO is about video game foundations. Yorda is the tangible representation of your progression in the game, she glows with a supernatural energy that opens locked obstacles so common in video games. Yorda also represents communication. Not only on a basic level, because she and Ico don't speak the same language, but she represents the communication between game designer and player. World and player.

You never maintain a dialogue with your inseparable partner, but Ueda's triumph is precisely to objectify the pillars of game design in a character that is felt by the player as a person. Whether it's the moments she communicates to you by pointing her fingers at things that can help you solve the puzzles, or the simple fact of guiding another being with an action buttom that allows you to hold her hand, which doesn't feel like coupling Yorda to you, rather that the two of you are actually holding hands.

Ueda has already joked that due to its "design by subtraction" philosophy, perhaps ICO's combat has become too simple and repetitive. I agree, but like it or not, for me every confrontation being a repetitive task that happens EXACTLY after solving a puzzle and/or if you leave Yorda alone for too long, it's almost like the game screaming at you your responsibility to protect the video game as a concept. Protect your journey, protect your progression, protect your communication with the world. If you are not interested in doing this, who will?

In addition to the characters, ICO exists within a world. And the world of ICO is meticulously crafted to be the setting for video game situations. What makes all areas of this huge castle so well built that many times, solutions to the puzzles are to find imperfections in the architecture of the environment so that Ico can hang or push a box.

Exploring the imperfections of a virtual world that were purposely left by the creator is part of ICO's proposal. It is part of the proposal to explore what video games do in the first place. It's a game that doesn't underestimate the player, because it never pretends that it's not a video game, it wants to see how much you understand this logic to be able to connect emotionally with an artificial intelligence that, holding your hand, will open the next box of surprises of this castle until you, the player, leave there understanding what makes a game, and your character leaves there free from the claws of its creator.

also i played the game on my playstation 2 but i refuse to log that rotten cover.