Aaron Lee embraces some of gaming’s most emotional tear-jerkers.
If you ask somebody about what brings back memories and feelings of love for them they’ll almost always list a piece of music, a scene from a film or a TV series, show you a photo or a piece of art or maybe an entire novel. Video games aren’t something that spring to mind for many people, which is acceptable given how young the medium is. People still perceive video games as toys for kids or just violent entertainment with no deeper meaning.
If you’ve seen Toy Story, then you know how impactful its story of friendship is. Characters you can relate to, in the form of Woody and Buzz, and emotions that have plenty of conviction. Hard to believe Pixar managed to create a computer generated film in 1995 which has become so timeless.
And ‘timeless’ is how I would label ICO. In the game you take the role of a young boy with an irregular skeletal affliction – he has horns. The boy’s village believes this to be a curse and imprison him in a distant castle. An angelic girl (known as Yorda) with extraordinary power has also been locked up in the barren, stone prison. After freeing her, the two of you must escape together.
There’s no English dialogue in the game and very few cutscenes. And the gameplay itself is probably one of the most unorthodox setups there has been. For instance, press a button and at anytime you and Yorda will hold hands. There’s great importance for this too, as Yorda is practically a liability – but a strangely forgivable one.
When I played the game for the first time my immediate reaction was almost to repel the minimalist style and its lack of clear objectives. But as I persevered I begin to get more and more attached to the characters. ICO is the ultimate NPC escort mission. You must solve puzzles, help Yorda clear gaps by catching her as she leaps and fed off sinister shadow monsters as they repeatedly attempt to make off with your ethereal beauty. I have completed ICO once, and by the end of the adventure, that takes you all over the castle, I put down my controller feeling a sense of compassion that I had never experienced with a game before.
ICO is certainly my most poignant memory of a game that managed to get my eyes all puffed up. But having played the game after its 2006 re-release, there were a couple others that had worked their way into my heart before then.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one such title. With its glorious medieval Arabian setting and a classic love story at its centre, this game has the swashbuckling of Errol Flynn and the romance of Audrey Hepburn rolled into one. The Prince and Princess Farah are none too pleased in each other’s company at first. The Sands of Time has quite an adult level of maturity underneath all the sand monsters and evil viziers. It’s a story of responsibility and consequence, handling everything from the death of a father to sex with taste. Plus, it’s memorable just to hear the banter between two such tormented lovers.
Another game that I found delightfully charming with its presentation of pre-teen crushes was Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts. Regardless of the fact that you are staying at a Psychic Summer Camp, the wilderness of Whispering Rock provides the perfect setting for a bit of mischief. You have your Wonder Years-style hero, Raz, and the pretty grunge girl he’s had his eye on for some time who’s just not interested, Lili. Until he saves her life, of course, at which point she becomes obsessively interested. Cue hours of hilarious black comedy as you save the world and your new girlfriend from psychic maniacs.
I personally think the number of commercial games trying to pull your heartstrings with any level of seriousness is few and far between. I’d certainly like to see a lot more of them. Then perhaps we would start to see the proliferation of more emotionally conscious works, such as Spirited Away. Recently, Heavy Rain had me distraught, but I doubt they’ll be any quite like it again for months.
Those are some of my favourites, and I encourage you to check them out if you’ve not played them yourself. At this point, if you were expecting to see a mention of Squall and Rinoa… sorry to disappoint you, but I missed the Final Fantasy VIII love boat.
Aaron Lee
Tags: ico, love, prince of persia, psychonauts
