The physical associations between holding onto a ledge and holding down the R1 button allow the player to always have a connection with Wander. The distinction is subtle: you don’t just push R1, you have to hold it.
In order for Wander to grab onto things - ledges, walls, colossi - the player must hold down the R1 button. However, I want to argue that Wander and Agro’s controls contribute in some important way to the artistry of Shadow of the Colossus. To simplify, ponder this question: How does mapping “jump” to the X button contribute to the overarching theme of a game? Well, by and large, it doesn’t, and that’s fine. It’s hard to appreciate just how creative the control scheme for Shadow of the Colossus is - particularly in the way it achieves an artistic goal - without comparing it to other games. I’m not talking about good, responsive controls, or button mapping that is particularly intuitive I mean a control scheme that, in and of itself, has something artistically important to say.įumito Ueda’s Shadow of the Colossus does just that. Unless the control schema is laughably bad or unnecessarily confusing, it gets nary a mention.Įven worse, the control scheme is almost exclusively relegated to a basic function and fails to convey any sense of artistry or contribute to an overarching metaphor.
The controller is the fundamental aspect of videogames as a medium, yet developers and fans alike seem to totally overlook it. What I mean to say is that while lots of the elements of the game are designed and featured in artistically and culturally relevant ways, a huge part of games is left out of the artistic amalgam: the controls. Unfortunately, games fall short in one crucial, yet easily overlooked, way: they only go half of the distance. We laud innovative game designers for forcing us to make morally ambiguous choices about ourselves and the characters around us. The “videogames as art” movement is a funny thingĪrtsy wonks like myself love to wax philosophic about the potential that games have in terms of narration or eliciting meaningful, emotional player responses.
0 kommentar(er)
