Shadow Of The Colossus Is A Powerful Fairy Tale Because It Resists Condemning The Player

"Despite this common logic, silence is often alienating. Few games embody this better than the works of Fumido Ueda. The protagonists of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, and The Last Guardian are taciturn, often silent or speaking only a fantastical language, which is either subtitled or not immediately understood. Moments of speech, or even of action outside of player input, are profound and rare."

"Protagonist Wander's quest is grounded in games past. He seeks to rescue his love from death. To do so, he must slay the titular colossi: massive foes strewn across a forbidden land. The entity spurring Wander on, Dormin, is a voice from the heavens haloed in light. Wander wields a legendary sword--one whose connection with the sun guides him on his quest. In every superficial sense, he is the epitome of a hero."

Silent protagonists in many games invite player self-insertion, but silence can also alienate. Fumido Ueda crafts taciturn leads whose rare speech and curated gaps generate empathetic distance. Wander embarks on a ostensibly noble quest to save a loved one, guided by Dormin and armed with a sun-linked sword, yet the quest requires slaying massive colossi across a forbidden land. Several colossi react only after Wander invades their space or attacks them, recasting the protagonist as aggressor and turning the heroic trappings into moral ambiguity about violence and culpability.

Read at GameSpot