Even still, TRENDS are a great part of videogame creation and SotC is one of the great trend-setters, like the first Zelda for the NES.

Anyway, thanks for the insightful comment.

“Mannered” is a euphemism for “affected”, right? We’ll have to disagree about Eggers; to my taste, given a world of writers who can write to the human condition with pathos and depth, he is as authentic as Tofurkey. However, I’ll cop to your point that “latest” was a poorly-chosen word.

Björn,

Thanks for the kind words. I think the comic book analogy is a good one. If it sets your mind at ease, the posturing in Zelda is not quite as bad as the typical comic book refactoring. It’s just a compromise.

Playing through again, there are some points where the game is actually explicitly paying homage to Shadow of the Colossus. At one point, you defeat a boss monster in a particulary SotC-like way, and the musical fanfare is actually taken straight from the other game. So we should always allow for the possibility that I’m wrong. Maybe they just made it “dark” because they really liked SotC. (Nah.)

As I’ve been playing the game myself, I’ve been feeling like there is something /off/ about it, but I could never put my finger on exactly what it was until now. You nailed it for me, and I agree completely.

“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” is neither vapid, nor shallow. Eggers is a mannered writer, and you may not like his style, but the book itself is a deeply touching and sentimental story of his relationship with his young, orphaned brother. Unless you haven’t read it (or couldn’t get past Eggers’ prose), I simply cannot see how you would claim it’s shallow. And it’s hardly the “latest” darling of anybody; it came out in, what, 2001?

Many (well, most) superhero comics nowadays are aimed at people who read superhero comics when they were children. So the writers take all the basic superhero stuff (male adolescent power fantasy) but they put in violence, darkness, mysogyny, sex.

However, most of them do this not because of a bold artistic vision, but rather so people who read “Batman” can now say: “See, it’s not for children… heads are blown off and people are having sex. This is really mature stuff.”

Yet, the result is that it rather comes off as “sophomore” at best.

As I said, I haven’t played “TP” yet, but I really hope that this is not the road they are taking with the franchise as a whole.

(Apart from that: I tremendously enjoy your blog. I’ve been reading for some two years now, but didn’t get around to compliment you for the great work you’re doing here.)

Shadow of the Colossus if you hate boss battles is a tough call. Speaking as a person who absolutely hates boss battles, I found Shadow “worth it” because I enjoy the form of its narrative, and I was able to psychologically steel myself beforehand to accept that this was the nature of the beast.

I’d say a bigger problem with Colossus is simply the pacing. You sort of need to be able to accept long stretches of doing, more or less, absolutely nothing while you figure out where the next Colossus is. I got through it by viewing both the finding and the boss battles as extended, intricate puzzles. But I can’t say the game is without its drawbacks — even if I did find it beautiful.

Hope that helps.

This was a commercial consequence of Nintendo’s internal culture, as I understand. There is little room given for creative freedom in most game development, with the possible exception of Wil Wright’s team at Maxis (even here I am uncertain).

Our research suggests that abstract art styles such as cell shaded graphics appeal to Intuitive players more than Sensing players, and the latter outnumber the former by 3:1 (in theory) creating an unfortunate drive towards realism over style in the game graphics for popular franchises.

Best wishes!