Design in Video Games Part 1

Understanding that this is a design blog, I simply have to post something about this. As it interests me greatly =)


Above is a supposedly leaked trailer of Project Trico, Team Ico's newest project in game development. Team Ico is maybe one of two video game development teams that I really follow closely, the other being Clover which was unfortunately disbanded... This is the team that brought us "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus," tw of my favorite games for various reasons.

I've only played through all of Ico once, and it was a long time ago. It's a wonderful game and well worth playing, but a tad on the stressful side. Worrying about Yorda all the time literally freaked me out. You can't leave the girl alone for more than a minute, or else she will inevitably be frisked away by crazy-awesome shadow creatures. It's a very moody, detailed game. Far from most games being released recently, which focus mostly on graphics and "pushing the envelope" through use of excessive violence and occasional implied (or shown) sex.

Shadow of the Colossus is known as the "spiritual successor" of Ico. It's not a true sequel, as it's never directly indicated that it is. Some fans see it as a prequel, others as a sequel, and some see it as a completely new storyline. Personally, I think its gives a bit of backstory to Ico, showing more of the culture andhow the rituals of Ico's societies came to be. Like Ico, it's very moody and quiet. The gameplay is pretty much a series of 16 boss fights staged in various corners of a vast and breathtaking landscape. This game is one of the few I can play over and over and still find new things. It's very relaxing for me, yet challenging at the same time.

And now there's this supposed trailer which was shown behind closed doors over a year ago at a press conference. Assuming it's real, I find myself very impressed. From what I can discern, there is a familiar relationship between two characters that also happens in the other two games. In Ico, Ico literally had to tug Yorda (a girl he finds trapped in a cage) from bottom to top of a huge castle while saving her from the shadow beings. In SotC, Wanda (or Wander, depends on your translation) had a horse named Agro who rode him faithfully into battle with the giant colossus-beings. Trico has a boy and his dog/rat/bird thing, both living through hardships and slving problems. It's a good formula that worked well in the previous games.

As for the design aspect, there are a million things I could cover. Team Ico has a very distinct look to their games. The color pallett is almost entirely black and white with splashed of necessary greens and browns. Both exhisting game have similarities and differences, and are completely different from almos anything else you will ever experience. The games are very focused on the emotional aspect of story-telling, and acheive heir goal with the use of dynamic elements. The graphics may not be totally realistic, but the player can experience a realistic experience through emmersion. In order for this to work, things must all fit nicely together and flow, the architecture in Team Ico's games is all very distinct and consistent, as are character and clothing designs. You can tell what's good and evil, dark and light, so on... Small details are so important for this as well. (Notice the opening the chain is going into in the trailer I posted, there are so many tiny details...)

Team Ico's gamesmean a lot to me, and always prove further that realism in video games does not only lie in the graphics, but in the presentation.