Shadow of the Colossus by Nick Suttner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well, the parts that were good were GREAT. And the parts that weren’t as good were super not as good.
Wow. With reviews like that, who needs Michiko Kakutani?
The best parts of this Shadows book are the parts that go beyond what’s happening on the screen. When the author gets personal, or when he gives me some inside info from a fairly in-depth interview with the game’s creators.
The parts that didn’t light me up as much were the repetitive “I wake up at the temple, cross the land, get to the colossus, kill him by taking these steps” pieces that I didn’t really need because I’d played the game. These things definitely happen in the game, and if you hadn’t played the game already, I don’t think you could read this book and understand it without those pieces.
And that got me thinking, How many people who haven’t played Shadows of the Colossus are reading this book? Surely some, but not many(?)
And it really drove home for me that, with this game in particular, the original video game experience of Shadow was committed to a format that, IMHO, really, really works. And a book about Shadow is a secondary, less-enriching experience because the game was totally designed to be a game.
Which is, I think, why the parts that happen outside of the game, the part about Suttner’s life or personal connection to the game, his interpretations of what’s happening, I think that’s why I enjoyed those parts a lot more than the parts of the book that felt like they were filling in the story so that someone who had never played the game would still find the book accessible.
I know it’s really damn hard to market a book, let alone a book where one might say, “Go play this entire video game first, then come back.” But I feel like it could have made the book a richer experience for me, if it was written with the assumption that the audience would have played the game already. I think Suttner’s a good writer, and like I said, the personal stuff was great. The descriptions were good too, especially considering that a lot of the stuff in this game is not easy to describe. I didn’t feel lost, and I got a good idea of what was going on. It’s been some time since I played Shadow, and Suttner’s descriptions brought a lot back to me. And he absolutely kills it for the last 20% of the book, which I think was the part that best combined what was happening in the game and with Suttner personally.
I know the book wasn’t written to please me specifically. But that’s why, for me personally, it wasn’t a total homerun. That might be totally unfair. I don’t know.
I’d just like to use the rest of this space to recommend that people play Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a fucking incredible game. Trust me when I say, you’ve never played anything like it. It’s emotional in ways and on a level that has never been replicated in gaming. It forces you into a strange, hero-adjacent role that so many narratives are uncomfortable with.
I think that Shadow is the ultimate, for me, when it comes to storytelling in gaming. I don’t think I’ve played a game that had a stronger sense of story, and where the gameplay better served the story. I don’t know if I’ve ever played another game where it felt like the game elements are subordinate to the storytelling.
It’s also a beautiful piece of video game minimalism, which is such a strange thing to encounter in a format that’s full of SO MUCH STUFF. There is so much stuff happening, so much of it is ratcheted up. Shadow exists in this weird, other space that feels very lonely at times.
I talk a lot about what separates good and great comics when I review books, and the difference between a good and a great comic is this: A great comic is a comic that tells a story that couldn’t be done as well in a different format. In a great comic, the comic format is essential to the way in which the story was told, and I think that makes for a very rich comic book experience. It also means that when comics are adapted, they can suffer. Watchmen is a good example of a book that really maxed out what the form can do, and the movie didn’t really deliver on those aspects or make use of film in ways not prescribed by the comic.
Shadow of the Colossus is meant to be played. It’s a game, but toss aside your preconceived notions about the word “game” meaning that something is unserious or that it can’t handle serious stuff. Shadow is the rare game that showed us a different idea of what games could be.
Play that shit.