I finally got around to playing Ico. It is a beautiful, beautiful game. Yes, it has pretty graphics, the controls are about as tight as 3D platformers get, etc etc…. what really strikes me about this game is a rare quality — so rare I can only think of one other game that does it off the top of my head — where the game as a whole has one single consistent emotional thesis.

I will explain further.

The other game like this is God of War. God of War is about one thing and one thing only: rage. Every slash of your blades, every battle cry, every bloody dismembering explosion maintains that theme. And I say “your” blades, because the game does a good job of creating agency and immersion; Kratos responds faithfully to your button presses, and the audio, visual, and vibratory feedback are near-perfect.

Ico has similarly excellent audio, visual, and vibratory cues. Ico’s theme takes more than one word to sum up, but it has the same singularity of purpose. Ico is about rescuing the damsel in distress. If you could physically pick up this game’s concept you would literally get “rescuing the damsel in distress” residue all over your hands. Other games may have you rescue a princess or something like that, but this is different… I can imagine the creators of Ico sitting down together and going “Okay, here is what this game is about. Let’s take a look at our gameplay, characters, and art, and strip away anything that doesn’t support the theme.”

The damsel in question needs to be led around by the hand through the entire game. What kind of crazy gameplay mechanic is that? Yet it works. It works really really well. Not only must she be led, but her animations are perfectly dependent and vulnerable as she stumbles or reaches out for your hand or shrinks away from danger.

Meanwhile, our hero takes the rescue theme to another level by being rather unqualified for the job, running around frantically and swinging a piece of wood at giant flying shadow-creatures who are trying to steal the princess away for unpleasant purposes. This point is driven home by audio cues of quickened footsteps and gasps of breath, and animations that showcase his lack of proficiency with a weapon. If he were more powerful and everything were made to look easy for him, it would be less of a heroic act and would have less of an impact.

The plot, told almost exclusively through three cutscenes, is like a fairy tale shell around the chocolately wish fulfillment of saving the girl. The premise is stripped to its bare essentials, with just enough background and imagery to make it clear what’s going on, and letting your imagination fill in the details.

Ico is not one of the greatest games. The puzzles are simple and cliché, and serve mainly to create tension between providing an escape route and protecting your charge. Rather, Ico is one of the greatest game experiences. For a game to deliver such an unadulterated experience is quite an accomplishment, and is something that the greatest writers, painters, filmmakers, and musicians hope to achieve. Bravo to the development team, may we all learn from their creative success and make our own artistic contributions to games.