This is a note to myself, for later reference, on the ICO thing.

I climb a ladder, and walk along a raised pathway supported by arches and pillars. The pathway ends in a door that opens when I stand on a pressure plate in front of it. I walk through. I walk across another parapet-styled bridge, to stumble through a side entrance into a room. The main door to the room — a big, solid wooden thing — is closed. To open the door, I climb a ladder to a platform near the ceiling, jump to a pipe which juts out of the wall next to the platform, sidle hand-by-hand along the pipe to another platform, which happens to be positioned right where the pipe turns off and ends in the wall again. On the other side of this second platform is another pipe, that runs straight across the room, toward a parallel platform. I again hang from this pipe until I reach platform number three. Here, I find a third pipe, parallel to the first, which leads to a fourth platform. This platform also happens to be in front of a window. I walk through the window, and climb down another ladder which does not quite extend to the ground below. I will not be able to climb back up it, once I drop. Next, I open the door by pulling a nearby lever. I then go back in, grab Yorda by the hand, and leave.

This is all clever level design. It uses my character’s abilities well. It is clear what I have to do. On a technical level — one of pure mechanical design — there are no problems. The situation is even to be commended, for the ingenuity in its scupture.

However, as far as world-logic goes: huh? The game seems to want to suggest that the game world is a real place, with a certain reason to it. This is why it gives me pipes and ledges and windows and comprehensible architecture. Yet the only function this architecture holds is to be traversed by the player character. The back-entrance to the room could have any explanation. The pipes, although arbitrary, are similar in this respect. What, however, about the two (latter) ladders? The platforms? Why are they placed just where there is a break in the pipes? The ladder surely is there for no other reason to reach that first platform — which serves no purpose but to allow access to the pipe/platform “puzzle” (as it were). The window needs no reason — yet what of the drop-off ladder which leads from it? There is no access to the window other than the pipe, which I assume no one but the player character would have reason to hang from in order to reach that far platform. There is no way up to the ladder from the ground below, nor would there be reason if there is no way down from the inside. And what of the lever to open the door? Unless the room serves no purpose but to keep someone in, there is no practical reason to put a single lever on the outside of the room. Yet that is an unlikely purpose for the room, because of the back entrance.

All of this might sound like quibbling — yet it is in leaving room for questions like these that the game world betrays itself. And it is so unnecessary. Only a few extra details would be necessary to give context to the game world. Don’t make it so easy for the player. Or don’t just give a single route. Put some more pipes in the room, which don’t just lead to the exit. That one happens to, will seem arbitrary. Rather than the convenient ladder, force the player to find his own convoluted way up to the pipes. Let him notice the pipes through his own observations and then devise a plan for maybe using them. And rather than putting a single lever on the outside of the door, give the door an internal switch. Just make it broken. Or, perhaps, put a bar on the inverse, that the player must remove. That would be adequate. Either get rid of the platforms or find some other rationalization for why that geometry would be present. Turn them into hay lofts, perhaps. Or maybe force the player to swing from one pipe to the next. Maybe have one pipe break off, when the player puts his character’s weight on it, allowing him to swing to the next — which will itself creak, and maybe pop a rivet, but not collapse. Or devise some other scheme. It’s not hard.

This is my issue with the game. It can all be rationalized, sure. Should I have to rationalize it? No. Is it appropriate to make up my own connections? I fear not.

The game does far more right than it does wrong. It’s just, it is an experiment. And this is one of its lessons.