#TeamIco30DayChallenge

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge Day 5: Which colossus is your favorite? And which one is your least favorite?

Colossus Thirteen (Phalanx) is 100% my favourite. It has the most dragon vibes of any of the final Colossi, but more than that, it’s just... big and beautiful and peaceful. It’s the only one that never attacks Wander - it’s just doing its thing, and the only way it can hurt him is in its attempts to escape. It’s a thrilling fight, too, high-speed and high in the sky, but of all the Colossi, Thirteen still makes me feel the worst for killing. Even Four (Phaedra) and its deer screams at least tries to attack you.

My least fave used to be Twelve (Pelagia) because it’s so tedious, especially when you don’t know about the ‘bonking its teeth to move it’ trick, like I didn’t when I first played. These days I can appreciate its weird design, though. (It appears to have lost the top part of its head. Those look like teeth jutting out of its ‘head’.) 

No, these days I think my least fave is Nine (Basaran). Those goddamn geysers!

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // day 17: Share a headcanon you have about the story of any of the games that's just too good not to be true. Go wild.

I don't really have any solid headcanons that I swear by, but I always found it funny that most people think of Wander as some sort of peasant or farmer, when there is absolutely no indication of it being true in the game. Quite the contrary, he wears a uniform similar to those of Emon's men, which makes me think of him as something more like a rookie or apprentice of whatever the heck his entire entourage is. Granted, he's not a very good swordsman, but he is a skilled archer and rider, in a way that would probably be a waste if he only used it to hunt or have fun. Emon is clearly an important person in his village, and to be familiar with him probably means Wander belongs in that circle.

Given that Mono was meant to be sacrificed, maybe she too was raised in the same circle, and that's how they met and grew closer. I think some people get a kick of those forbidden-love-stories-due-to-social-status like Jack and Rose but this doesn't feel like that type of story to me. If there was any divergence between them, I think it might have been that perhaps Mono took the prophecies more seriously and wanted to fulfill her fate, whereas Wander questioned his society's beliefs as he dared to challenge them for her.

And it is after typing all of this that I realize I do have a headcanon after all!

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 12: Another popular theory: is Mono the queen?

I wouldn't say that it's exactly her, but rather a version of herself that got corrupted over the years and years she spent on the forbidden lands. So, in a way, I do think it's part of her that lives in that entity, but also some other forces that slowly overtook her too (maybe Dormin, maybe a little bit of greed and desire for an eternal life).

There might be a few things about this theory in general that don't make sense, and it's also a bit sad to think that Mono could have lost herself along the way instead of living up to be the good person we all think she is, but I also think this is a fun theory to explore since both stories connect, even if only in a distant future.

I remember once reading someone else's theory about how Wander probably remains a mortal and dies eventually, but Mono becomes immortal after being brought back to life, so she keeps on kidnapping the horned boys in hopes of meeting with her horned boy again someday, but it's never him, because he's long gone. I wish I could find that post again because it made a lot of sense and it was a really interesting theory. It really stuck with me but sadly I never saved it.

All in all, and though I would prefer it not to be her because everyone loves a good happy ending, I think it's a really interesting theory that makes some sense. We might never know, though!

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge Day 15: If you could play one of the unused Colossi, which one would you choose?

Probably Phoenix.

It has a unique look with the fire/lava, and the strategy of having to dunk it into some water to expose its vitals is completely unlike any of the final Colossi. All of the other unused Colossi that we know about seem to have had major parts of their puzzles absorbed by the game’s final sixteen: not Phoenix, though.

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge Day 13: What’s the relationship between Wander and Mono in your opinion?

They were fiancées and had been friends since childhood. Mono got sacrificed when she went to the local temple to get their union approved and start planning the marriage, and the local god smelled Dormin Destiny on her and freaked out. Wander spent most of the leadup to her death arguing passionately and increasingly desperately that there had to be a mistake until the local god manifested long enough to tell him to shut up.

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 16: You've got 5 minutes with the dev team and they'll answer one single question about anything for you in detail. What would you like to know?

I think the question is what wouldn't we all like to know! Just kidding, but I think that just like everyone, there are a million little things I would definitely love to ask about, but there's just a couple that really still bug me to this day, so I would definitely ask them what the boy's name is.

I think it was all fun and games in the beginning when they kept encouraging us to listen closely and try to guess it, but without a solid clue and considering that the characters from the previous games had names that ranged from straight up made up fantasy-ish type of thing, to japanese and english, it becomes pretty difficult to even make out something that would make sense as a name when the language itself is fictional and made up to sound both familiar and foreign to everyone.

Not really sure why they made us go on an name hunt of all things, especially if it truly is in the script (definitely would make sense for it to be). I hope that someday they reveal it since no one seemed to come to a solid conclusion, it's not that I'm mad about the boy not having a name, I'm mad about him HAVING a name but it being too difficult for us to find out hahaha!

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 13: What's the relationship between Wander and Mono in your opinion?

Such a boring answer but to me it's the obvious one, I really believe they're boyfriend and girlfriend canonically. Not only are there small hints here and there, but it's also a no-brainer that absolutely no one would subject themselves to that unless they really, really loved the other person, and that fact alone makes me surprised to see that there are still a few people who believe there was a possibility that they didn't really know each other.

I do fancy some other theories though! I always found the brother-sister dynamic some people theorize to be really endearing and unique, though I personally don't think it could be canon (they don't really resemble each other physically!). My personal favorite one, however, would be that they're really, really, really good friends. Like, childhood best friends who grew up together and were inseparable through thick and thin, because platonic relationships between boys and girls are just so underrated and the childhood friends trope is just the best. I mean, romance is cute. Adorable. Absolutely everything. But platonic soulmates defying the world together? It's GOLD.

In summary: I think they are a couple, but my personal favorite theory is that they're best friends

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge Day 2: Who’s your favorite character?

Haha, Wander, again. A lot of it is from developing him in my personal Team ICO timeline, but even just thinking about him in Shadow of the Colossus, I wish I had half of this guy’s determination. You can definitely read part of Colossus’ point being deconstructing Heroic Resolve as a virtue, especially in videogames, but at the same time, for me, I can’t dislike Wander for it. Whatever you read Mono as being to him, he really must have loved her.

Plus, he’s a cute, clumsy dork. It’s endearing and humanising how he stumbles often and clearly doesn’t know the first thing about swordplay. His interactions with Agro are adorable (and sometimes hilarious, like the awkward way he mounts up from some angles).

And then we get to the whole Immortal Wander headcanon and my fanfics about it, where Wander’s essentially an immortal demigod with a chunk of Dormin’s soul still in him. He’s older, traumatised by some incredibly bad hands life has dealt him, and kind of prickly as a result, but still at his core someone who loves with his whole heart and who will do just about anything for the people he cares about.

I’m also fond of Dormin, incidentally. I’ve always had a weakness for (1) morally ambiguous characters and (2) Ancient Mystical Thingies, and Dormin hits both of those very nicely. In the Immortal Wander stories, they also get some character development towards being more mindful about mortal concerns. I platonically ship them and Wander, as well.

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 14: Do you make any original content for the fanbase? (theories, discussions, fanart, fanfiction, edits, memes, etc) If so, feel free to link it below so others can check it out!

Well, I do just a little bit of everything around here and I really like that variety, though I do find it especially entertaining to sometimes edit and make little funny things like the text post meme. You can check out my own creations here! There aren't many discussion and theory posts yet as I created the blog after all the games were already out, so there weren't many active discussions going around at the time, but I'm sure as hell super excited to start doing it once we get some news on the new game!

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge Day 6: Which game would you rather spend a day in if you were magically transported into its universe?

Well, if I only have to spend a day there... (I don’t think I’d want to actually live in any of them, to be honest! The Last Guardian’s setting wins by a hair if I had to move there, since on the surface at least it seems the least bad. Sure you might be kidnapped by a trico but at least that’s only a once-in-a-generation thing.)

Probably Dormin’s land from Shadow of the Colossus, since I know it so well from wandering around while playing and when researching for Enlightenments. In particular, I’d like to visit the ICO beach and the Shrine of Worship, and wouldn’t mind spending long enough there to see both.

[icology]

(turns out the uni thing I had to take care of today ended up not happening because of the usual bureaucracies SO,,, doing the 30 day challenge to destress)

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 1 : Which game is your favorite and why?

My favorite game so far is Shadow of the Colossus without a doubt, though I have a very strong connection with Ico as well, as it was the first one I played.

I feel that to explain why I love it, I have to backtrack to the time it released and tell you the story of how I came across it. Leaving it under the cut because it's super long and I don't wanna put a wall of text on your dashboard, but I SWEAR it's funny!

When shadow released, I was around 10/11 years old, and though I played videogames on a regular basis, being a kid my interests were mostly cute and funny stuff like Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, Spyro, etc, etc. You get the deal. It finally releases, and this game is all over the place. It's on gamestop, it's on the cover of gaming magazines, it's everywhere. My brother was beyond excited and somehow managed to convince me to be excited for it too, and we get our hands on the game. Now's the time to mention english isn't my first language, games back then were rarely localized, and us being kids, we didn't even read the description all the way through. I actually think my brother accidentally skipped the intro cutscene because I have zero memory of ever watching it then.

Imagine my shock when I start up the game and there are minimal instructions in a language I know like 3 words in, a dead girl, barren land with no enemies despite there being a weird "monster" on the cover and zero visual cues as to what to do next. I tried all the buttons. I checked the menu for a missions tab. I tried to find anything that would tell me what to do next (yes, I tried the sword. I thought you had to use the light beams to kill something!!!). The only thing I ended up doing was climbing the shrine (I used to call it a "castle") because it was the only thing I could do, and I was 100% convinced that whatever had to be done, had to be atop the shrine because everything else was empty. Needless to say I fell down every single time before I could reach the top because I had no stamina. I DETESTED IT. But, for some reason (or anger. probably anger), I played it almost every single day because it was getting on my nerves how I just couldn't figure that strange game out. It had me right on that instant but I didn’t even realize it.

One day, my dad got so tired of seeing me and my brother aimlessly riding Agro around, he took the controller from us and started playing it himself. I got bored watching him and went to do something else, 5 minutes later I hear screaming from the living room, turns out my dad reached the tutorial area that nor me or my brother bothered to check before, and that's when we realized there WAS something there after all. Then Valus shows up and my dad just says "THERE ARE GIANTS IN THIS GAME???" (I don't think he ever bothered to look at the cover lol). It was like having a collective epiphany. He hands us the controller and after a few tries taking turns we manage to take down the goddamn thing, then the black "tendrils" pierce Wander and we're taken back to the shrine. Me and my brother looked at each other and we went like "that's game over, we did something wrong". I gave up on it and didn't play it until years later in my teens, but I loved Ico growing up (I didn't know they were from the same dev team back then!). Some weeks later I bought the Playstation Magazine and they had an entire section dedicated to the game where they explained how to take down each colossi. I felt really dumb but at that point I was so frustrated that I didn't bother to pick it back up, but I'm sure my brother did at some point.

I finally played it again out of curiosity that never really died down at around 17, after going through all of our old stuff stored away and finding it. I did some research first and spoiled the entire thing for myself while reading about it online, but by then I was finally fluent in english and a lot more experienced, so I was able to clear it with no issue. And I loved it. Throughout my teens I got obsessed with anime and manga, so for years I only played games in that vein, but it was as if correctly replaying shadow had filled a void in my heart I didn't even know I had. It made me get back into the PS classics, and writing, which I hadn't done since I was like 14, and made me see every single piece of media I came in contact with from then on in a completely different light, all because no game or song or movie had ever played into my emotions like that. I had never seen something that broke your heart and mended it immediately after, it reminded me almost of the way your parents scold and teach you a lesson but they do it in a loving way. And in my little writer heart I felt envious. SO ENVIOUS. Because how could someone come up with a story like that and execute it so perfectly? I wanted to do that to people. I wanted to create something that made people feel like it changed them after being in touch with it.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't play it all at that age because I just didn't have enough emotional maturity, or age, even, to understand the themes or why it looked the way it looked. I remember seeing the black blood spill all over the place for the first time freaked me out, it reminded me of something closer to horror and gore than of dark fairytales. I know the experience could have been different if I hadn’t spoiled the plot to myself, and that it would have probably hit me a million times harder than it did, but if the story itself hadn’t sparked my interest in the first place, I could have never even touched it again, so I’m even grateful for that as well. I wouldn’t change a thing because that was the way I was supposed to come across it. Around that time I finally found out ico was from the same devs and of course, it all made sense. Then, a new game was on the way, and I ended up staying to see what would come next. No regrets, and I plan on staying for much longer.

Long story short and apologies for the long read: Shadow is my favorite because I hated it, but it’s so good that I ended up loving it.

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 8: Predictions on Game 4?

For someone who talks way too much, I don't have that many, but one thing's for sure: I'm curious to see what's gonna come out now that they've got a publisher with a massive worldwide presence, money, and trust on their project.

Ueda always said the setting of his upcoming projects is decided by the previous one (for example, Ico took place in a more closed and linear environment, whereas SOTC ended up being open world), so I think he's gonna continue the tradition and do the exact opposite of TLG, so I'm expecting something more like SOTC on all aspects. I think this is quite possible, especially after he said he wanted Game 4 to reach new audiences (even more since it'll be multi-platform), and we all know SOTC was born of the desire to make a more "gamey-game".

I think we're still gonna get a world full of whimsy and magic, but I think they're gonna tone down on the softness and give us something with heavier themes and more gritty and daring (again, in the vein of SOTC), that could potentially be something all players from all platforms could enjoy.

If I'm not mistaken, Ueda also mentioned a couple times we were gonna be surprised when we saw the project so... do surprise me, sir. I'm waiting.

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 4: Who’s your favorite sidekick?

Very torn between Agro and Trico for this one, but, based on gameplay value and story, I'm gonna have to go with Trico. Not only does the entire story of TLG revolve around your bond with him, but it's as if he's a real friend on the other side of the screen who's aware of your presence.

From a perfectionist point of view, I think we all can agree that there were things about the game that could've been improved if it weren't for the rush to meet Sony's deadline and release the game once and for all, but I also think that we cannot deny that bringing Trico to life was an absolute feat that no other team or director could have pulled like that. He's so perfectly crafted, from his looks to every playful trait of personality, that it's almost hard to believe a creature just like that didn't exist at some point in history. You can feel the love and dedication that went into creating him. They absolutely excelled at it and the game as a final result is proof of it. TLG is a truly unique experience that just wouldn't be the same if it weren't for the way Trico as a whole was perfectly executed!

[icology]

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 10: Are you a part of the "secret seeker" community for SOTC? Do you keep up with that side of the fanbase?

I think that what they do is really interesting, and I like to keep up with their work and discoveries whenever something new comes up (which is a rare occasion, though it's been rarer in the past). Besides that, I don't really do much secret seeking myself, to be honest. I only participate in exploring when it's justified, like when TLG came out and when the enlightenments challenge was discovered, I thought it was really fun and I loved the feeling of possibly discovering something new. That aside, I don't really think there's anything meant to be truly discovered, other than exploring and just soaking in the world (excluding older builds of the games, of course! even then, I don't think there was ever a secret lol).

I do however have huge respect for the people who put years of their life into researching and exploring the games, giving us new insight on what could've been if there were no time or hardware restraints for the games. They're a vital part of our community and the reason why the fascination with their universe only grows with each year that passes.

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30-Day Challenge, Day 30: Add your own question and let your followers give you an answer for it!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month of me rambling about the Team ICO games, in particular Shadow of the Colossus!

I’m going to toot my own horn and again link y’all to my Team ICO works on AO3 and ask you to tell me, either here or there, something you like about one of them.

[sparkylurkdragon]

Team ICO 30 Day Challenge, Day 26: Were you happy with the way Bluepoint’s PS4 remake of SOTC turned out? If not, what would you change?

Sure was, by and large! The reimagining of Dormin’s land is breathtaking, and Wander is still a clumsy dork. I actually never quite finished it because I kept a save around to use as research for Enlightenments... perhaps I should, er, do that. (Swapping HDMI cables between the Switch and the PS4 takes executive function, and I’ve mostly been playing on my Switch and PC - Agro the PS4 and Dormin the Retron 5 have seen relatively little use lately.)

As for complaints... I did think Wander’s model looked kind of off in general. He’s got a gaunt kind of look in the original and PS3 port that suits him, and the phases of his Dormin possession are way too subtle compared to the original. He kind of goes from ‘eh maybe a little off’ to ‘zombie’ in two seconds flat in the PS4 version, while in the earlier versions the slow corruption seemed more obvious to me.

I was kind of baffled by some of the sound design decisions, too. Again, I never really finished it, but Colossus Four’s deer screams were some of the bestworst noises any of the Colossi made in the original. I’m not sure what was going on in the PS4make, but they didn’t have nearly the impact to me.