“Video Games Made Me Do It!”: Shadow of the Colossus and Video Game Violence

There is an age old belief that videogames are often to blame for violent crimes,  resulting from glorification of violence which leads to desensitisation – turning players into zombie-like criminals, who take their game’s quest to kill into the real world. Shadow of the Colossus (Team Ico, 2005) takes a critical stance against this commonly held belief to expose the player to their already established violent tendencies, by using violence to elicit emotion rather than gratification which highlights the immorality of their actions.

Emotion is largely attributed to the characterisation of the colossi, which helps to generate a strong feeling of guilt in the player after they have killed each of the sixteen creatures. The colossi are essentially gentle giants, beautiful animal/stone hybrid creatures whose magnificent stature leads them to be mistaken as violent monsters. They are instead peaceful creatures, and the majority of them only become aggressive after the player approaches or initiates an attack – which the player does in all cases. A cutscene begins when the player approaches the first colossi, Valus, showing the ground shaking beneath its gigantic feet as it walks in height with the trees. The player unsheathes their sword ready to fight- however, Valus takes no notice of the player until they whistle at it or shoot an arrow, and shows no signs of aggression until the player begins to climb its body – from previous gaming, the player instinctively acts aggressively when they do not need to defend themselves against anything.

Guilt is heightened by gameplay, which makes the act of killing a colossi a heartbreaking encounter, stripped of any sense of achievement other games often generate. The task of defeating a colossi is not as easy as pointing a gun at their heads and shooting, the player instead has to work out the puzzle of their bodies to find a way to reach their weak spots and kill them. For Valus, the player must first target its feet so it falls over, allowing the player to advance up its body to the weak spot on its head. Valus tumbles to the ground in agony, before rising to clumsily attempt to shake the player off – never actually using violence to defend itself. Rather than action-fueled sequences, it is a very drawn out and sobering process – portraying violence as nothing but cruel. This is highlighted by the slow and haunting battle music which plays throughout and gives the player a sense that what they are doing is wrong, rather than the triumphant upbeat music which usually accompanies boss fights.   

The game does force the player to follow through with the senseless murder of these creatures, as the only way to progress the story and fulfil the quest of trying to save Mono is to do so. However, in doing so SOTC does not simply follow gaming traditions, it instead uses classic gameplay to critique them. The player enters the game with a knowledge of the stereotypical quest – to fight and destroy evil, to save good mankind – leading them to act irrationally and selfishly on their own. Through its cruel portrayal of violence, SOTC reveals how games can instead make players more moral by making them aware of their instinctive actions.