The story never confirms the players’ thoughts. But these interpretations only say something about limited player subjectivity: how players coinhabit an action, visual, song, or game mechanic. This ambiguity leaves the collections of player interpretations and inferences how the player may feel as though they can point to something hidden in the world. The plot doesn’t reveal these mysteries either as they unfold. The game simply present mysteries to wander through, look at, climb up, and defeat. The story doesn’t reveal the required confirmations that the players’ inferences and interpretations need to become actual storytelling devices in the game. Instead, the player is the one saying something about how the world works and what the world is, rather than the world and the game itself. Yet, none of these interpretations and inferences are confirmed by Dormin, Wander, Mono, Lord Eamon, the colossi or any possible lore in the world. The player does this by combining the disparate elements into a sort of cohesive, interpreted whole that the player believes says something about the world that Wander lives in. If the player is manufacturing their understanding of the world with inferences and interpretations, then it is the player who outlines a story from visuals, metaphors, music, and game mechanics in the game, not the game itself. What these explanations create is a patchwork understanding that the player applies to the world about what is happening in Shadow of the Colossus. But all that inferring and interpreting never comes to fruition in the game. We’re forced to rely on interpreting and inferring about character actions, visual metaphors, music, shapes of the colossi, etc. As players, we start generating a few facts about the story. If we stop only looking at the plot and characters and begin zooming out to the wider context of why Wander revives Mono, then deeper questions begin to surface: what is Dormin’s role is in the world, why Wander must be sacrificed, where is this land, why is the land littered with ruins, etc. We are left to infer those pieces from their ambiguous actions and how they are animated. These characters don’t portray many missing pieces to help fill out who or what they are. Dormin is revealed to be a massive, shadowy figure, but then is dispatched quickly into a mysterious pond. He remains a static character, expressing determination towards healing Mono–even as Eamon’s men cut him down. His appearance has become evil, but his steadfast personality hasn’t changed. When he returns after killing the sixteenth Colossus, his focus is still on Mono’s well being. We see Wander change into a darker and less recognizable form, but this doesn’t translate into a personality change. Wander never hesitates or changes his attitude about completing Dormin’s request. Characters change in appearance–Wander and Dormin for example–but if personalities are present, they are static. Along with this, there is little to no character development in Shadow of the Colossus. With these tasks given by Dormin, Wander unflinchingly completes the game’s puzzles. To the player, the game’s plot is made clear through the beginning dialogue and subsequent character actions. The story Shadow of the Colossus tells uses a simple plot: Wander wants to revive Mono, and is instructed how to do this by Dormin. A Mystery Is a Powerful Storytelling Device, But Not a Story Itself.
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