Earlier this month, NieR: Automata and Drakengard creator Yoko Taro participated in a three-way interview with Ender Magnolia director Keisuke Okabe and Denfaminicogamer. During the discussion, Yoko Taro named some games he considers to have had a major impact on video games as an art form, emphasizing the PS2 classic ICO in particular.
Published by Sony in 2001, ICO is a 3D action platformer designed and directed by Fumito Ueda. The title quickly achieved cult classic status, captivating players with its minimalistic yet highly immersive design and mostly silent storytelling.
Yoko Taro’s comments on the game revolve around its central mechanic – as the protagonist Ico, you are tasked with escaping the castle together with the mysterious girl Yorda. As Yorda can only perform limited actions, Ico has to help her through the castle by lifting her and arranging objects on the field so that she can pass. If ICO strays too far from Yorda, she will be targeted by shadow creatures, and he cannot progress past locked gates without her.
“ICO is a game with very strong overarching messaging. Frankly speaking, the mechanic of leading the girl along with you itself has a negative impact on playability,” Yoko Taro comments before adding, “For example, if ICO were a game in which you carried around a suitcase the size of a girl, it would be an extremely annoying game. But having the player lead the girl was an innovation.”
Yoko Taro explains that this decision in ICO’s design went against mainstream game development theory at the time. “Back then, good game design was defined as design that’s entertaining even if you stripped it down and replaced all the objects on screen with basic cubes. This is where ICO took a step in the opposite direction, conveying meaning through its themes while using gameplay that already existed elsewhere, even including ‘negative’ gameplay mechanics.”
According to Yoko Taro, ICO appeared at a time when “art and worldbuilding were seen as merely ‘decorations’ to be overlayed on top of the game system.” However, ICO did the opposite, putting art and atmosphere first. The gameplay was subordinate to art, and used as a means to express the theme and message. “I found it to be very epoch-making,” he comments.
NieR: Automata’s creator also mentioned two other titles that he believes have had a lasting impact on both game design as a whole and his own work: Toby Fox’s Undertale and Playdead’s LIMBO. He suggests that these titles pushed video games as an art form and encouraged “the range of what’s expressed in games to expand dramatically.”
