The Yordian Knot

How Don'tNod unraveled Fumito Ueda’s code

One of Oscar Wilde's most famous aphorisms said that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” In some contexts it is a perfectly accurate and truthful phrase, in others it may sound a little unfair and severe. In the world of video games, for example, we cannot apply the same rules of music or literature of the late 19th century when concepts such as "format" or "franchise", which are literally based on imitation and reiteration, did not exist. As a matter of fact, there are game designers and directors who have given such a powerful imprint to gaming DNA that entire generations have more or less unconsciously taken inspiration from their works. In this case the imitation is not (only) a form of frank flattery, but should rather be seen as the fruit of the work of a student who proves that he has assimilated the lesson of the prominent professor. And when "the professors" are called Fumito Ueda, Jenova Chen, Hideki Kamiya or Arnt Jensen (director of Limbo and Inside), we can be sure that the works of their students will have an edge that most of the market lacks.

The "Holy Quaternity" of Game Directing according to my personal experiences: from left to right: Fumito Ueda, Hideki Kamiya, Jenova Chen, Arnt Jensen

Recently, Paris-based Don't Nod have proved that they have assimilated Fumito Ueda's lesson in exemplary fashion, because in their recent game Jusant the references to the game design of the japanese auteur are extremely evident. Jusant is a mountain climbing simulator with simple and effective mechanics and an onirical setting. If you ask your friends about this game they might answer you "how boring", "but how can you even enjoy that?", "I fall asleep every time" because I experienced the same answers myself, but the harsh truth is that if we think about it, we could have said the exact same things about Ico back in 2001 because apart from beating smoke demons and solving easy puzzles there really wasn't a lot of action running on our cathodic monitors. However, Ico had a high novelty factor in his favour combined with an artistic direction that was absolutely off the charts for its times, while being "derivative" of Ueda's work exposes Jusant to some slightly more grounded criticism. Yet I can't help but falling in love with Don't Nod game, because it is an absolutely personal and intimate declaration of love towards Ueda, because it tells a modern and dreamy ecologist tale and because it manages to touch my heart like the boy with the horns and Yorda did at the beginning of the new millennium.

So what has made Ico a cult game over the last twenty years, and why does Jusant reminds us of Ico so much? My very personal answer is "the sound of footsteps in the wind". If I think back to when I played Ico for the first time on the Playstation 2, my memory is almost exclusively auditory. I vividly recall the rhythm of Ico's footsteps on the stone floor of the enormous castle, a rapid and rhythmic "tap tap tap tap tap" echoing among the bare and immense surrounding spaces. The boy's animation was fast and slightly unrealistic, almost clumsy, but it fit perfectly with the environmental sounds, most often limited to the blowing of the wind or the chirps of the seagulls. Jusant, just like Ico, goes side by side with a minimalist soundtrack which gets noticed only in cathartic moments of the game or to indicate the proximity of some particular site, otherwise the sound of the wind is the only soundtrack to operate in the background and, as bizarre as it may seem, the sounds of nature, when properly used, can be as effective and catalyzing as the most sumptuous of soundtracks.

Along with the sound-design another similarity between the two products is the presence of a partner-in-crime, a key charachter vital to the unlocking of obstacles on your path. I know it may seem indelicate but Yorda really wasn't a damsel in distress, she was more likely the key to a metaphorical lock. She was at the same time a burden, an incentive, a catalyst of events which, thanks to its author's writing, "also" presented herself as a delicate and ethereal girl with a dysfunctional maternal relationship. In Jusant the relationship between the protagonist and his pet sidekick is formally identical to the one between Ico and Yorda: it is an emotional bond, sure, but it is even more a bond of mutual utility to achieve a common goal, namely the end of the gaming and narrative path.

A further element that has always characterized Ueda's works are negative spaces, intended as millions of cubic meters of fresh air on screen that serve a very specific purpose. In photography, "negative space" is used to highlight specific subjects by framing them sorrounded by elements that do not attract the brain attention, focusing on the point where the eyes fall in the most natural way. Not only that, negative space can also be used to create a very strong "sense of scale", underlining and exacerbating the sense of human irrelevance in space. In Ico, the immense half-empty rooms of the castle are not just “puzzle-boxes”, they are also “sound-boxes” echoing our steps in the wind, and as we push enormous blocks of stone to open our way towards freedom, these huge empty spaces make us also feel extremely alone, lost and abandoned. In Shadow of the Colossus the vastity of the Forbidden Lands creates a huge and diverse map, obviously, but it’s also an invitation to contemplate the impressive landscapes while savoring the passing of time, leading at first to a feeling of deep calm and -after a few hours of play- creating a deep emotional bond with Agro, who evolves from a “four-legged vehicle” to a faithful companion, playing a key role in the boss fights versus Quadratus and Phaedra. Finally, in the Last Guardian, the concept of Ico is developed on architectural verticality rather than blocky linearity, but the spatial management -also in this case- is used to instill a unique tone to the story as it unfolds.

In Jusant the spaces’ management is formally identical to Ueda's works. There are immense structures to climb that constantly lead the players’ gaze to evaluate how much they have climbed towards the goal and how much they have left behind. As previously happened in Ico and The Last Guardian, in Jusant the player can see past, present and future destination of the journey, having a perfect sense of space, time, pace and progress. This sensation is to all intents and purposes a form of narration, based on rhythm, achieved goals and imaginery, absorbed both on a conscious and subconscious level, with a few animated sequences as a gloss on the ongoing narrative process.

If we talk about pure gameplay, Jusant is a flashy doppelgänger of Shadow of the Colossus. Just replace the shaggy giants with crevasses and steep rock walls and you will realize that the control mechanics built around sticks and triggers, as well as the management of stamina during climbing, are in fact Ueda's lesson applied to the letter, with a couple of deadly weather events added by Don't Nod to replace the "body shaking" dynamics implemented by the colossi once they sense your annoying presence on their bodies.

Finally, a little more hidden and camouflaged against the narrative background, Ueda and Jusant's trilogy also have in common a strong connotation of magic and mysticism. In Ico the boy born with horns is considered a bearer of bad luck and is exiled to a castle inhabited by mystical creatures linked to the concepts of light and shadow. In the game there are artifacts that react to Yorda's powers and the feeling of living in a dreamlike space is ever-present. In Shadow Of The Colossus the Lore tells us of a malevolent deity who tries to manifest himself again after centuries, at the expense of 16 guardians deeply linked to places of worship and arenas rooted in the local morphology. The most relevant thing on a narrative level is that in the original game for Playstation 2 the celestial vault is dyed with a purple color. This specific chromatic connotation, perceivable only on a subconscious level while playing, transported the gamer to a place halfway between dream and reality, between life and death, between earthly and alien, accentuating and catalyzing the themes and narrative. Its absence in the remake by Bluepoint Games, in my humble opinion, has strongly diminished the supernatural and almost lovecraftian tones of the original, but this, perhaps, is a topic for another story. Finally, in The Last Guardian, the themes of sacrifice and malevolent entities are brought up again even if the atmosphere is more fable-like and lighter than in the previous two games, giving the gamer perhaps the most positive and hopeful ending of the trilogy.

One of my early pictures of Shadow Of The Colossus, using the PCSX2 emulator on PC

If you remove the iconic bloom, you'll notice that behind its shiny courtain the sky above the Forbidden Lands is defined by a peculiar purple hue. Its absence in the remake by Bluepoint Games has strongly diminished the supernatural and almost lovecraftian tones of the original game, transfiguring a deeply allegoric tale into a trivial and action-oriented product.

In Jusant, however, it is the architectural structures that cover the supernatural share of the product. While the areas inhabited by the locals recall the sea and the life of fishermen with a few hints of fantasy (for example the cave with the enormous flying jellyfish), the architectural structures that act as bridges between the various game levels (in a gamey but also exquisitely tectonic way) are instead highly technological, almost science fiction, reminiscent of classic works by Studio Ghibli and Gainax, powered by a mysterious natural energy that will also prove to be the bearer of the modern ecological message of Don't Nod.

Jusant, in a nutshell, is nothing more than a modern compendium of Fumito Ueda's game design: we have the rarefied atmospheres of Ico, the climb of Shadow of The Colossus as well as the indispensable and very cute "companion pet" of The Last Guardian. Fumito Ueda's imprint on subsequent generations of creators and designers is a style made of minimalism, essential color choices, non-verbal communication and an absolutely uncommon sensitivity. It's nice to find him in other people's works, but we all do it in the hopeful expectation of his return, which awakens in all of us never-dormant emotions of great adventure and fantastic worlds.