We review the work of Fumito Ueda, creator of titles such as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and we analyze the importance of the figure of the author in the composition of video games. Don’t miss it! On this note!

Creating a great work is very difficult. Repeating it is for the elect, and one of those elect was Fumito Ueda. In his work you can see the place occupied by the figure of “Author“In the industry and in his latest game, The Last Guardian, we can observe the limits of “video game as art”.

Without freedom there is no author. The triple A industry expelled its great heroes: Hideo Kojima, Ken Levine and the same Fumito Ueda, who left that industry and formed separate studios to regain a freedom they no longer had.

Until a few years ago it was debated whether video games were a legitimate art form. Today that discussion seems over. What can be debated, on the other hand, is what place the “author” video game has in the mainstream industry Is it recognized by critics and massive gamers? Or is it a niche experience, almost a relic? Is there a place in today’s industry, dominated by big studios, for the figure of an “author”?

A video game as an art does not only seek to tell a narrative. But an idea, an emotion, an atmosphere. A vision of the world. An experimental game seeks to succeed outside the system. An “auteur” game seeks to succeed within the industry on its own terms.

In the mid-2000s, this way of understanding design was at its peak. Critically acclaimed works and popular hits: Mass Effect, Bioshock, Portal, Metal Gear 3, Shadow of Colossus they formed what could be called a golden age.

Of those great heroes of the industry, how many are still in that place? Sagas with anticlimactic endings, series that creatively stalled or failed to repeat the mystique of the original.

You can think of a thousand reasons, but one in particular is of interest: the price of success. A colossal success marks an artist forever. He cannot escape it and the magnum opus becomes a cross for the author. It makes it sacred but it becomes a weight on your shoulders. All the authors had to reconcile with that first leap to glory, that which enshrined them in popular culture, chained them. They were prisoners of their worlds, their characters, their imaginaries.

Fumito Ueda and his rise to fame

For Fumito Ueda, that cross was Shadow of the Colossus. It is impossible to watch The Last Guardian without feeling the weight of that shadow. In the game, Ueda he tried to repeat the already proven mechanism: to criticize the fantasy of power. Doing this is the basic mechanism of any video game that aspires to be “art”. It seeks to deny violence as the only possible stimulus.

The great enigma for an “author” was always the same: How can you play with that fantasy without “breaking the spell”, without losing the immersion, the impact? There are two ways to break that fantasy. The simplest is the narrative: a cutscene that criticizes violence. Another more subtle way is to do it through pure design: the same mechanics used as a metaphor.

Authors have a complex relationship with their own work that ranges from autohomenaje and self-criticism. The Last Guardian offers a great example. The first thing the player does is climb onto the creature (that strange mix of bird and cat called “Trico”) To remove a spear that is stuck.

Everything is made to emulate the Colossi. The same mechanics are used but in the opposite direction. From aggression to care, from death to life. That mechanics is metaphorical and self-referential without being explicit. He criticizes his own work, his own legacy.

The Last Guardian and his duty

In The Last Guardian he breaks with the fantasy of power. The creature is protected instead of exploding it (as in a Pokemon) or saved instead of killing it (as in a Dragon Quest). But that conceptual genius has a dark side.

The basis of every game is the progression of the mechanics. If this mechanic of killing beings is used so much, it is because it is effective, because it allows progress in a game. You catch or kill stronger and stronger creatures. If a mechanic never grows, it does not allow any progression. A wicked mechanic in concept can be virtuous in design. And a virtuous idea conceptually can be detrimental in design.

In The Last Guardian you are not the “owner” of the creature. You are at their mercy. You depend on her. However, this makes the player almost a passive spectator. Critical distance becomes emotional distance.

The great theme in the work of Fumito Ueda It is the connection, the empathy. History and aesthetics can catch and be humanistic, but the mechanics are what define the medium. And in The Last Guardian the sheer mechanics are alienating. Everything that it promises in concept ends up affecting execution. In addition, great ideas of the author are repeated: there is no life bar, which gives us the feeling that you do not have control over the creature. Not to mention, there is hardly any dialogue or cutscenes.

These original ideas, when taken to the extreme, lose their “magic”, it makes you not the real protagonist. The player leaves the center of the scene. This “anti-power fantasy” is pushed to the max. In this sense, the story involves you from the emotion, but never from the mechanics. Rather than “play the game”, you passively watch how it is “played alone”, there is no real challenge. Thus, the story is unforgettable and the mechanics are fleeting.

In Shadow of the Colossus everything was more ambiguous. You played with the epic and at the same time criticized it, but the epic was there. There was a very fine, almost perfect balance between violence and contemplation. In The Last Guardian, however, there was zero balance, only anti-empowerment.

The Last Guardian was a good game, but what did it lack to be a new classic? He was overshadowed by his own royal lineage, that is, he failed to “live up to” the legacy of the saga. He failed to recreate the magic of the original.

Now, is it possible to recreate the original magic? Isn’t a work something unique? Own of its time, unrepeatable? It was a game expected for almost 10 years, at the same time that the closing of a trilogy, came to close two cult games. He had all the pressure in the world and that led to a perhaps unattainable expectation.

We want to believe that a genius is immortal and inexhaustible and we want to see the figure of the author as a unique individual genius. It is a functional idea for everyone, that works for the players and for the industry, that legitimizes the best of the medium as a source of expression, that makes us forgive the industry for its most harmful aspects.

It is said that a genius stands on the shoulders of giants. Fumito Ueda It’s a giant. The Last Guardian he has giants standing on his shoulders.

A note from Andres Prillo for Globe Live Media.

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