Bye,
Gary

Also as always Hey Ash is awesome.

The pointing and laughing is aimed at me, for I fail.

I have found no official word at all that Yorda is blind, and playing the game she certainly doesn’t act as if she is blind. She navigates objects, stops before a ledge, looks at objects, she even chases birds. During the ending she looks for Ico, she doesn’t fumble around for him. Though, admittedly, she is a bit special at this point.

Shadow of the Colossus: I think implying SoTC is sexist is a bit of a cheek. The person you are trying to help is not helpless because they are female. They are helpless because they are dead. It could have been a male character or even the sodding horse and it wouldn’t have made much difference to the relationship (fanfiction aside). Wander is begging a deific entity to undo a terrible loss, something anyone who has lost someone dear to them can empathise with regardless of the genders involved. Her past is that she was sacrificed because she was believed to have a cursed destiny – a fate not dissimilar to what happened to Ico in the first game, she isn’t really singled out. If anything, she is a McGuffin, it could have been anyone, the relationship between her and Wander is never expanded on.

This has been a bit long and dull.

And getting a stick would help that, yes, but the kid grabbed the only stick there was! So you have to make a choice: would you rather Yorda be less helpLESS, or you be at all helpFUL? Well, maybe you don’t have to make the choice. The game designers looked at their one-stick world and decided there wasn’t much game in the other way.

Srlsly, though, it’s a knight-in-shining-armor thing. They just found a more interactive way to tell it. Blame every woman who ever wanted a man to be useful to her, and every man who ever wanted to be helpful to a woman for this, not just Ueda.

ALL MEN SHOULD HELP ONLY EACH OTHER! ALL WOMEN SHOULD BE SELF SUFFICIENT! Ignore the fact that this leads to the end of the human race in a couple generations. ;P

(PS: I’m totally just arguing the other side for the hell of it. I am the Devil’s Advocate.)

It’s this great emotional experience built around the longest and most frustrating escort mission ever. So good on the game creator for taking one of the most hated mission structure and making us actually want to finish your damn game.

Bigger props to HAWP for calling out the slanted view on feminism.

Biggest props to Papa Burch.

What skirt shot? I was too busy looking up Papa Burch’s shorts. It was hawt. I’m gonna go take a shower now. Hawt shower. Hawt. Shower.