Shadow of the Colossus book review, book opinion
Shadow of the Colossus by Nick Suttner from Boss Fight Books is a play-by-play walkthrough of the game Shadow of the Colossus with personal anecdotes and developer correspondence interspersed throughout. It’s exactly that and nothing more. If that doesn’t sound interesting to you, then this book isn’t for you. If it does sound interesting to you–as it definitely does to me–then you will get a lot of enjoyment out of this book.
The author, Nick Suttner, has written for EGM and 1UP.com, was at the time of the book’s publication, a Lead Account Manager at Sony and is now a freelance writer with script editing credits most recently for Celeste. So, he knows how to write. Which is important to consider when diving into a full narrative book about a single game. Plenty of people love games and would love to wax eloquently about them for almost 200 pages. But few people actually can. And that’s what Boss Fight Books does very well, and where Nick Suttner–who calls Shadow of the Colossus his favorite game of all time–comes in. This book is part love letter, part game dev diary (as culled by interviews with various members of Team Ico), and part defense of the video game as an artform. If you’re reading this review then you are likely already in the games-are-art-dammit camp, but that’s a drum I don’t think can ever be beat enough. So I’m glad Suttner does so here. Carry on the good fight, Mr. Suttner.
The book’s narrative hook–that it’s essentially a play-by-play walkthrough of the game with commentary throughout–is simple and unsurprising, which may be the book’s only–though admittedly large–downfall. Potential readers who haven’t played Shadow of the Colossus may avoid the book. Now, I hear you saying “but how many people who haven’t played the game would read an entire book about it?” That’s a valid assertion. But I would argue that players who have played the game would be served better by a story that does much more than map the journey they’ve already experienced.
So the question becomes, what could Suttner have done other than regurgitate the journey? Well, he could rest on his ability to write damn well, which he does here. But is that enough? He could fold in interviews from the game developers to allow him, the writer, to excavate specific moments from the game as they are regurgitated. He does that too. Very well. But still something is missing. I think the book is too comfortable with simply documenting an experience. It doesn’t contribute to the larger Shadow of the Colossus conversation. It points out how great the game is. It allows the creators to justify why the game is great. But it doesn’t carry the conversation forward. For a game as awe-inspiring as Shadow of the Colossus is, a game that I have to believe is capable of ongoing conversation, this book unfortunately doesn’t carry such a torch.
But, the fact remains, if you like reading and you like the game Shadow of the Colossus, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t read and you shouldn’t enjoy this book. For those people–I am one of those people–it’s a must read. But if you fall outside of that–assumedly thin–Venn diagram overlap, then you really have no reason to read this book.
Research/Sources/Credits/Inspirations (this is not a comprehensive list, as that would be impossible, especially the “inspirations” items)
- Boss Fight Books: https://bossfightbooks.com
- Nick Suttner, twitter: https://twitter.com/nsuttner
Music Credits
8bit Dungeon Level Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
