11Nov05 (Monthenor): Does everybody remember Ico? That comic is almost painful for me to look at, situated as it is back in the day. We're going to talk about something that's kind of like Ico today.

Shadow of the Colossus: This is the next game made by the team that did Ico, and if it is not some form of direct (se|pre)quel then it is a spiritual successor. If you want to know about the game, well, you climb 16 giant stone beasts and put your sword into their magical weak points until they fall over, which is definitely not a metaphor for anything.

Like Ico, it's not really about the game. It's not what you do so much as what you feel. Shadow of the Colossus is about a man willing to do anything to bring his lover back from a premature and perhaps undeserved death. It's about an echoing voice in the sky that gives him help. It's about the colossi, some who want you dead, some who just want to live, and every one of which succumbs at last to your sword. You've seen the story before; you know how it will end, right from the beginning, and you know it cannot end well. Why, then, do you go on?

Morgion and I had a lot of arguments much like the above. Morgion was convinced that we were evil, that we were doing evil. I was (and still am) convinced that we were doing the right thing, maybe not in the right way but it was going to acheive our goal. That goal is just.

It's not a funny comic, not really. I think it captures the right flavor of despair that comes with victory.

In awesomer news, yesterday I purchased what might very well have been the last copy of Guitar Hero in all of Fargo. Yes, with the guitar controller and everything! At the moment you are reading this post, there is a 75% chance that I will be rocking out.

12Nov05 (Monthenor): It is now 2 AM and we have been rocking for eight solid hours. Holy shit. ROCK. I'm finding it hard to type because my left hand keeps trying to form chords.