Gorgeous Graphics

Light and Shadow

The magic of ICO's graphics can be summed up in one word: lighting. The game begins in the drab and dark regions of the castle, with the occasional flickering torch. Thanks to the high polygon counts on the characters, light reflects stunningly off the characters and provides a good sense of 3D depth. Jorda is dressed in white, a sharp contrast to the dark, drab castle - and the developers have given her a certain "glow." Step outside and you're greeted with a lush textures and rich colors. The character shadows are perhaps the best I've seen in any game, providing not only proper perspective for the most part, but also exhibiting "soft edges," giving it incredible realism. Most of the game architecture however, is lit statically.

Why did the builders leave chains hanging around?

This is real-time footage

What the screenshots cannot relay is the superb animation. Running around, climbing ledges or chains, swinging your staff, and jumping around all look fluid and life-like. Make a quick turn and Ico will use his staff to help maintain his balance. Jorda has an equally impressive set of animation although her motions are far more deliberate and cautious. Whereas Ico will scale ladders rapidly with full or energy, Jorda navigates ladders one rung at a time. This is just the surface. Interaction is a constant element to this game, and it is the two-person motion capture that really stands out. You can help her up ledges by extending your hand and pulling her up. Lead Jorda by the hand slowly and she'll walk along with you, but start running, and she'll try her best to keep up but you'll still end up having to pull her along. The videos can describe this far better than I can, but before we go there, there's something we need to mention about the graphics.

Let's go!	Lending a helping hand
I'll never let go!	Were you worried?

Smoke and Mirrors

ICO has a fresh concept and strong visual design, but it's on the PlayStation2 with its infamous lack of video RAM. Although ICO is being developed in-house, from a technical perspective the game uses a more noticeable kludge than those from Polyphony Digital, Square, or Konami's MGS2 team.

ICO uses a high-resolution, single-field display. Like the full-motion video in Wing Commander IV, every other line is a black horizontal bar, which saves half the bandwidth for any frame at a given resolution. Essentially, there are only 592x224 pixels of content, but the display mode is 592x448 (640x480 for TVs). Most video capture cards and some high-end TVs will detect this interlaced output and "line double" the image, removing the black horizontal lines by blending the signals available above and below. This is what our video capture equipment does, but when you play the game, you will doubtlessly notice the "interlaced" effect, simulated in the following pictures.

Line-doubled image from the capture card	Interlaced simulation using Photoshop
Another direct screenshot	Simulated interlacing

Although your maximum brightness is cut by 50%, the picture in real-life isn't as dark as our edited screenshots suggest. Similarly, it's not as bright as the rest of our unedited shots. From far away, you can convince yourself that it's not too noticeable, however this is still unconvention in a console game, and in many ways, a major disappointment.