Man’s Best Friend

Video games make us experience a whole range of emotions: excitement (The Elder Scrolls), satisfaction (The Sims), frustration (Tomb Raider), bewilderment (DoA Xtreme Beach Volleyball), shame (The Force Unleashed). So when a new feeling comes along, it’s pretty big news. I discovered a while ago that games can also offer me comfort, mostly through companionship.

Take Yorda, for example, Ico’s mysterious female companion in the game, Ico. This game has such a wonderfully mysterious and ethereal environment, and the pairing-up with Yorda, who speaks in an unknown language, makes the experience all the more magical. The two characters actually hold hands throughout most of the game, with Ico actively leading Yorda through the game world, protecting her from incorporeal creatures who persistently try to capture her. It’s this hand-holding that somehow strengthens the relationship between the two characters. Yorda is totally dependent on Ico for protection, but – and this is what makes the relationship so beautiful  – Ico’s dependency on Yorda is just as potent; the idea of being left alone in that foreign, unfamiliar world was enough to make me hold onto Yorda’s like it meant the end of the word if I let go, even though she liked to let go of mine a lot for no apparent reason.

This is a beautifully contingent relationship.

Fawkes from Fallout 3 is a great companion. Anyone who’s played the game will know just how desolate and depressing that post-WW III American wasteland is, especially for those who’ve played any of the Elder Scrolls games by the same developer. This is what makes finding a companion so comforting in Fallout 3. Some opt for the dog companion, Dogmeat, instead. He’s ok, but the thing about Fawkes is he’s a great heffing Super Mutant with a gun the size of a small tree. All the other Super Mutants in the game (that I know of) are twisted, violent abominations hell-bent on filling you with lead in some fashion or other. But Fawkes… well, he’s different.

He’s got his problems, sure, but what man doesn’t?

My first choice, however, has got to be the one companion who’s given the most and taken the least. He asks for nothing but jerky and cuddles, and we’ve all got plenty of those to give.  Hewie, my canine sidekick in Capcom’s survival horror game, Haunting Ground, offered me comfort in an otherwise heart stopping environment. I love atmospherically-scary games anyway, but Haunting Ground’s adversaries chase your maiden-like character in harmony with the scariest game music ever created (seriously, it’s really scary, stop laughing and take the scariness seriously), which makes it that bit more intense. It was due to Hewie that I felt almost cosy existing in this game world. It was the juxtaposition of the nightmarish setting and my friendly companion that made the game so moreish. How well I trained Hewie throughout the game determined how well he responded to my commands, including to attack my aggressors. Hewie is a realistically-modelled canine companion who never failed, aside from that handful of times which we had a good talking about, to instantly come through for me at my command. He’s the best.

Hewie also helps you solve puzzles by sitting on things in a random, arbitrary, almost unintentional way.

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One response to “Man’s Best Friend”

  1. Jake avatar

    Play through Ico a second time and you can understand everything Yorda says…

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