Shadow of the Colossus and Nostalgia Without Experience

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) Screenshot

One summer evening in 2019, I booted up the PS2 epic Shadow of the Colossus for the first time. The moonlit sky of the opening cinematic illuminated the room, and haunting melodies filled my head as I eagerly anticipated this enigmatic game I had long heard heralded as a classic. As the night progressed and I delved deeper into this unfamiliar and desolate land, an unusual feeling set in. I felt like I knew this muted and grim architecture, the shaggy hair of these colossal beasts, and the minimalist score that grew into a bursting symphony as I plunged my sword into the creatures. But it went deeper than that, the floaty movement and snappy climbing felt like second nature. The beam of light shooting forth from my blade sent pangs of recognition down my spine, but… how could that be possible? 

I racked my brain, trying to think of anywhere I could have played the game before. I never owned a PS2, so I reached out to childhood friends, former babysitters, and anyone who might have had the game and allowed me to play it as a kid. I needed to confirm that these feelings were nothing more than my mind dusting the cobwebs off long-forgotten memories. However, every single person I contacted gave the same response: they had never owned a copy of Shadow of the Colossus. This truly was my first time playing it. 

I’ve thought about this frankly bizarre event a lot over the years. I’ve never replayed Shadow of the Colossus, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I’m afraid new memories will supplant the peculiar nature of that initial playthrough. I’ve mulled it over, searching for an explanation, but I always arrive at the same strange conclusion. When I played Shadow of the Colossus in 2019, I was overcome by nostalgia… but how can you be nostalgic for something you never experienced? 

Recently, I’ve come to understand that nostalgia is not only a feeling but also an “aesthetic”. If you browse Gen Z’s favorite social media app TikTok long enough (though you might not be able to much longer), you’ll find users describing their aesthetic predilections as “cores”. If you’re into rustic and homely activities like baking, gardening, and wearing flannels, well, that’s “cottage core”. If you’re a bit more earthy and drawn to spirituality and nature, that’s “fairy core”. And if you’re just a weird little guy, you might feel at home in the “goblin core” community. It seems like there’s a “core” for everything, so it’s no surprise that users who long for the past may find “nostalgia core” TikToks on their For You Page.

Nostalgia Core

These videos are typically a collection of images from the posters' childhood. However, the slideshows rarely feature specific moments from the creator's adolescence. Instead, they aim to reach a wider audience by presenting a vague and universal idea of 2000s childhood, often featuring places like backyards, playgrounds, video stores, or classrooms, and including products from the era like McDonald’s Happy-Meal toys, flip phones, TV dinners, and Ice cream trucks.  

Scrolling through the comments sections of these posts, you’ll find people reminiscing on fond moments stirred from memory by a particular image. Yet, there is also a pervasive sense of melancholy. The majority of users express sentiments like “I should’ve appreciated it more”, “I want to go back”, and “Everything is so dull now”. “Nostalgia Core” is primarily a space to grieve what has been irrevocably lost to time. 

The authors of these TikToks play into this mournful atmosphere by playing somber songs in the background and captioning videos with phrases like: “When did life stop feeling like this?”, “Make the most of your life.” and “Can you give me just one more day?”. The community thrives on a longing for the past that is often gloomy and unsettling as they collectively confront the relentless march of time. 

Speaking of unsettling, there is another aesthetic trend on the internet that often overlaps with “nostalgia core”, but this one is a bit darker. If the generic backyards and classrooms evoke the hazy recollections of childhood, “Liminal Spaces” are eerie reconstructions of adolescent nightmares. 

Liminal Spaces

Liminal spaces are photos or artistic depictions of abandoned locations. The name is derived from the concept of liminality,  an in-between state, so these are often places of transition or separation, like hotels, crossroads, airports, bathrooms, hallways, etc. However, these familiar places have been stripped of context; a playground lacks children, an indoor swimming pool is dimly lit and deserted, and a vacant shopping mall features no identifiable store signs. The comfortable becomes the quiet uncanny.

Gen Z creators play into this unsettling feeling by bathing images in the aesthetics of the 2000s, capturing the liminal experience that is the transition from adolescence to adulthood. This often gives the photos a dreamlike ambiance, as if they are the foggy remnants of a life we can no longer return to. While the audience can place the picture in time, in the absence of specific memories to tie them to, one is left with a surreal and lonely connection to an intangible past. It’s as if these liminal spaces exist as nebulous moments from a generation’s collective memory. We are left grasping at the familiar, only to discover apparitions of long-forgotten nightmares, resulting in an uncomfortable and unexplainable nostalgia. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar? 

Video Game Nostalgia

Video games (remember when I was talking about those!) display their age more apparently than other mediums. Games are always adopting the latest innovations in the rapidly evolving fields of technology and design. Just by glancing at a game’s visuals, sound, and mechanical conventions, it becomes obvious whether it came from the first console generation or the second. Shadow of the Colossus looks and feels like a game made in 2005; it is immediately recognizable as a piece of media from my childhood. Contrast this with a movie made in 2005 which is almost indiscernible from one made in 1995, or a book made, uh… whenever (text will always be text!). Playing Shadow of the Colossus, I am seeing, hearing, and feeling the essence of my formative gaming experiences; their DNA has just been arranged into a different structure. 

Playing it as a teenager, I became hauntingly aware of lost time. In a different life, I loved this game as a kid, I got lost in its cryptic world, epic battles, and head-scratching puzzles. But in this one, I am left only with the bittersweet knowledge of memories that could have been. 

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) Concept Art

Conclusion

While I could end this post here (and maybe I should), It’s interesting that I don’t feel this way about every game from this era—at least not so far. To be completely honest… I still don’t have an explanation for why specifically Shadow of the Colossus made me feel this way… but I can try. 

The game has an almost dream-like quality. Dialogue is spoken in a fictional tongue, ancient overgrown architecture sporadically populates the realm, and there are no people, no non-playable characters to give context to this forgotten and unfamiliar place. The camera zooms out while riding through the empty, yet beautiful landscape, revealing to the player how insignificant they are compared to the rich forgotten history of this dying world, adding to the pervasive sense of melancholy and unease. Shadow of the Colossus is vague and surreal, it is an archetypical story of transition set within an interactive liminal space. 

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) Screenshot

At least, that’s what I’d like to say is going on here. I can’t go back and psychoanalyze my brain from five years ago. It could be because it brought to light fond memories of adventure games from my childhood which made me a bit too nostalgic. It might be that the moments of solitude and quiet reflection while traveling through a derelict and lonely environment made me a bit too introspective. It could just be because I played it when I was a Junior in high school, thinking about my future, and it confronted me with the fact that I’d never play this game or any game as a kid again. Whatever the reason, Shadow of the Colossus may be a liminal space unique to me, but I’m sure this is not a singular phenomenon. It was generated in part by the way video games are constructed, and will likely only become more prevalent. 

Nostalgia has been an aesthetic trend in the gaming industry long before it was one on TikTok. In the Indie scene especially, it's been a great way to get people excited about a game by tying it to something familiar and avoiding the difficulties that come with creating hyper-realistic graphics and complex systems. However, while these games may adopt the visuals and sounds of older games, they are often designed with modern audiences in mind, implementing newer conventions and quality-of-life improvements that simply did not exist in the games they emulate. Furthermore, larger companies seeking to capitalize on this wave of nostalgia have remastered or rereleased their classic games with updated visuals and features. In many ways, creating the idealized version of the product that only existed within the faint memories of the children who played the original. 

The past is evolving. When the bones of past experiences are reconstructed into something less familiar and the qualities that allowed us to place something in time disappear, we may only be left with an eerie sense of nostalgia plagued by the absence of memory.