Shadow of Wanda is a powerful fairy tale because it refuses to condemn players

Today, October 18, 2025, Shadow of the Colossus celebrates its 20th anniversary. Below, we examine the moral complexity of its narrative through its silent protagonist.

Does a silent protagonist amount to self-insertion? A lot of video game logic suggests yes. Heroes like Gordon Freeman and Link remain forever silent, only grunting or shouting. Even the Master Chief, who had a voice, covered his face. Under his mask, there could be anyone.

Despite this common logic, silence often alienates people. Few games embody this more than the work of Fumido Ueda. Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, and The Last Guardian all feature taciturn protagonists, often silent or speaking only in a fantasy language that is either subtitled or not immediately understandable. Moments of speech, and even action outside of player input, are profound and rare.

Under the logic of silent recognition, these protagonists will be simple player avatars with graphic characteristics. However, Ueda's carefully orchestrated gaps create an empathic distance between himself and his game heroes. In the 20 years since Shadow of the Colossus was released, it has proven its profundity as a moral fable due to its distance from players.

That's not to say Shadow of the Colossus isn't interested in the video game format. The protagonist Wander's missions are based on past games. He tries to save his lover from death. To do this, he must slay the titular giants: the legions of enemies that litter the Forbidden Lands. Dormin is the entity that inspires the wanderer to keep going, a voice from heaven shrouded in a halo. The Wanderer wields a legendary sword – a sword whose connection to the sun guides his quest. He is the epitome of a hero in every sense of the word. He has noble pursuits, sacred tools, and fearsome enemies designed to kill.

However, Wonder is the aggressor. For many of the colossi, he had to fire his bow and arrows at them to get their attention. They only attack him when he invades their space, and often not until he attacks them. The colossus bleeds black blood. It spurts out of them when Wonder stabs them. They moan, flail, cry and scream when he climbs on top of them. Each Colossus had an animal noble, but was murdered by Wander. Every element is part of the rhetoric of Shadow of the Colossus. Overall, they take common aspects of heroic fantasy and turn them into something horrific.

However, Wander is not a cipher or a stand-in. Usually, games in which the protagonist is silent start from a relatively normal position. Think of Gordon Freeman’s long train ride to the office in Half-Life, or Link’s journey to the Kokiri Forest as a child in Ocarina of Time. In Shadow of the Colossus, we begin halfway through Wonder's journey, traveling over land on horseback. When he arrives and places his lover Mono on the altar, we learn only a few things about him. First, he carries an “ancient sword,” as Domin puts it. Second, he attempts to save his love from death and damnation. 3. His horse Agro is a loyal and brave companion. This implies that people live outside the game. There are important things that players can't see or understand yet.

Additionally, Wonder's exact motivations are unclear. His relationship with Monod has never been described. Instead, we see how he would act without her. His journey to slay the Colossus is arduous and dangerous, but he presses on with an almost inexhaustible drive. The player can instruct him to stand over Mono's body on the altar. The camera zooms in, creating a level of intimacy rarely seen in games. Wonder's love is deep and perhaps selfish, considering how much he would destroy to see it restored, but we don't see it firsthand, so it's hard to identify directly with it. Shadow of Wanda establishes this understanding through gestures that accumulate into cascading meanings.

Through these gestures, the game takes on a theatrical quality. Players inhabit the Outcast, much like an actor playing a character. Players will need to make some choices, such as whether the frequency of his visits to Mono will be in between defeating giants, or whether their own skills will define him as a dexterous warrior or a clumsy but strong-willed civilian. However, the format is set. Wonder has made his choice. Players can only interpret them.

This is a huge contrast to many other games that usually focus on the morality of the protagonist. For example, Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line use the protagonist as player agent. BioShock's plot twist emphasizes how little the player actually plays in the story, turning the hero into a hapless figurehead. In Spec Ops: The Line, the player's willingness to complete the game and protagonist Walker's belief in the importance of his mission are ambiguous. Walker's determination made him cursed, and that implicated the players as well. In loading screens and monologues, Spec Ops warns players to stop playing the game.

There's more than just player condemnation behind both games, but a somewhat shallow approach to the protagonist's morality. For example, the developers themselves are strangely absent from this logic. BioShock's twists have dramatic power but little emotional weight. The protagonist is not anyone; he is just a tool. This distortion relies on player identification solely from absence. Spec Ops: The Line does this better. Walker is a character who is at least two-dimensional. However, if he is a character who does things his own way, why discuss player complicity? Moral swings don't implicate the player in any real way.

Shadow of the Colossus is also interested in agency, but not that of the player, but that of Wander himself. Both Bioshock and Spec Ops have a lot of sound. Antagonists Andrew Ryan and John Konrad explain the themes to players in straightforward terms. Shadow of the Colossus is quiet. Its world is filled with empty space and empty time. This emptiness leads to an empathetic, albeit still distant stance. Through the course of the game, players gradually get to know Wander. The process of embodiment is ambiguous, mysterious, not simple or reducible. Shadow of the Colossus doesn't treat the player as a hapless lackey, unable to truly understand the current situation until the game's author generously assists. Wonder's fault wasn't twists and turns. This fact allows players to live with it and even temporarily embody it.

Condemnation is cheap; understanding is hard-won. Even though Walker has more lines and more text, Wander still feels more real because his personality isn't attached to the player. Instead, there is a feeling of exchange. We feel sorry for Wanderer and mourn him. This relationship has a deeper, more profound impact on our own morality than simple condemnation. If asked whether we are guilty, the Shadow of the Colossus remains silent.

At the end of the game, a group of companions sworn to stop Wander arrive and seal him away within a forbidden area, leaving Wander to a place where the player cannot follow. The sealing process turned him into a child, and Mono, who was successfully resurrected, seemed to want to raise the child. All of Wonder's heroism and strength was drained. He is now a creature unable to hold a controller.

This ambiguous ending is part of the reason for Shadow of the Colossus' enduring power. We were once companions of Wonder. We go with him. But his destiny is his own. So does ours.