[A New Duck]

I love a lot of things about SotC, but one of the things I love most is how non-badass Wander as he's all flailing about.

[Toptube]

[spinach]

[The Blueberry Hill]

The horse is called Aguro in the Asian version instruction booklet for Shadow and the Colossus. Does it bother you that much to think that you can't name your own horse? People don't always get to name their animals.


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MYSTERY ADVENTURE START..

[spinach]

no man it just sounds like a command and not a name

a catch-all, it is come here and it is giddyap

there really are no names here

it is a nameless wanderer and a horse and man everything else just feels like a need for things to have names because of a marketing thing

i don't know man i have no relationship with any manual from any region, my understanding is from the game alone and that other stuff just doesn't fit

so understand -- this is why it's so weird for me to read these names that are a bad transliteration [twice over no less] and a spoken command that is sometimes a whistle

that's all

[The Blueberry Hill]

You have funny logic that a command to come, and a command to go can be the same. People give their animals names, its a natural thing. Doesn't have to be marketing. I would feel odd if I thought he didn't have a name for his horse, considering how close they seem. That could be a cultural thing, or certainly a personal thing.
But I think we all understand that feeling of when people try to mess with our interpretation of something in superfluous ways. People linking the narratives of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in this thread is bugging me the same way.
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MYSTERY ADVENTURE START..

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

spinach how do you feel about the fact that the girl has a name
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[spinach]

daisy i don't care

blueberry it's simpler to have the command for come also be the command for go than it is for a name call to equal a whistle to equal the command to go

who calls a thing by name to make it go faster?

yes people name their animals, but understand my gut when playing this game, the way i heard it, it was some sort of command

i had no manual when i played this game on a borrowed console

i had no text telling me the horse's name was AGRO and the boy's name was WANDER [i will never get over this error] and the girl's name was something else

and i have no reason for them to have names -- they're all that's there, who's going to refer to them by anything?

this is why the names strike me as gross -- the boy's name, Wander, as transliteration of a poor transliteration of Wanderer, just sounds off, as wanderer is a descriptive, a label -- for one who wanders, which fits, it's what we do, but it's certainly not a name. and the horse, well, as i said, it always sounded like a command to manual-free me, in its use in the game [also it never sounded like agro to me, i never could quite nail it, it was formless, an utterance], and it's been a couple of years i've been working with this perspective. when our horse makes its sacrifice and our hero screams his one catch-all command, it means something to me, quite different from yelling a name, something that ties into the limited vocabulary afforded us through the simple interface of our console game controllers -- our hero says it because it's all he can say. it's all we can say. that bit went and screwed itself into me pretty good, and, well, it just doesn't work the other way.

but hey whatever, it's cool, you guys answered my question.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

[spinach]

yes but saying its name to make it do a thing is weird on the human end of that interface

it's just not something people do

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

to do a specific thing thing?

I mean, when one of my cats is acting in a way it shouldn't (leaping up somewhere it's not supposed to, bothering another cat it knows it shouldn't), I yell it's name at it. I thought this was fairly common.
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[spinach]

that's a whole different situation though -- 1 we never scold our horse, 2 our horse is alone, there are no other horses for it to act up with, no trouble for our horse to get into, 3 we only tell it to do one thing [move, either to us or with us]

you ever go horse riding, or spend time with riders? that's about all there is in the corner of town i'm nestled in right now.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

next time be more specific, then.
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[spinach]

didn't feel i needed to be more specific, your example is a completely different situation from anything in the game -- why even consider something so extraneous?

[skelethulu]

well I don't know about you guys but I call my dog and mostly use her name as a command word, combined with snapping

[boojiboy7]

verbs can be names. Hence, I am really fond of his name being Wander.

[spinach]

yes that's alright too

but will you understand that no name is uttered in the game for this man at any point, so someone without any material external to the game will make the assumption this dude has no name?

or that an unclear spoken command -- which it certainly is in the game, even if it is the horse's name -- would not be assumed to be the name of a horse? [skelethulu -- the only time any of my dogs' names were used as commands was in the situation dais brought up, a scolding measure. otherwise i'd use verbs and body language]

there is nothing within the game itself that suggests a name, so please do make an effort to see from my perspective

[boojiboy7]

Oh, i understand that. I am just saying that, given what he does, referring to him as Wander (or, you know, the Japanese title of the game) is pretty fitting.

[CubaLibre]

Why is this happening.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[SuperWes]

[Tokyo Rude]

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, it is pretty funny.

[spinach]

rudie we've all gone to hell don't bother

cuba no one is as invested in this as you might think, don't worry about it

[Wall of Beef]

My name is Jeff.
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Tumblr

[spinach]

hello, Jeff

[Wall of Beef]

[spinach]

Jeff!

[OGC]

theory: the kid in Trico is a reincarnation of the horse from SotC
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CLOSE TO THE EDGE

[LandRoverAttack]

I always thought Wanda was something we called him, and not his name. Sort of like how with RPG characters that have no default names, people end up calling them something like Boy, Girl, Sprite and affectionately Main Character or Protagonist. Only here, his name is Wander. And it's on the box. He doesn't have a name in the game, though he likely has one wherever he comes from, I guess.

As for the horse, when playing I thought it was a command as well. But it does make more sense as a name, as he uses the same word to call him and spur him. I like the idea of the horse having a name and not the main character, though. I think it fits. That human tendency to name pets.
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[manmachine plays jazz]

i always just called him the wanderer?

i assumed that was what the poorly transliterated JP title was implying, anyway

[Dracko]

Yeah, same here.

I don't see how any of it matters either way. They're all pretty anonymous characters.

[spinach]

this thing's got some adventure serial heritage

[Dracko]

guys what if the prince of persia's name???

[spinach]

he's got one now, for the movie :<

i don't remember it, it's on mechner's blog somewhere

doesn't know how to work an anonymous character onscreen

[kael]

[108]

[boojiboy7]

Well, he does have to do a lot of wandering to complete it though.

[The Blueberry Hill]

[Tokyo Rude]

[spinach]

man, are you?

[oepn]

Is anybody serious?