11 Video Games That Taught You Valuable Life Lessons

Nature is wonderful. Nature is powerful. 

Shadow of the Colossus illustrates this paradox with cinematic brilliance and emotional beauty.

In Wander's quest to resurrect Mono, he must kill the sixteen colossi of the forbidden land to gain the favour of Dormin, who agrees to resurrect Mono in exchange. The journey to dismantle these natural beauties is a poetic paradox - the tale of a young man saving the life of a young woman, at the cost of destroying something truly wonderful and mysterious about the world. Gamers, naturally, come to question the logic in killing the giants as the story progresses, as the essential premise of the game is inverted. What would once be asked as: 'is killing the colossi a price worth paying for Mono's life?' soon becomes: 'is Mono's life a price worth paying for the destruction of the colossi?'.

Besides illustrating the propensity of mankind to dismantle the raw beauty of nature, Shadow of the Colossus educates, by analogy, to the incredible potential contained within nature. Waterfalls, mountains, beasts and birds are beautiful subjects of the earth, but so too are humans in the capabilities as protectors and destroyers. Although most will have played the game through to the end and witnessed the downfall of the magnificent colossi, players will often contemplate the repercussions of the actions upon nature.