Another pitfall of chronic anticipation, aside from mistaking the mundane for the fascinating, is confusing a magical cloud of pixie dust with anything real at all.

Take the matter of “Threeco,” the next installment in the venerable lineage of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s been the subject of aimless speculation going back to last January, when Sony posted a cattle call for artists and designers specifically for Team Ico’s next project. Not even a proper announcement, the skeletal text and single cropped screenshot still managed to prod fans into an elated uproar. And it’s been pegged beyond a doubt (by completely baseless rumors) that the game will finally be revealed in some form at TGS ’08, drawing ever nearer.

[[image:nn_080914_queen_01.jpg:They even used appropriately somber music. No fair.:center:0]]
It’s once again with giddy expectation that we fall total suckers to misdirection. Case in point: The image you see above, and the Flash animation from which it derives, however authentic they may seem, are totally fake. There are a couple minor signs that give it away, but they’re easily overlooked when our brains are so ready to receive the good news. However, this supposedly wasn’t intended to foster false hope; a Flickr caption claims it was innocently mocked up for Team ICO Games Magazine, an obsessively enthusiastic fan blog, out of the same eagerness we all feel for the upcoming sequel.

While I’m willing to give the creator the benefit of the doubt, he or she really should have considered the fallout of producing such a convincing fake — right down to using the same navigation menu seen on actual PlayStation.com software pages. Flattery’s one thing, but that’s just duplicitous. Literally!