Shadow of the Colossus is a 2005 action-adventure game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It takes place in a fantasy setting and follows Wander, a young man who enters an isolated and abandoned region of the realm seeking the power to revive a girl named Mono. The player assumes the role of Wander as he embarks on a mission that might entail Mono's resurrection: to locate and destroy the colossi, sixteen massive beings spread across the forbidden land, which the protagonist traverses by horseback and on foot.
The game was directed by Fumito Ueda and developed at Sony Computer Entertainment's International Production Studio 1, also known as Team Ico, the same development team responsible for the acclaimed PlayStation 2 title Ico, to which the game is considered a spiritual successor. Сonceived as an online multiplayer game titled NICO directly after Icos completion, Shadow of the Colossus underwent a lengthy production cycle during which it was redeveloped as a single-player title. The team sought to create an outstanding interactive experience by including a distinct visual design, an unorthodox gameplay template, and non-player characters with sophisticated artificial intelligence such as the colossi and Wander's horse, Agro.
Cited as an influential title in the video game industry and one of the best video games of all time, Shadow of the Colossus is often regarded as an important example of video games as art due to its minimalist landscape designs, immersive gameplay, and emotional weight of the player character's journey. It received wide critical acclaim by the media and was met with strong sales compared to Ico, due in part to a larger marketing campaign. The game won several awards for its audio, design, and overall quality. A remastered version for the PlayStation 3 was released alongside Ico as The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection in September 2011, developed by Bluepoint Games, who later developed a remake of the game in high definition for the PlayStation 4 in 2018.
Gameplay
Described by several commentators as an action-adventure game, The game's environment is largely presented as a seamless open world. Progression through Shadow of the Colossus occurs in cycles. Beginning at a central point in an expansive landscape, the player seeks out and defeats a colossus, and is then returned to the central point to repeat the process. The player's journey to a colossus seldom follows a direct route: stretches of varied terrain often require that a detour be taken along the way. Most colossi are situated in remote areas, such as atop cliffs or within ancient structures.
left|thumb|Wander climbs the first colossus to stab the sigil on its forehead. The [[HUD (video gaming)|heads-up display shows the character's health and stamina (lower right), as well as the colossus' health (upper left).|alt=An image of a small human figure perched on the face of a gigantic, statuesque creature.]]
Once a colossus is found, the player must discover its weaknesses to defeat it. Each colossus dwells in a unique lair, and in most encounters the player must use some aspects of the current battlefield to their advantage, a necessity that becomes more pronounced as the game progresses. The first two battles take place on simple, vast, flat areas of land, wherein the player's only goal is to discover how to scale the colossi and attack their weak points.
Every colossus has at least one weak point, symbolized by a glowing sigil that can be illuminated and identified by the sword's reflected light. Each colossus has areas covered with fur or protruding ledges, which Wander may use to grip and scale the colossus while it thrashes about in an attempt to dislodge him.
Wander's horse, Agro, plays a large role in the game. Aside from her capacity as a means of transportation, Agro enables the player to fight from horseback, a critical avenue to defeating some of the colossi. However, the game contains many environments that players cannot traverse by horse, and colossi are often found in areas within deep water or beyond large obstacles that must be scaled. Agro cannot travel beyond these, and when separated from Wander by such obstacles, cannot participate in the following battle. in subsequent playthroughs players may access bonus weapons and in-game features after finishing optional Time Attack trials, which allow the battles with the colossi to be replayed with a restricted time limit. Shadow of the Colossus eschews disclosure of detailed information about the backstories and interrelationships of its characters to the player. wherein a vast and unpopulated peninsula, known as the Forbidden Land, serves as the main setting for the game's events. Separated from the outside realm by a distant mountain range to its north and sea to the south and east, the area contains ruins and remnants of ancient structures, an indication that it had formerly been a settlement.
The only point of entry to the region is a small cleft in the mountains to the north that leads to a massive stone bridge. This bridge spans half the distance of the landscape and terminates at a large temple called the "Shrine of Worship" located at its center. It is, however, forbidden to enter the land, which includes diverse geographical features, such as lakes, plateaus, canyons, caves, and deserts in addition to human-made structures.|alt=In a brightly lit sanctuary, a young warrior stands beside the body of a maiden lying on altar.]]
The protagonist of the game is , a young man whose goal is to resurrect a girl named . The only established fact regarding Mono is that she was a maiden who was sacrificed because she was believed to have a cursed destiny. Assisting Wander in his quest to revive her is his loyal horse, , who serves as his sole ally in defeating the colossi; the English-language version of the game refers to Agro as a male steed, although director Fumito Ueda said that he saw Wander's horse as female. Wander also receives aid from an entity called . The story revolves around these characters but features a small supporting cast, represented by Lord and his men.
Speaking with two voices at once (one male and one female), Dormin is a mysterious, disembodied entity. According to legends of the game's world, Dormin has the power to revive the dead;
The colossi are armored, most often enormous creatures with forms ranging from various humanoids to predatory animals, and live in all manner of surroundings and environments, including underwater and flying through the air. Their bodies are a fusion of organic and inorganic parts such as rock, earth, and architectural elements, A pillar of light marks the location of each colossus after they are defeated. The Latin names of the colossi, though spread throughout fan related media, are not official and are never referred to within the game.
Plot
Wander enters the Forbidden Lands and travels across a long bridge on his horse, Agro. After they reach the entrance to the Shrine of Worship, Wander, who has carried with him the body of Mono, brings her to an altar in the temple. A moment later, several humanoid shadow creatures appear and approach Wander before he easily dismisses them with a wave of the Ancient Sword in his possession.
After the shadow creatures are vanquished, the disembodied voice of Dormin manifests within the shrine and expresses surprise at the fact that Wander possesses the weapon. Wander explains the plight that led him to seek the forbidden land and asks that Dormin return Mono's soul to her body. Dormin offers to grant Wander's request under the condition that he complete a rite designed to destroy the sixteen idols lining the temple's hall. To that end, Wander must use his sword to slay each of the idol's physical the whose presence ranges across the vast expanse outside the temple. Although warned by Dormin that he may have to pay a great price to revive Mono, Wander sets out to search the land for the colossi and destroy them.
An aspect of Wander's mission that is unknown to him is that the colossi contain portions of Dormin's own essence, scattered long ago to render the entity powerless. As Wander kills each colossus, a released fragment of Dormin enters his body. Over time, the signs of Wander's deterioration from the gathered essence start to appear: his skin becomes paler, his hair darker, and his face is increasingly covered by dark veins. The outcome of the battle with the twelfth colossus leads to a reveal of a group of warriors that has been pursuing Wander, led by Emon. Urged to hurry with his task by Dormin, Wander soon heads off to defeat the sixteenth and final colossus, the largest upright colossus. On the way to this confrontation, he rides horseback across a long bridge which begins to collapse as he is halfway across, but Agro manages to throw Wander over to the other side before falling into the distant river below.
Soon after, Wander goes on to defeat the final colossus as Emon's company arrives in the Shrine of Worship to witness the last temple idol crumble. Wander appears back in the temple soon after, the signs of his corruption readily apparent: his skin is pallid, his eyes glow silver, and a pair of short horns have sprouted from his head. Emon condemns Wander for stealing the Ancient Sword and trespassing into the Forbidden Lands and for using the "forbidden" spell (likely referring to his killing of the colossi). However, a newly whole Dormin takes control of Wander's body and transforms into a shadowy giant. While his men flee, Lord Emon casts the Ancient Sword into a pool at the back of the temple's hall to evoke a whirlwind of light. The supernatural vortex consumes Dormin and Wander, which seals Dormin within the temple once again. As Emon and his warriors escape, the bridge that leads to the temple collapses behind them, and its destruction forever isolates the forbidden land from the rest of the world. Although he has condemned Wander for his actions prior to their encounter, Emon expresses hope that Wander may be able to atone for his crimes one day should he have survived.
Back in the temple, Mono awakens and finds Agro limping into the temple with an injured hind leg. Mono follows Agro to the pool into which Wander and Dormin were pulled by Emon's spell, where she finds a male infant with short horns on his head. Mono takes the child with her, following the horse to higher levels of the Shrine of Worship, and arrives at a secret garden within the shrine.
Development
Origin
thumb|right|The [[monster movie genre, of which the original Godzilla film (1954 theatrical poster pictured above) is a famous example, served as a source of inspiration for the concept of Shadow of the Colossus.|alt=A giant humanoid reptile stands against a backdrop of burning buildings. It breathes a stream of fire at a fighter airplane clutched in its right hand. At the bottom left below the "Godzilla" logo, several people are looking ahead with trepidation. At the bottom right corner, a black-haired man wearing an eyepatch looks askance to his right.]]
Shadow of the Colossus is developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. Director Fumito Ueda and producer Kenji Kaido return alongside the rest of the team from the development of Ico. The game originated from one of Ueda's concepts that he developed directly after the team submitted Ico, released in late 2001 for the PlayStation 2, for publication. As the basis of their subsequent game had not been decided, Ueda examined "a number of old ideas kicking around in my head ... that couldn't be realized under previous circumstances". After a brief review of those avenues, Ueda chose to explore one that aligned with his own preferences as a game player.
Ueda envisioned a work with an underlying motif of "cruelty as a means of expression". Accordingly, he chose to base the game around the player character's encounters with enormous fictional creatures, According to Ueda, Team Ico assumed that the creation of levels for a single-player game akin to Ico necessitated the construction of elaborate puzzles, a practice that the staff wanted to eschew.
Early prototypes
thumb|left|Team Ico produced the technology demo for NICO, the initial [[online multiplayer-focused incarnation of Shadow of the Colossus, using the native graphical capabilities of the PlayStation 2 (shown here with its Network Adaptor attached).|alt=An image of the original PlayStation 2 model, supplemented by an attached network-enabled add-on.]]
To develop the concept video for NICO, Team Ico formed a small internal group, which was composed of Ueda, one of Icos designers and a roughly 10-person animation team. It depicted a group of three masked, horned boys who rode horseback across a vast landscape and attacked a towering being reminiscent of the second boss in Shadow of the Colossus. The video was visualized in the Ico game engine and was rendered in real-time on the PlayStation 2 hardware. Among these was a showcased gameplay mechanism wherein one of the colossus' attackers who had scaled and killed it proceeded to mount his approaching horse by leaping onto its back from the entity's corpse.
In May 2003, Team Ico assembled a demonstrational build of NICO and presented it at a production meeting. and prequel to Ico.
The staff used player feedback to advance the testing of the "organic collision deformation" system by inputting simple objects to experiment its capabilities.
Kaido remarked that his colleagues needed to "start transitioning into full production", as they had devoted extensive efforts to the preparation of the game's technology.
As Team Ico operationalized the game's physics-oriented features, they continued to refine them with reference to the Ico-inspired character designs from the NICO concept video. While the basic movements of the character models were animated by hand, their physical interactions are simulated in real time by the game's physics engine. which was conceived as a realistic representation of its real-life counterparts. This solution allows the horse to occasionally ignore the player's commands as well as a simulation of a full day cycle and weather variations, excised because of problems that Ueda attributed to the PlayStation 2's memory capacity. In naming the game, Ueda intended to move away from the abstract title of Ico to a simpler and more straightforward product name. The event was accompanied by a live orchestral performance of selected music from the game's soundtrack, which drew interested visitors to the showcase. where Sony alluded to the game's tentative release date in the next year. and by the next month, Western video game-oriented media outlets such as GameSpot and 1Up.com had received a pre-release playable version of Shadow of the Colossus and reported their early impressions about the game. Also in May, the same version of the game–estimated by a Japanese online news source to be at "60 percent of completion" by that point–was exhibited at E3 2005, However, several spectators complained about the low frame rate of the title, Ueda later admitted the existence of several flaws in the design of Shadow of the Colossus; Ueda told Eurogamer after the convention ended that Team Ico deemed the game to be "pretty much fixed as it is" and that they did not have plans to supplement the game with new content. After three and a half years of development, Team Ico completed the Japanese and North American versions of Shadow of the Colossus in September 2005. The modeling of the game's environments, whose arrangement stemmed from independently constructed battlegrounds tied to each of the colossi, followed a pattern that Kouji Hasegawa described as "a repeating cycle of creating, testing and tuning". This aesthetic was exemplified by the game mechanics of searching the setting for the colossi, which came from Ueda's desire to determine a straightforward and visually defined reference for the player. and Ueda was inspired by the interplay between the horse and the protagonist to focus his following game, The Last Guardian, on a similar relationship.
Music
The development of Shadow of the Colossus music started alongside that of the game itself. Ueda's core idea was to use a "dynamic and gallant" score in the game, The team's goal with the soundtrack of Shadow of the Colossus, as with Ico, was to differentiate it from conventional video game music, and to "express restraint with regards to emotional expression as much as possible". Inspired by the opening theme from Silent Hill, In selecting the composer of the game, Ueda sought to deviate from the conceptual perspective of the score for Ico, written by Michiru Oshima. The open nature of Shadow of the Colossus locations and their lack of life, coupled with the restrained use of music in the game, reinforces its atmosphere of solitude, the company divulged details about the limited first run edition of the game, which players could only acquire by pre-ordering, on August 19 of that year. On September 12, 2005, SCEI revealed that it had secured an arrangement to distribute the game through 7-Eleven's Japanese сhain of convenience stores. The companies launched a promotional campaign: consumers who pre-ordered the game at one of the 7-Eleven's retail outlets would receive stylized bookmarks whose designs incorporated artwork from Shadow of the Colossus. Branded merchandise, such as calendars, posters and T-shirts, was also sold in the Akihabara district on the occasion, and a promotional image featuring a colossus was placed on a billboard in the area.
Unlike Ico, Shadow of the Colossus received far more exposure, in part because of Sony's willingness to leverage its resources for a massive advertising campaign. It was advertised in game magazines, on television and via online resources such as SCEI's affiliated websites: for instance, in November 2004 the game's soundtrack was partially made available for listening on the game's official webpage. Shadow of the Colossus was released in Japan on October 27, 2005 accompanied by a nationwide advertising campaign that ran across multiple mediums. The PAL version of the game was released in February 2006. Much like the PAL release for Ico, the game came in cardboard packaging displaying various pieces of artwork from the game, and contained four art cards. The game also came with a "making of" documentary, a trailer for Ico and a gallery of concept art, accessible from the game's main menu.
Reception
Shadow of the Colossus received universal acclaim, with an average critic score of 91% at GameRankings, The game received strong reviews from publications such as the Japanese magazine Famitsu, who rated the game 37/40, the UK-based Edge, who awarded an 8/10, and Electronic Gaming Monthly, who granted 8.8/10. Dave Ciccoricco, a literature lecturer at the University of Otago, praised the game for its use of long cutscenes and stretches of riding to make the player engage in self-reflection and feel immersed in the game world.
Many reviewers consider the game's soundtrack to be one of its greatest aspects. In addition to Electronic Gaming Monthlys award of "Soundtrack of the Year", and GameSpot felt the game was too short (average playthrough time estimated 6 to 8 hours), with little replay value given the puzzle elements to each colossus battle. These figures compare favorably with Ico. The game was placed on Sony's list of Greatest Hits titles on August 6, 2006.
Awards
Shadow of the Colossus has received several awards, including recognition for "Best Character Design", "Best Game Design", "Best Visual Arts" and "Game of the Year", as well as one of three "Innovation Awards" at the 2006 Game Developers Choice Awards. At the 2006 DICE Summit, Shadow of the Colossus won the awards for "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering" during the AIAS' 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; it also received nominations for "Overall Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Action/Adventure Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Animation", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming". It received one of two "Special Rookie Awards" at the Famitsu Awards 2005. It was nominated for "Best Original Music", "Best Artistic Graphics" and "Best PS2 Game", yet also "Most Aggravating Frame Rate" in GameSpots awards for 2005, while it won "Best Adventure Game" and "Best Artistic Design" in IGNs Best of 2005 awards, who cited Agro as the best sidekick in the history of video games. Two years after its release IGN listed Shadow as the fourth greatest PlayStation 2 game of all time. GamesRadar awarded it Best Game of the Year 2006 (being released in the UK in early 2006, later than the US), and appears in the site's "The 100 best games ever" list at number ten. The game's ending was selected as the fourth greatest moment in gaming by the editors of GamePro in July 2006. The readers of PlayStation Official Magazine voted it the 8th greatest PlayStation title ever released in the magazine's 50th issue, and it placed 43rd in a later poll presented in the journal's 100th issue. Destructoid named the game #1 in their list of the top 50 video games of the decade. IGN named Shadow of the Colossus the best game of 2005, and the second best game of the decade, behind Half-Life 2. In 2012, Complex magazine named Shadow of the Colossus the second-best PlayStation 2 game of all time, behind God of War II. In 2015, the game placed 4th on USgamers The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2022, the game placed third on IGNs "Best PS2 Games Of All Time" list.
Legacy
Shadow of the Colossus has been cited as an influence on various video games, including God of War II (2007), God of War III (2010), Titan Souls (2015), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), Death's Gambit (2018), Praey for the Gods (2019), and Elden Ring (2022). Film director Guillermo del Toro considers both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as "masterpieces" and part of his directorial influence. Shadow of the Colossus is also cited numerous times in debates regarding the art quality and emotional perspectives of video games.
The game plays a significant role in the 2007 Mike Binder film Reign Over Me as one of the ways Adam Sandler's character copes with his primary struggle – with aspects of the game mirroring the tragedy that befell Sandler's character; Shadow of the Colossus falling giants mirroring the crashing towers of the September 11 attacks in which his wife and children died, and the game's lead character trying to resurrect his deceased love are two of the main themes which strike a similarity. Sandler is said to have ad libbed a detailed description of the control scheme in a scene with Don Cheadle, who plays his old friend. Both actors are said to have become experts at the game during the filming. The HD version was released separately in Japan.
Remake
Sony announced a remake of Shadow of the Colossus for the PlayStation 4 during their Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 press conference. It was released on February 6, 2018. The remake is led by Bluepoint, who developed the earlier PlayStation 3 remaster. The developers remade all the game's assets from the ground up, but the game retains the same gameplay from the original title along with the introduction of a new control scheme. Ueda had since left Sony, but provided a list of recommended changes to Bluepoint for the remake; he stated that he does not believe many of them will be implemented, nor would they add any of the colossi that had been cut from the original game.
Film adaptation
In April 2009, it was reported that Sony Pictures would adapt Shadow of the Colossus into a film. Kevin Misher, producer of The Scorpion King, The Interpreter and the recent attempted remake of Dune, negotiated to produce. It was announced that Fumito Ueda would be involved in the film's production. On May 23, 2012, it was reported that Chronicle director Josh Trank would be directing the film adaptation. Seth Lochhead was due to write the film. In September 2014, Variety reported that Mama director Andrés Muschietti would direct the film after Trank dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with other projects.
In January 2025, while chatting on Radio TU, Muschietti confirmed that the film was still in development, and that there was a script that he likes a lot. However, he acknowledged that there are difficulties securing his desired budget for the project.