Atmosphere of stark beauty
Shadow of the Colossus remake boasts a string of massive, powerful opponents
Shadow of the Colossus Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation 4
Shadow of the Colossus is the brainchild of Fumito Ueda, the game’s writer, director and lead designer. Ueda established a name for himself off the critical and commercial success of Ico (2001) which tells the story of a boy who leads a sheltered girl through a castle. In these games, as well as in Ueda’s latest work The Last Guardian (2016), there is a use of space that favours dilapidated structures and large open areas to create an atmosphere of stark beauty.
Duos also figure prominently throughout all three games. In The Last Guardian, a boy and a mythological beast try to escape from a crumbling castle while in Shadow of the Colossus a young man named Wander goes on a quest with his trusty steed Agro to bring a deceased maiden back to life. A curious aspect of Ueda’s design choices is that both Agro and Trico, the beast in The Last Guardian, defy conventional gaming norms by not responding with alacrity to each of the player’s inputs.
Agro won’t always turn on a dime whenever you want just as Trico won’t obsequiously go where you would like him to every time.
Their obstinance fosters the impression that the creatures have some will of their own which heightens the illusion that your companions are more than digital puppets.
In Colossus, Wander’s quest to resurrect the girl leads him to a cursed land where he finds a temple in which there are 16 stone statues and an altar. Placing the body on the altar, he hears a disembodied voice address him. The voice confirms that it is possible for the girl to be restored to life if Wander agrees to perform a ritual that will cost him dearly.
Heedlessly, Wander accepts the bargain and the voice tells him where he can find his first foe. After killing it, by climbing up the fur on its back and repeatedly stabbing at a vulnerable area on its head, Wander is overcome by a smoky vapour. After the ethereal voice charges him with another foe to pursue, it becomes obvious that Wander has assumed the role of an assassin.
Much of the brilliance of Shadow of the Colossus stems from the sheer majesty of your opponents. Some are the size of tall buildings while others are more compact powerhouses. The player must adopt different strategies to defeat each of the colossi which makes every confrontation feel significant.
The new remake was developed by the Austin-based Bluepoint Games and uses the original PS2 review code as reference material though the game itself has been rebuilt. The sun-blasted grass of the fields, the ivy laced stones of the buildings, the fur on the colossi — all of the graphical textures — have been revamped.
Still, such reworkings beg the question of what constitutes the definitive version of a game. I think for now that’s an open-ended question.