Few games remain icons for years after their release like Shadow of the Colossus has. Team Ico's 2005 PlayStation 2 action-adventure game is often cited as one of the earliest examples of video games as an art form, much like its prior work Ico. Shadow of the Colossus left an impact on the video game industry, as seen when the game continues to inspire groundbreaking projects today, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring.
This put the weight of the world on developer Bluepoint Games, a studio only previously known for remaster projects such as Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, when it was tasked with remaking Shadow of the Colossus from the ground up for PlayStation 4. While the studio had intimate experience with the game through developing The Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection, entirely remaking a game so beloved for its artistry and design was no small task. Thankfully, even five years later, Shadow of the Colossus remains one of the greatest remakes on the market.
The Impact of Shadow of the Colossus
The original Shadow of the Colossus was an immediate smash success upon its release in 2005. Like all of director Fumito Ueda's games, Shadow of the Colossus survived a hectic and unpredictable development cycle, where the game was originally conceived as a co-operative prequel to Ico titled Nico. Nico would allow four players to take down giant creatures together similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter series, but this idea was scrapped after it was deemed too difficult to create the game while also implementing online multiplayer on the PlayStation 2. This led Team Ico to take elements such as the giant creatures and the game's large world and blend them into a single player game, which would go on to shape Shadow of the Colossus.
Shadow of the Colossus was met with critical acclaim at launch, becoming one of the highest rated PlayStation 2 games thanks to its advancements in video game animation and visual storytelling, its unique and memorable puzzle bosses, and the reenforcement of its narrative themes through its game design, which it is still held in high regard for today. The game even achieved mainstream success, with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro citing the game as a piece of inspiration for his work, and the 2007 film Reign Over Me using the game as a pivotal piece of its narrative.
Since its release, Shadow of the Colossus has been commonly referred to as one of the greatest video games of all time, redefining emergent storytelling in the video game industry and inspiring many more groundbreaking titles to follow it. While the game was remastered for PlayStation 3 in 2011 by Bluepoint Games, many elements of the game were still relatively unpolished thanks to hardware limitations at the time of its release. This inspired Bluepoint Games to propose a full remake of the game to Sony, which would release in 2018 for PlayStation 4.
How Bluepoint Honored And Preserved Shadow of the Colossus
When remaking Shadow of the Colossus, Bluepoint Games wanted to deliver fans the experience it remembered from 2005, while not drifting too far from the creative intent that Team Ico strived for with the original PlayStation 2 game. This gave the studio the difficult task of recreating the game's visual style and feel from the original game while also appropriately modernizing it. Thankfully, through Japan Studio's involvement, Bluepoint had full access to the development archives at Sony, including original art assets created for the PS2 game.
Importantly, Bluepoint lifted the original game's code for the remake. While the remake is built on Bluepoint's own internal engine -- later used for its Demon's Souls remake -- Bluepoint blended elements of Shadow of the Colossus' code with its modern engine to retain elements such as the intricate behavior patterns of the Colossi. That's why they move and react incredibly similarly to their PS2 counterparts. This extends to Wander, the game's protagonist, whose animation is blended between the engines, with Bluepoint's engine rendering elements such as his poncho for better physics.
The Shadow of the Colossus remake has been criticized for retaining the tricky controls of the original game, which are a staple in Team Ico and GenDesign's games due to their emphasis on key-frame animation. Bluepoint rightfully maintained that this was a crucial element of Shadow of the Colossus. The controls are a necessary element of the game's design, so instead of changing the game's controls and physics entirely, it tightened up elements of Wander's control scheme such as how he reacts to ledges and the responsiveness of the gripping mechanic.
Shadow of the Colossus has built a reputation for being an especially mystifying and elusive game. The game is packed to the brim with secrets and mysteries that continue to elude fans to this day, creating its own brand of lore and immersive world-building that has gone on to inspire games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring. With that in mind, Bluepoint Games needed to honor this and its legacy, and in doing so the developers actually consulted fan websites such as Nomad's Blog, a website dedicated entirely to unpacking Shadow of the Colossus' code and examining various connected elements and secrets. In Shadow of the Colossus, the amount of birds surrounding Mono represent the amount of defeated Colossi, and portals open in the sky where defeated Colossi rested before the player defeated them, reemphasizing the weight of the player's actions on the game's world.
Bluepoint even managed to leave its own mark on Shadow of the Colossus while continuing to honor Team Ico and Japan Studio's work. It introduces a reference to The Last Guardian, the most recent game by director Fumito Ueda and his studio GenDesign, which is composed of many ex-Team Ico staff members. In the game's world, players can find some of the barrels the player uses to feed Trico in The Last Guardian. This retroactively helps further connect Shadow of the Colossus to The Last Guardian, which aids a popular theory that all of director Fumito Ueda's games are connected.
In an industry currently obsessed with remakes and remasters, Bluepoint Games' Shadow of the Colossus remains the gold standard for how to recreate a beloved and iconic title without straying too far from the original creators' intent. The only changes the game makes from the original are quality of life improvements that finely tune the game for modern audiences. Bluepoint retains the experience fans cherished on the PlayStation 2, keeping the game relevant and preserving it for future generations.
Shadow of the Colossus is available now on PS4.
