Video Game Deconstruction: Shadow of the Colossus, Part 2

Colossus 5
I am a buffoon. Remember how I couldn’t change my camera controls? Turns out I was looking at the completely wrong options. Duuuurrrrrr. Everything is much better now.

I’m starting to notice something about the Colossi. I first noticed something odd while fighting the previous Colossus. I thought that it was odd that it started actively trying to kill me as soon as it saw me, before I even began attacking it myself. I mean, if you’re sitting around in your yard on a nice Summer day and a cricket hops up onto your porch, do you immediately get up and begin trying to crush it with your big, sandal-wearing foot? Of course not, unless you have some odd irrational fear of harmless bugs. But I didn’t think much of it until I encountered this Colossus.

It was a large bird, roosting atop a pillar amongst some ruins sticking out of a large lake. When I entered the lake, it watched me as I swam around. I would try to circle around behind it, but it would just keep turning to face me. It didn’t attack, probably because it knew I couldn’t get to it, but it was still odd that all of its attention was to me, despite the fact that it could just fly away at any time.

I began to wonder if the Colossi actually knew who I was or why I was there. Could they possibly know exactly what was going on? Could they all know that they existed only to be killed? If so, why wouldn’t the bird just fly away from me? It could have easily retreated into some mountains, safe from my murderous grasp. But it held its ground. Even as I began to stab it to death, it refused to fly away to safety. Maybe...

Could the Colossi want me to kill them?

Colossus 6
It actually took a bit of effort to find this one. My beam of light pointed me through a forest... into a dead end. I leapt off a cliff into the pond below... which was apparently only about ankle-deep. Ouch. From here I had to find a nearby tunnel that lead to the desert in which the next Colossus resided. It was a simple bit of pathfinding, but I’m hoping that this develops more, to the point where the last few Colossi actually require some exploration and thought to locate.

The Colossus itself went down pretty easily. But what actually impressed me here was how it tried to fake me out! It uses this one attack where it slams the ground with its fist... the perfect place to start climbing! But despite how it looks, you can’t actually climb your way up its bracelet. It wasn’t until God spoke up and told me to hide somewhere that I realized what I had to do.

This was a very easy fight, but I’m hopeful that this means that future fights will require more thought and ingenuity, leading to more interesting ways to bring down the Colossi.

Colossus 7
Uuuuugh.

For the entire game, I have been dreading one thing: water fights. I took solace in the idea that water controls are so unbelievably clunky that they couldn’t possibly base a Colossus around it.

Boy was I wrong.

But there’s really nothing to talk about here aside from how unintuitive this fight is. The most glaring bit is how it handles weak points. Up until this point of the game, the player has been conditioned to know that you must shine your magical sword-compass-light onto a Colossus’ weak point to reveal it and open it up to attack.

This is not the case here. The Colossus has three electrical spines along its back that will shock the bajeezus out of you if they enter the water. Each one also clearly has a weak point situated right behind it. However, no amount of light-shining will uncover them. So of course I spent the entirety of my first attempt at this fight trying to do so, with nothing happening. Eventually the electricity finally finished me off.

Yup, my first death in the game. Not because of difficulty, or a foolish error on my part. Just shitty boss design.

Naturally, I questioned exactly what was going on here. So I consulted the internet. Turns out you don’t actually have to uncover these ones. Whether this is a constant for all weak points or just a special case for this one Colossus, I do not know. But either way, this pissed me off.

My second attempt went much better. I managed to poke out each weak point, and shut down each spine, quite easily. But then the second round of shenanigans showed itself.

See, this Colossus, seemingly randomly and for no real reason, will sometimes decide to just stay submerged forever, until you have to give out and release your grip on its hide. Then you get to do the wonderful process of drawing its attention and climbing up to its head all over again. This serves no purpose at all. All it does is pad the fight out and annoy the player.

I’ve had gripes about a couple Colossi up to this point. But this was the first time I actually thought of one just being of poor design. A depressing development. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again.

Colossus 8
It took a little bit of exploration to find this Colossus, but again, not much. I’m finding that I wish the game had that “free-roam” feel I expected even more now.

The Colossus itself went down pretty easily, once I figured out its gimmick. The fight took place in a large colosseum (har har, game developers) that was comprised of several floors. My knee-jerk reaction was that I would have to fight it on the ground, and then chase it throughout the ruins, climbing onto it by rolling through the “windows” scattered around.

But it looks like my deep history of gaming experience had bitten me in the ass once again! In any other game, this is exactly how the fight would play out. But this time... not so much. I figured out instantly that its legs were the key to the fight, so I spent a long while shooting at them. (I tried a direct sword-assault first, but the game was all “lol no you use arrows here ‘cause I said so.”) Then after a while I just kinda randomly died for no obvious reason.

I tried again, and after a bit of bumbling, I found out that doing the fight backwards from my expectations was what the game wanted. I had to bait the lizard into climbing up the walls, THEN I could shoot it down and stab the shit out of its cloaca. (By the way, game? Eew.)

It took a couple rounds, and on the second trip up the colosseum stairs, I kinda ran blindly into a large hole. Turns out the ruins are falling apart! This actually made me a bit happy. Yeah, it sucked to fall off the side of a tall building, but it reminded me of what environment I was in, and punished me accordingly for failing to keep that in mind. As the player, I need to be thinking about these things, and remembering that, even in the heat of battle, I need to be aware of my surroundings, and should never run face first into unknown territory. It was a small event, but it was an interesting one.

As a final note, after every Colossus death, Boy passes out and has this weird acid trip vision dream thing of one of the Gates from Chrono Trigger. There’s always been a voice that accompanies it, but its been unintelligible. But I think, as I progress through the colossal roster (har har), its becoming more clear. I got a sense of sadness from it this time, even though I couldn’t make out the words. (Its probably in that nonsense language the game uses, anyway.)