Sometimes during a fight this glowing sigil will change location, making the sword’s light beam essential to victory. See, it doesn’t point to the colossus but rather its weak spot, the point that the player has to reach and attack. The player isn’t following a dotted line they’re an explorer in an unknown world.īut Wander’s light beam serves another purpose. Shadow of the Colossus wants you to get a little lost, to not be sure of where you are going. And since this beam of light relies on the sun, the player is vulnerable when in a dense forest or dark canyon. The player has to treat the light as an approximation of colossi distance rather than fidgeting with it. When riding his horse, Agro, Wander can keep the blade focused but can’t steer.
When Wander is on foot, he has to stop moving to shine the sword. The sword’s light guides the player through the world, but it doesn’t function like a radar or compass. The beam of light that it reflects is desaturated and unfocused, but by aiming the blade, the ray will narrow and glow, until the controller rumbles and the player is in the direction of the colossus. How does the player know where to go? By holding the ‘O’ button, Wander will hold his sword to the sun. The Forbidden Lands are large, and the colossi have to be killed in a linear order. White-tailed lizards that are scattered across the map increase Wander’s maximum stamina, but their effects are minimal outside of post-game content. But there’s little point to wandering in The Forbidden Lands when not traveling to the next colossus. All locations, even boss arenas, are accessible from the beginning sombre hollows of lands that hint at the design of each colossi.
WANDER SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS FULL
On their way to the colossus, the player has full control over where they go in the overworld. The protagonist Wander wakes in the Shrine of Worship, travels to the next colossus and defeats it, and is sent back to the shrine. Shadow of the Colossus uses a repeating structure. What is the impact of blindly including a compass, minimap or quest marker? Can we make these guiding mechanics elegant, and diegetic? The answer, is that one year before Oblivion showed the world the future of navigation in video games, Shadow of the Colossus mastered it. There are thousands of them in every game we play, but it’s the dynamics of these mechanics, the way each interacts with the other, that determines the way a game will play.
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