A Colossus, Shadowed

The colossi are dead and Wander's mission is complete, but was it really worth it?

# 11

One by one, I killed the colossi until there were no more left to kill. The eleventh and fourteenth creatures were hardly of truly colossal stature, but they were armored, highly aggressive, and capable of a nasty repeated charge that can easily stun-lock and kill you with no chance to recover. This is particularly unfortunate in the fourteenth battle, since dying will force you to repeat the lengthy setup phase that you must complete before smashing the colossus' armor and rendering it vulnerable to damage. The twelfth colossus breaks the earlier trend of peaceful lake-dwellers by using an electrical projectile attack. This fight can take quite a while, since you need to ride on top of it until it shambles over to one of the structures protruding from the lake so you can jump off onto solid ground to continue the fight. I think it's possible to "steer" the beast by positioning Wander correctly, but I never mastered this and suffered its seemingly random movement patterns.

# 12

The thirteenth colossus is a winged snake-like creature peacefully minding its own business in the desert until Wander murders it. I quite liked its design, particularly its natural balloons that you need to shoot so it must descend. I wonder if the balloons contain hot air or hydrogen? Both seem plausible to create via biological processes, unlike helium. It occurred to me that someone who watched only the fifth, seventh, and thirteenth "battles" would probably conclude that Wander is a psychopath who kills for fun, but a viewer of the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth encounters might see him as a brave hero. Of course, insofar as Wander can be said to have an ideology at all, it seems to be "the ends justify the means," at least regarding Mono's life.

# 13

The battle with the fifteenth colossus was the first time I resorted to a walk-through, as it was far from obvious to me that the sword's impact would create a ramp needed to reach the upper level. I think this would have been a clearer fight if the colossus used only its arms in battle, since you need to exploit its arm-sweep again after it drops its sword. The stomp attacks muddy things and make it unclear how you should position Wander relative to the colossus. Prior to the final colossus encounter, the game hands the player their first personal loss by seemingly killing Agro. This is a missed opportunity: sure, we "lost" our horse, but by this point, there's nothing left for Agro to do anyway. If Agro had instead fallen before the penultimate battle, the player would be forced to traverse the Forbidden Land on foot, by which means the game mechanics themselves would make the loss felt.

# 14

The sixteenth colossus is a spectacle to behold. It's practically more building than creature, and your first task is to close the distance while it pelts you with fireballs. Unfortunately, the fireballs do entirely too much damage, and you'll likely restart this section quite a bit, which tends to drain the dramatic tension. The fight improves once you're too close for a fireball, since it's practically impossible to die after that point. I once again needed a guide to kill the monster, this time because the game broke its own rules. Near the end of the fight, you will be standing on the colossus' right wrist and need to attack a target on its left bicep. Your sword is rendered useless by the flames girdling the colossus' arms, and the solution is to use your bow. However, the second and ninth colossus battles established that targets to be shot with arrows glow green, and this one was the ordinary blue color. Had a single color value been altered, the correct course would have been obvious. Designers, take note!

# 15

When the last colossus falls, Wander teleports back to Dormin's temple and arrives just behind Lord Emon and his retainers, who have followed him to put an end to Mono's resurrection. Dormin reveals that the colossi were elements of their power that were separated to control them, and Wander has been reuniting them to who knows what end. Wander's (now horned) body is incorporated into a shadowy giant, and the player is allowed to crush a few soldiers before Emon seals the temple, which drags Wander into the temple's pool and destroys the bridge leading out of the Forbidden Land. Mono at last regains consciousness, only to be greeted by Agro, who apparently suffered nothing worse than an injured leg. She finds a baby with horns in the now-empty pool, which is implied to be Wander, but could easily be just an incarnation of Dormin. The three of them make their way to a garden on the temple's roof, which is home to the animals that were conspicuously missing from the Forbidden Land, and the game ends.

# 16

It's impressive how Ueda managed to fill Shadow of the Colossus with such a weighty moral conflict with so little dialogue. As players, we are naturally inclined to sympathize with the character we control, but it's hard to avoid the impression that Wander is making a horrible mistake. The Forbidden Land seems to have been forbidden for good reason; I got a sense of treading on hallowed ground and found myself continually sheathing my sword, even though there's not much in-game reason to do so. (I was reluctant to bring my lightsaber into the cave, if you know what I mean.) Was Emon right? Mono is once again among the living, but she's trapped in the Forbidden Land with a baby of unknown provenance. Who is that boy, and what is his destiny? We can only wonder.

Fin