Shadow of the Colossus (2005, SOTC) by Sony’s Japan Studio is one big reason why I maintain the belief that the PlayStation 2 is the console with the greatest library of all time. SOTC would, like so many other games last gen, get the HD Remaster treatment six years after its debut when it was released for the PS3 alongside its spiritual predecessor, ICO. I just finished ICO on the PS3 a few weeks ago, finally removing that classic from my backlog. It’s aged well, but, not nearly so well as SOTC, which now sees a rebirth on the PS4 next week thanks to the passionate and skilled folks at Bluepoint.
Bluepoint are no strangers to remastering some of the best games of the PS2-era, and by extension therefore, some of the best games of all time. ICO, the God of War series, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, Gravity Rush: Remastered, the crew from Austin, TX has a strong portfolio and their quality is evident from the opening cutscene of this SOTC remaster. The game has obviously received a massive technical overhaul, and the press were treated to some numbers that I will share shortly. Technically wizardy and updating are to be expected in a re-release, but for a game like SOTC, maintaining the soul of the game is vital. To that end, it’s absolutely worth noting that the same programming code used for the colossi, the horse (Agro), and other core gameplay mechanics are unchanged from the original PS2 code other than a few minor bug fixes. A bit later I’ll delve into other gameplay tweaks, but knowing that Ueda-san and his team’s original vision has been preserved is sure to please fans of the original as well as those numerous folks who just never got around to getting this one off of their backlog.
Before going any further, I wanted to share some numbers that were shared with me by Sony, because if you’re like me, and you’ve been a gamer since the PS2-era or before, it’s always amazes to see how far tech has come. Rather than try to re-word this bullet list I was provided, I’m going to put it verbatim here:
· Colossi went from an average of approximately 20,000 triangles to around 250,000 triangles. Some were a lot more, like the 16th colossus came to almost 1 million triangles!
· All of the organic, natural elements in the world were manually-placed by artists, ensuring a hand-crafted quality experience throughout the game.
· The Shrine of Worship and all of its assets used to be several thousand triangles, it now is several million triangles! In fact, there is more detail in the Shrine of Worship by itself than the entire PS2 version of the game world, by double!
· Over 150k rock instances, 11k tree instances, with other objects over 290k instances in total.
Numbers don’t lie, but this is one of those games you’ll want to experience for yourself, first-hand. I have yet to jump on the PS4 Pro + 4K train, but this game does have 4K support. I can tell you that on my launch PS4 I was blown away by the draw distance and sheer beauty of the audio and visual presentation. A feature-rich Photo Mode is included and easily accessed simply by pressing down on the d-pad. Few games have as many background/wallpaper-worthy snaps per few minute span than SOTC. This is due to attention to detail, both from the original Japan Studio as well as Bluepoint. In addition to the raw numbers above, artists used some fantastic tools to generate, light, and simulate the flow of the colossi fur, for example, in realtime. Special methods are used to reduce visual pop-ins/outs and also keep detail levels the highest in the immediate view of the player. These words will be forgotten, the screenshots you might remember, but play SOTC on the PS4 yourself to really understand.
SOTC on the PS4 stuns in its presentation quality, from the original score, to swift load times, to the gorgeous visuals. Gameplay has received fine-tuning as well, with improvements made in gameplay from aiming to weapon switch to climbing and mounting Agro, Wander’s trustworthy horse. HUD customization, camera improvements, and save game adjustments were added too. For example, if you save at a Shrine, when you select Continue from the main menu, you start right there instead of at the main Shrine of Worship, which can save some travel time. Side note? I like that the Continue option from the main menu shows you time played and number of colossi defeated. There are a few dozen unlockables that you can get for beating x number of colossi on different difficulty settings in a certain amount of time, and you’ll also unlock concept art and comparison screens as you go colossi hunting.
Old games often suffer from nuisances like difficult aiming or a shoddy camera. I’m not saying that the original SOTC (or even the 2011 remaster) had these issues, or even that this new release is perfect — but Bluepoint made changes to the bow aiming and the sword-shining, that helps make aiming more intuitive and better than ever before. Handling Agro for mounting and dismounting, as well as just steering and accelerating with him, has also been improved. Platforming/traversal mechanics like jumping from one ledge to another and stumbling far less when landing from jumps is also refined, making a much more modern and fluid experience.
While Bluepoint has made a lot of improvements, the core game, the soul of it, remains unchanged, as I mentioned earlier. As Wander, you’re trying to resurrect a young girl whose body you have carried to the Shrine of Worship. The gods that be are willing to help, but you must first defeat all of the colossi (the number of which I don’t want to spoil). Few games can have such a simple premise and gameplay design, yet are flat out good enough, timeless enough, to be remastered — twice. So, whether you have played SOTC before or not, you can rest assured it’s an all-time classic, and that for the PS4, Bluepoint has done a fantastic job with this remaster.
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