Read This: Shadow Of The Colossus' many hidden treasures, and the insanely dedicated players who find them
The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or noteworthy pieces that caught our eye.
One of the most notable features of classic game Shadow Of The Colossus is the lack of enemies besides the 16 colossi, which leaves the rest of the game world open for exploration without fear of combat. The game is approaching a decade in age, which has given a dedicated group of players time to find every last Easter egg, glitch, and hidden area scattered throughout the world’s Forbidden Lands.
Craig Owens’ fascinating look at the Colossus community went up at Eurogamer this week—it traces the history of the search, from its beginnings as a Sisyphean quest for an additional colossus through current players using hacks to explore leftovers from the beta stages of development. Owens notes, but doesn’t overdo, the religious parallels in the hunt (though one of the players talks about the game’s creators as gods who “meant” for the Easter Eggs to be part of a whole, and another has a grand Theory Of Intersecting Points), as well as the sense of discovery each of the players feels at even the smallest finds.
The article might be more interesting to those who have played the game, but it also explains most of the terminology for those with no Colossus experience. Best of all, it includes several screenshots of the collected secrets, most notably giant eagles that can carry the player around to explore even more.