History VideoGame / ShadowOfTheColossus

* DeathofaThousandCuts: When Wander gets knocked down by a colossus, it takes him a few seconds to get back to his feet. The two smaller colossi are fast enough and aggressive enough to knock Wander back down before you can regain control. With bad luck, they can very easily stun lock you until you are dead or you reset. With a maxed out health bar, this trope is the result.

[[caption-width-right:348:You have a sword and a bow. Now kill the beast.]]

* DreamSequence: Wander has a brief one after killing the 7th Colossus; during the dream, [[spoiler:Mono wakes up]]. When Wander wakes up from the dream, he can be heard muttering Mono's name.

* FilkSong: [[https://youtu.be/D0ihPazjoy4 Giants Fall]], courtesy of Music/MiracleOfSound.

* WaterfrontBossBattle: There are two water-based colossi battles, one against an electric eel and the other against a colossus who walks around a lake. The first one is notable in that [[ColossusClimb the boss itself is the only platform in the arena]], and it tends to drag you underwater, too.

* OffscreenTeleportation: Defeat a Colossus and [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality you won't have to worry about walking all the way back to the Shrine of Worship]] - Wander will be knocked unconscious by dark threads and will wake up back at the shrine.

* AmbiguousSituation: Almost everything in the plot has at least some ambiguity to it. Is Dormin evil, or otherwise a herald of catastrophe? Is Lord Emon? Is Mono? Is ''Wander''? (We only know the last two ''names'' from the credits.) [[spoiler:Did Dormin keep his promise and resurrect Mono as he was dying, and did he intentionally save Wander, or was that an incidental effect of the ritual? For that matter, did Dormin even die?]]

* AmbiguousSituation: As with AlternativeCharacterInterpretation, there is just so much left out of the plot that only the game's creators can know for sure what is really going on (hence the YMMV page).

* DummiedOut:
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teeyOWD1P_o "dam"]]. No one knows why it is there or what it would have been for. It does not even have collision data (meaning you cannot stand on it), and it is only accessible through hacking and a lot of patience. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LUaQ8cNe_c Someone did manage to add collision]], giving a better idea of the sheer size of the area.
** The entire east section of the map will always be covered by clouds. There is a bridge over the 12th Colossus area that could have been an access to it, but there is no way to get up there.
** The original plan was to have a whopping 48 Colossi in the game, though this was cut down to 24. Another eight of these were then removed from the final product for pacing; they were either combined with the one or two of the remaining Colossi or just plain scrapped.

%% Examples with no context will be deleted.

* CallReceivalArea: The Forbidden Lands. Wander was forbidden to go there by Emon, and [[ForbiddenFruit when he does go there]], Dormin gives him the quest that makes up the entire game.

* CollectionSidequest: [[spoiler: The [=PS4=] remake added one involving 79 Enlightenments, coin-like objects hidden in various locations across the Forbidden Land. They're usually in hard-to-get places that require some climbing, or falling, to get to, and some of them you definitely won't be able to reach on your first playthrough. [[GuideDangIt There's no way to mark them on the map, and the counter showing how much you have is in the lower left-hand corner of the map instead of in the Stats screen.]] The only hint you have is your controller will make a strange sound if you're near one. Your prize for getting all 79 is the Sword of Dormin, [[InfinityPlusOneSword the most powerful weapon in the game]], [[BlessedWithSuck but at at the cost of reduced health regen]].]]

A movie based on the game was announced years ago, but it currently sits in DevelopmentHell. On one hand, it has plenty of potential for SceneryPorn and a compelling plot; on the other hand, how do you adapt [[PuzzleBoss what amounts to a puzzle game writ large]]? While [[Film/StreetFighterTheLegendOfChunLi Justin Marks]] had the initial credit for the film's screenplay, the studio ended up [[http://www.siliconera.com/2012/05/23/shadow-of-the-colossus-live-action-film-moving-forward-with-chronicle-director/ replacing him with Josh Trank]], the director of ''Film/{{Chronicle}}'', at least until ''Film/FantasticFour2015'' came along, as its massive failure, largely laid at Trank's feet, essentially ended any involvement from him.

* PlayingThePlayer: For the most part, through subtle, disconcerting details such as in Wander's appearance, musical cues, and the colossi's AI and the ending...

''Shadow of the Colossus'' is a 2005 ActionAdventure game and the second in the VideoGame/TeamICOSeries, acting as a standalone [[SpiritualSuccessor prequel]] to ''VideoGame/{{ICO}}''. Directed by Fumito Ueda, the game does away with numerous conventional videogame formulas to create an aesthetically breathtaking experience centred on massive fights and world exploration. The storyline is vast but told with very little exposition, which allows players to form their own story based on their individual experiences.

''Colossus'', which was first released on the [=PlayStation=] 2, marks the second entry in the ''VideoGame/TeamIcoSeries'', a set of thematically-connected games from the developers at Team Ico. Sony bundled ''VideoGame/{{ICO}}'' and ''Colossus'' together for an UpdatedRerelease on the [=PlayStation=] 3 in October 2011. (The next game in the series, ''VideoGame/TheLastGuardian'', was released for the [=PlayStation 4=] in December 2016 after spending years trapped in DevelopmentHell.) Sony announced a remake of ''Colossus'' for the [=PlayStation=] 4 during E3 2017, developed by Bluepoint Games with assistance from SIE Japan Studio. The remake's assets were made from scratch, along with an optional new control scheme, but is otherwise faithful to the original. It was released on February 6, 2018.

[[caption-width-right:348:[-You have a sword and a bow. Now kill the beast-].]]

''Shadow of the Colossus'' is a 2005 action-adventure game and the second in the VideoGame/TeamICOSeries, acting as a standalone [[SpiritualSuccessor prequel]] to ''VideoGame/{{ICO}}''. Directed by Fumito Ueda, the game does away with numerous conventional videogame formulas to create an aesthetically breathtaking experience centred on massive fights and world exploration. The storyline is vast but told with very little exposition, which allows players to form their own story based on their individual experiences.

''Shadow of the Colossus'' is a 2005 action-adventure game and a standalone [[SpiritualSuccessor prequel]] to ''VideoGame/{{ICO}}''. Directed by Fumito Ueda, the game does away with numerous conventional videogame formulas to create an aesthetically breathtaking experience centred on massive fights and world exploration. The storyline is vast but told with very little exposition, which allows players to form their own story based on their individual experiences.

* StopTheHeroTwist: Wander follows the instructions of an unseen voice telling him to slay the sixteen Colossi roaming the lands. He's told that doing so would bring his loved one back to life. As the game progresses, we see there is a group of priests who are traveling to the land, and Wander eventually discovers that each Colossus was a living seal keeping the AmbiguouslyEvil Dormin sealed away. Defeating the final Colossus results in Dormin breaking loose and possessing Wander's body just after the priests arrive to warn him of what he was doing. From there, Dormin eventually gets sealed back in, and Mono awakens to find a little baby with horns nearby.

* DifficultySpike: Most players agree that this happens somewhere around Colossi 3–5, which require strategies more complex than "climb up and stab repeatedly" to win the battle. The 10th Colossus, Dirge, is considered the starting point of another spike thanks to the battles becoming faster paced and far more tense (sans a few {{Breather Boss}}ess).

''Shadow of the Colossus'' is a 2005 action-adventure game and a standalone [[SpiritualSuccessor prequel]] to ''VideoGame/{{ICO}}''. The game does away with numerous conventional videogame formulas to create an aesthetically breathtaking experience centred on massive fights and world exploration. The storyline is vast but told with very little exposition, which allows players to form their own story based on their individual experiences.

** In the [=PS4=] version, the [[AchievementSystem Trophy]] for completing the game is titled [[VideoGame/DarkSoulsII "Bearer of the Curse."]]

** Beat the game once or twice and collect enough silver lizard tails to improve your grip, and you can climb to a secret garden on top of Dormin's tower [[spoiler:as seen in the ending]]. Eating the fruit on the trees there will eventually [[SelfImposedChallenge reduce your health and stamina to less than the player initially starts with]], though.

** If you want to improve your grip by collecting lizard tails, but don't want to kill the lizards, you have the [[SelfImposedChallenge slightly harder option of shooting just the tail itself]], which they will then [[DidntNeedThoseAnyway detach and run away from]].
*** Notably, the stamina you build up throughout the game from fighting the Colossi stacks with each subsequent playthough, so each NewGamePlus gets a little bit easier just based on that. So long as you're fine with a bit of EarlyGameHell, you don't need to harm a single lizard.

* {{Bookends}}: The first cinematic opens with dark skies and clouds, as an eagle flies into the shot over the mountains. After the credits, the eagle flies over the mountains, out of shot, and the last cinematic ends with clouds and dark skies.