Focus, Atmosphere, Limitations: Learning from Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus is considered a landmark title that was developed by a highly disciplined and intelligent team.  Released in 2005 for the Playstation 2, the critically acclaimed title featured incredibly expansive, vast worlds and even more vast enemies to scale and conquer.  Set in a fictional world, the game follows the tale of a young warrior who is on a quest to slay all of the mystical massive creatures that exist in order to resurrect his fallen loved one.  As the player goes to each location to slay each colossus, they become larger and more beautiful than the last.  Between these epic battles are uneventful rides through breathtaking fields, mountains, and other terrain.

Shadow of the Colossus is useful as a smart game development model for several reasons.  The cadence of the title is very different from most games; instead of a nice stroll or job through the excitement and action of the game, Shadow of the Colossus seems to be more like walk, sprint, walk, sprint, in the way that the player has massive “boss” fights bookended by serene horse rides.  Why is that?  Secondly, the game is one of the most beautiful ever developed for the Playstation 2.  How does the world work together with the gameplay?  And third, why is the game so limited in the abilities of the main character?  Was that on purpose?

Let’s dive in to the practical development techniques that student and independent developers can learn from this title.

Learning from the Colossi: Focus

There is much to be learned from Shadow of the Colossus; the game speaks volumes about the development team that created it.

The first lesson is one in incredible focus.  The Shadow of the Colossus team was incredible focused in the spending of their game development resources.  They knew what they wanted their game to be about: massive creatures that the player must scale and defeat.  However, game projects can’t go on forever; any real world developer will tell you that even the most epic of titles must be completed in a reasonable amount of time.  For that reason, it’s up to the developers to determine where they want to spend their resources and time.

It should be noted by any aspiring developer how difficult it must have been to leave the world of Shadow of the Colossus so empty.  There are no enemies to be found in the world other than the colossi.  Imagine for a moment how easy or tempting it would have been to make more enemies to populate the fields and the lakes.  Nothing complex, but just a small deer to hunt, perhaps a lizard that bites at your heels, or a swarm of bees that would chase the player as they rode by on their way to the next monstrosity.  But there are none of these.  The only enemy programming and animation time that went into the game went into the colossi.

The result?  Imaginatively created creatures with immense detail for the player to explore.  Behavior and animation, fur and stone that felt and looked real.  Would making a simple enemy or two to populate the world have taken away from the Colossi development a noticeable amount?  Who knows, but it certainly would have taken away something.  And by leaving the world empty except for these moving works of art, the developers made the moving mountains of the Colossi even more interesting by contrast.  Now that is some smart focus.

Learning from the World: Atmosphere

Not many people take the time to appreciate art anymore.  Actually going to a museum and standing to look at a painting, to experience it, to understand it.  So much of our world is instant access, a deluge of information, entertainment, and advertisement, oftentimes with games appearing to be at the forefront of the madness.

Shadow of the Colossus is a work of art, but many games are a work of art.  The game also forces you to digest it as a work of art.  In the periods before fighting the Colossi, the game asks the player to take long horse rides through the wilderness, some journeys lasting upwards or 20 or 30 minutes, silently trekking through the expanse of nature.  There is nothing for the player to do, nothing to interact with, other than the horse they are riding on.

This part of the game belongs in the Aesthetic Layout, and yet many games do not have their players do nothing but simply absorb the atmosphere.  Too often developers become nervous that their player will be bored without encountering some sort of Punishment and Reward system that they need to master.  But having the patience to allow players to drift through their world can be very useful at times, especially when coupled with the first point of focusing the gameplay elsewhere in the game.

Learning from the Hero: Limitation

Many games give the player more and more to do over the course of an adventure.  More powers, more weapons, more features, more and more and more!  This is a tried and true method for keeping players interested in your game; expanding the Base Mechanics as they chase after a Long Term Incentive is an intelligent and practical way to keep an audience entertained.

However this is not the route that Shadow of the Colossus takes.  Throughout the entire game, the player has the same set of controls and weapons.  He can run, jump and climb, and he can use his sword and bow, and ride his horse.  That’s all.  Each of those items are necessary for the first Colossus, and the they are all that is necessary through the entire game.

What is the result of this?  In a similar way that forcing development to be around the Colossi instead of on a wide variety of enemies throughout the fields and the game, forcing the player to only play with a limited, non-expanding number of abilities makes sure that they are all thoroughly explored.  Instead of many shallow Base Mechanics, the game is made up of a few but deep Mechanics that are fully put to the limit.

This is one area where intelligent indie developers in particular have much room for improvement.  It is easy to create a Base Mechanic and fill a few minutes of gameplay with it.  It is another challenge to make one Base Mechanic and fill ten hours with it.  Doing the latter will require that both the player and the developer ask themselves, “What else can be done with this that I didn’t first think of?  What can I do that will really constitute as a new or advanced skill or tactic?”  Using the bow on the first Colossus is no comparison to the bow skill required on later Colossi, and yet the Base Mechanic is the same.

As the challenges grow, the Mechanics stay limited, and thus the player is the one who must expand.  This is a smart move for several reasons, one because it forces the player to see the world in a deeper way, and a more practical reason, that it doesn’t require the developer to spend as much time making a vast array of Mechanics.  Limiting one’s self to a few features and then diving deep can have its rewards.

Making a Big Impression

Not every game needs to have the development resources of Shadow of the Colossus to make a strong presentation to the player.  By making smart decisions about resources and putting the effort where it counts, intelligent developers can learn to focus their efforts and make even their small amount of resources count in a colossal way.

This game analysis was suggested by Fredrik Fors Hansen.  You can read about his independent XNA game project, Garbalicious, on the Garbalicious Blog.

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