Over 15 years later, Shadow of the Colossus remains one of the most influential games of all time. The spiritual successor to Ico released on the PS2 to critical acclaim, won multiple awards, and became the inspiration for how boss fights in games could feel for the next decade and a half. It was remastered for the PS3, remade for the PS4, and even got an indie "spiritual sequel" in Praey for the Gods.
For such a critically acclaimed game, there's very little left to say about Shadow of the Colossus that hasn't been said already. But a recent leak on 4chan provides us with insights into the game's development and even reveals several colossi that never made it to the final version.
The two 4chan threads were combined into a single post on the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit. Both posts were from an anonymous user named Moe who's leaked internal Team Ico documents–or so he says. As with all leaks, we should take this one with a heft grain of salt.
That said, the images that have been posted certainly look a lot like Shadow of the Colossus. There are several images of what appears to be the game's map as it evolved during development, eventually leading to the final version with its 16 Colossi fights.
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An interview with an unknown Team Ico dev said that they'd originally intended for 24 boss fights, but shorted it down to just 16 for various reasons. This was partly due to time constraints, partially due to hardware limitations on memory, and partially because some bosses were just better than others and more deserving of being in the final game.
There's a chart of several cut Colossi and how they compared to Malus, the game's final boss. Sirius, Devil, Griffin, Phoenix, Worm, Roc, Monkey, and Spider never made it into the final game, but elements and ideas from these bosses were often combined into a Colossus that did make it, such as Griffin's fire vulnerability being given to the 11th Colossus, Celosia.
Some of these cut bosses are even mentioned in the Shadow of the Colossus art book. Check out the leak here, and then compare them to the art book yourself here.
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