AdpcmVolControl

The volume control of the 5th colossus.

AdpcmVolControl is a type of sheet from Shadow of the Colossus. They are present in all available builds of the game and their function is to control the volume of the music during the battle with the colossi.

Description

All of the 16 colossi utilize this sheet. During gameplay, one may notice that the music volume goes down when the colossus doesn't see the player and / or is far away; and up when they see the player.

Unused Content

The volume control showing 21 colossi.

Found within the files of the PS3 version of the game are a few sheets of this type for unused colossi. However, not all of the unused colossi had a volume control sheet.

Devil, Phoenix, Roc, Sirius and Yamori A had this sheet, while Evis, Griffin, Saru, Spider and Worm didn't, with a total of 21 colossi having this sheet. Griffin and Saru are known to have been rejected fairly early into development. However, Evis, Spider and Worm were kept much longer than them.

The idea is that the colossi without this sheet most likely weren't in the plans anymore, and since this type of sheet was seemingly added quite late in development as the music was still not present in-game at this time, it's possible that development on Evis, Spider and Worm was already discontinued at the point in time of the creation of the volume control sheets.

The list having 21 colossi seems to align with what Kenji Kaido (the game's producer) said in an interview featured in the book De sombras y bestias: la travesia de Team ICO, where he states that: "We went from the 48 originally planned to twenty-four, and from there we arrived at 20." The only difference being that there's 21 colossi listed instead of 20. It was most likely planned to get rid of another colossus to get a round 20, but it's unknown if that ever happened.