Badlands

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Badlands
Profile
Inhabitant	Roc
Quadrant	D6
Stage Number	23
Designer	New: Takeshi Ochiai (ot) Old: Koji Hasegawa (hw)

Badlands is the developer name given to the unused arena of Roc, one of the unused colossi.

Description

Clip of Roc's pillar in D6

Short clips of Wander coming out of the Autumn Forest into the desert, Roc's pillar can be seen on the right.

A desert-like landscape with a huge impact crater on its center, and a smaller crater connected to it facing southeast. It is filled with various types of ruins, including a massive pillar which the colossus rested on.

Location

The location of Badlands in a mockup version of the early map.

The arena was located on the southwest of the Forbidden Lands, next to the Blasted Lands, at quadrant D6.

Trivia

• After Roc and the Badlands were discarded, the 6th Colossus and the Canossa took their place on the map.
• Various pieces of the 3rd Colossus' armor can be observed in one of the artbook screenshots and in the video footage of Roc.
• The 13th Colossus' Desert can be seen in the picture of Roc perching on its pillar.
• A short clip from an extended trailer by IGN shows Roc's pillar. Found by a user named Aïth.
• Badlands' chip data is full, indicating that the whole quadrant it resided on was modelled. This correlates with the existence of the old versions of quadrants B6 and C6, and it connecting to the surrounding quadrants.
• By examining the footage of Roc closely, one can note that the base of its pillar has smaller pillars supporting it, with spaces big enough for Wander to fit through. It's possible that it was made that way in order for Wander to hide from the colossus and regain health.
• An interview with the development staff of Shadow of the Colossus released by the Japanese graphical design company CG World contains materials of the game's map, which include, among other things, snapshots of the level-of-detail model of the E6 quadrant back when the adjacent D6 area still housed Roc, allowing for a fairly decent idea of how the arena looked like in its entirety.
• Roc's arena was previously speculated to have been located at B3 due to a seemingly similar shaped area being seen in an old low resolution texture, but it was debunked when several pieces of evidence, one of them being Roc's pillar, were found that linked Badlands and D6 together.
• Curiously, despite Badlands being set in a giant impact crater, the name 'Crater' was instead used for a different arena. The much more vague "Badlands" name might suggest the arena wasn't specifically imagined as a crater at the start of Roc's development. However, evidence from the game's data sheets indicates Phoenix started development far earlier than Roc, making this theory unlikely.

Gallery

Screenshot of the battle from the artbook.

Footage of Roc's pillar. Notice the base of it, showing spaces big enough for Wander to fit through.

Overal Field Design from the CG World magazine detailing how the Forbidden Lands were made. The Badlands crater can be seen in images numbered "2" and "3".

The pillar behind a rock in a screenshot of the 13th colossus compared to a picture of Roc. First noticed by Jaikhay.

Comparing the picture with the in-game location, the only thing missing is the 6th Colossus' mountains. Done by Wisi.

Textures of the Badlands.

Textures of Roc's test area - Stage 23.