Badlands

Talk Page

Badlands
Profile
Inhabitant	Roc
Quadrant	D6
Connecting Quadrants	C6 D5 D7 E6
Stage Number	23
Seamless Designer	Takeshi Ochiai (ot)
Test Stage Designer	Koji Hasegawa (hw)

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

Description

An arid landscape with a huge impact crater on its center, filled with various types of ruins.

Seamless

Textures of the Badlands.

The seamless model's texture segment, which was found in the PS3 Data Sheets, has mainly dry ground, rock, grass, and structure textures. Most of the structures used 'moyou' textures, which are predominantly used by the 3rd colossus. From what can seen in the screenshots and footage of Roc, the structures appear to have been taken directly from the 3rd colossus' armor, including some parts of the massive broken tower at the center of the crater.

Footage of Roc's tower.

The tower was where the colossus perched on at the start of the battle. The base of the tower had small pillars supporting it, with gaps 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.

Test Stage

Textures of Roc's test area - Stage 23.

Before being placed in the seamless world map, Roc was tested in Stage 23. The texture segment of the test stage only lists three textures: One for rock/structures (hn_iwa), another for grassy ground (hn_sibafu), and the third one for meteorites (hw_grd_moon). While it's unknown if the meteorites were removed after the stage was placed in the world map, from what's seen in the screenshots, they do not appear to have remained.

Location

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

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

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.

Several theories were presented to prove this, including a short clip from an extended trailer by IGN showing Roc's pillar that was found by community member named Aïth; the 13th colossus' desert being seen in the background of the screenshot of Roc perching on its tower; as well as the pillar being seen in the background of one of the early screenshots of the 13th colossus found by Jaikhay.

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

It was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when an interview with the development staff of Shadow of the Colossus released by the Japanese graphical design company CG World was discovered. It contained materials of the game's map, which included, among other things, snapshots of the level-of-detail model of the E6 quadrant back when the adjacent D6 area still housed Roc. Aside from confirming the location, it also allowed for a fairly decent idea of how the arena looked like in its entirety.

After the map was reduced, the 6th colossus and the Canossa were moved from F6 to D6, and a mountain very similar in shape to the one still present in F6 replaced the Badlands crater. The areas to the west of D6 were also made to be more mountainous, and some were even completely discarded, like quadrant B6.

Trivia

• 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.
• 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 this theory was debunked when several pieces of evidence, one of them being Roc's pillar, were found that linked Badlands and D6 together. As well as another unused colossus, Yamori A, being discovered to have lived in B3.
• Curiously, despite Badlands being set in a giant impact crater, the name 'Crater' was instead used for a different arena occupied by the Phoenix colossus. This is likely because Phoenix's stage was created first, and since the name was already taken, the more vague name 'Badlands' was chosen.

Gallery

Screenshot of the battle from the artbook.

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.

The Ancient Lands World Era 3 World Era 2 Retail Map Beta Map (fan recreation)