Beyond the Forbidden Lands is a non-profit fan-made PC remake of Shadow of the Colossus with the restoration of cut content as a major focus, including the Unused Colossi and removed areas from the game. The game will provide the option of playing as close to the original Shadow of the Colossus as possible, along with the inclusion of a 'Story Mode' which is set before SotC.
The development team behind the project is responsible for many recent discoveries that have taken place regarding unused content from Shadow of the Colossus, and features assistance and guidance from many prominent figures in the community, such as from Wisi, NomadColossus, Pikol and more.
Development[]
Development of Beyond the Forbidden Lands was initiated in 2018 by Revolver Ocelot, the original project manager; as experimentation with attempts of re-modelling the Beta Dam in Unity. In 2019, Aith had been recruited to the team and had begun creating new models; the first ones of which being H2, I3 and I4. Over time, the team begun to grow until it was at a stable state to pursue a full-fledged game. By late 2020, most of the team members weren't part of the original team, including the Lead, and the project's development was completely reset/started from scratch due to a number of different reasons.
While not intended to be moddable, the game is intended to be customizable in a way that you can drastically alter certain aspects of the game (e.g colossi designs, hud/ui elements, and more) to more resemble different early versions of Shadow of the Colossus, with specific presets for the Red Hair beta, Blue Vest beta, Arms/Pre-E3 demos and the final version of the game.
This level of customization is also somewhat planned for the in-game map, allowing for the use of earlier quadrant designs found in earlier versions of SotC as well as the introduction of completely new quadrants, and the Beta Mountains should someone wish to explore such areas should they find out how.
The team is currently comprised of 12 members, all in different roles, and currently headed by Benji.
It is planned to use the original Roar of the Earth OST for the game's music, as well as some original tracks.
Unused Content[]
Griffin concept art
Beyond the Forbidden Lands' primary goal is to recreate and restore unused content from earlier versions of Shadow of the Colossus. This includes the Unused Colossi, unused areas like the Sluice and more. The intention is to re-create Shadow of the Colossus as it would have possibly been during the short time that it had 24 colossi. This includes a full re-creation of the unused areas, most of which have been completed by this point. The 10 Colossi included in the scope of the project are Evis, Devil, Griffin, Phoenix, Roc, Monkey, Sirius, Spider, Worm, and Yamori A.
Releases[]
A public release of the demo was available starting on the 21st of December 2019 to over two years, but was made unavailable as it no longer represented how the game was going to look.
On the 23rd of September 2021, the project's Launcher was finally released. With it, came the ability to install the first ever public tech demo since the project's reset. There have been a couple more tech demos released since then and all of the Patch Notes, with the release history, are available in the Launcher. This Launcher will be used up until the final release of the game, and has received several updates itself as well.
Gallery[]
.png "Sirius (1).png (1.43 MB)")
