Canyon

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Canyon
It casts a colossal shadow across a misty lake...
Profile
Inhabitant	Bird
Quadrant	H4
Connecting Quadrants	G4
Stage Number	02
Seamless Designer	Masanori Kajita (mk)
Seamless Designer (earlier ver.)	Mitsuhiro Shimooki (sk)
Theme (E3)

Canyon (峡谷) is the developer name given to the arena of the 5th colossus.

Description

The battle is fought in a foggy lake. The lake is dotted with platforms, ruins and a giant pillar where the colossus lands on at the beginning of the battle.

Location

The arena is located on the east side of the Forbidden Lands, next to Cliff Path, at quadrant H4.

Trivia

• If Wander lands on top of one of the many ruins in the arena, the colossus will blow air to make him fall.
• By the time the game was still known as NICO, the place where the colossus rested on was not a pillar, but a rock.
• In the early versions' pause menu map, the 'H4' quadrant design looked as though there wasn't any water in it, with a crater-like circular design in the middle. From what's known about Avion's earlier incarnations, it always had water, as you needed to hide underwater to avoid its bursts of wind.[1] This fact makes the 'H4' on the pause menu map very peculiar, which spawned numerous theories regarding it.
• The Canyon wasn't originally located at H4, as proven by the Preview, PSU Preview and OPM Demo versions of the game, which included a super low resolution texture of H4 that looks nothing like the arena, but instead a forked path leading to several directions (G4, H3, H5 and I4). The PS3 data sheets also include a texture segment of the old H4 quadrant, before it was replaced with the Canyon.
  • Its original quadrant was H3, as proven by a picture from the CG World magazine showing the differences between a newer and older map, seen in the gallery below.
• The many structures of the arena such as the sunken castle at the entrance have materials named as "buddha". Whether this means they used to belong to Buddha's old Labyrinth arena or not is unknown. It's possible that they are completely unrelated as no such textures were found in Labyrinth's or Stage 20's texture segment.
• The mountains surrounding the Canyon have been copied from Poseidon's Lake, as evident by them having the same exact shape when seen from the top, as well as both of their materials being the same; that is "00pose_rock_wall".
• The E3 Demo version of the Canyon features different structures, similar to the pillars from its concept art. They were used in the colossus' old strategy, as Wander needed to hide behind them to avoid its wind attacks.
• In the E3 Demo, there is a placeholder cutscene for this arena that can only be accessed with the debug menu or by modifying the code. The cutscene has no camera panning and ends very quickly. The theme named "Sanctuary" (also known by its file name "cave") plays.
• Inside the PS3 (and PS4) files, there's a unused control sheet for an object named "CANYON_POLE_A". Inside it, there's a setting named "General-purpose_(building_collapse)_detection", and it also references a "damage" motion. This may mean that there was some kind of destructible object in Canyon early on in development.
• The mountain textures of I2 are named: "sk_rwl_canyon_yelw_a001_mip". It's possible that an earlier version of Canyon had those textures, or at least another version of them.

Gallery

• Original
• Remake
• Earlier versions

The entrance to the 5th colossus' arena.

Another shot of the entrance.

The tower by the entrance.

Wide view of the canyon. Picture by Jaikhay.

The platforms that Wander need to stand on to attract the colossus.

Ruins with an intact bridge.

The pillar in which the 5th colossus rests on.

The ledges that are needed to climb to exit the arena.

The entrance to the 5th colossus' arena in the PS4 remake.

Another screenshot of the entrance in the remake.

Concept art of the pathway leading to the Canyon from the remake.

The pillar-like structures only encountered in the E3 Demo version.

Clear picture of the pillars.

The tower by the entrance of Canyon in the E3 Demo version. Note that the stairs are intact, granting Wander access to the upper floor.

Top view of the Canyon from the E3 Demo version. Same shape as the final one, except for the different structures.

Concept art of the Canyon.

The Canyon from the early version of the pause menu map.

Image from the CG World magazine showing differences between a newer and older map. Canyon can be seen in H3 at the bottom right of the image on the right, but missing from there in the left one. Bought by Shuu and sent to Nomad Colossus, who scanned it.

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