The battle was set on a volcanic crater, with one or more lakes throughout it.
Wander on the J4 mountains.
The later version of the arena featured a dry environment and was incredibly large, with its borders being outside of the main quadrant. A single volcanic rock texture is listed in its texture segment, and the arena also featured dead trees placed throughout. In one of the screenshots from the artbook, one can see a hill in the distance as well. The only remains of this arena are the mountains in J4; as well as the dead trees, which are now placed on the arena of the 9th colossus.
The earlier version of the arena (the one from the screenshot with the larger Phoenix) featured a more volcano-like appearance, with every single texture from it (Stage 8) being volcanic, as opposed to the later version only having one.
Location[]
The location of Crater in a mockup version of the early map.
The available evidence points to the arena being located on the east side of the Forbidden Lands, at quadrant I4.
The J4 mountains appear to be a partial remnant of the arena, sharing many of the same unique textures listed only in Crater. The materials from J4's ground remnant are named as "i4_seam_ground" and "i4_seam_ground_durt", indicating that it connected to I4 and was not moved.
Trivia[]
Screenshot of the 9th Colossus' arena from the PSU Preview version, showing the I4 and crater trees.
Crater was previously speculated to have originally been located at Quadrant D3, the location of the 9th Colossus in the final version; due to the presence of matching trees in both arenas. Additionally; in the first public 'OPM Demo' map a copy of the 5th Colossus' icon was used in place of the 9th, suggesting the presence of another 'bird' at Geyser. Both ideas would later be discredited; the first when said trees were found to had materials that included "I4" in their name, which could indicate a potential location prior to being moved, and the duplicate Bird icon explained by users Nomad Colossus and Wisi as a leftover from an older order in which the colossi were fought.[1]
The unused theme "Voice of the Earth" is likely to have been the intro song for reaching the Crater. The proof of this is the song's name in the debug menu of the game, which is titled "volcano".
The theory that Phoenix lived at I4 was originally from SpaceOmega5000 (formerly known as WWWArea).[2] Later evidence from the data sheets helped solidify it.
Crater's chip data is full, indicating that the whole quadrant it resided on was modelled. This correlates to part of the arena expanding over to J4 and Ueda's comment stating that they needed to create a really large environment for Phoenix.
Gallery[]
The J4 mountains, a part of the Crater that was left in the game after I4 was nulled.
Top view of the J4 mountains.
Close-up of the J4 mountains and its remnant of a ground.
The trees originally from Crater, now in the 9th Colossus' arena.
Textures of the Crater.
Textures of the J4 mountains. All three of them are also listed in Crater.
Textures of Phoenix's test area - Stage 08. They no longer exist.
Walkthrough