The battleground was set inside of a circular sand pit that was slightly wider than the 8th colossus' Underground coliseum, being one of the smallest arenas created for the game. The pit was placed in the center of a desert surrounded by dunes.
Seamless[]
Textures of Dune.
Dune's texture segment, found in the PS3 Data Sheets, does not include any textures of man-made objects, only having textures of dry ground, sand, and mountain walls.
Textures of "dune_par_erea_gate".
There also existed a separate texseg related to Dune, as well as Parthenon, named "dune_par_erea_gate". Models with "gate" in their name typically do not refer to a literal gate, but rather a path connecting an arena to the rest of the world. Examples of these include the passages to the 8th colossus' arena, and the inner area of the 15th colossus' Parthenon with the fallen pillar, which is named "parthenon_area_gate". The gate lists textures commonly found in temples from the arenas of the 1st and 6th colossi, in addition to a texture named "oh_taimatsu" (fire pillar). This same texture is also in Valley and is presumed to be the same texture used in ICO's fire pillars. Another curious element about the texseg is that it contains no sand related textures, only having grass ground, which indicates that the desert ended at G1, with the earlier version of the Parthenon area (H1) having no sand.
Image from the CG World magazine showing differences between a newer and older map. Bought by Shuu and sent to Nomad Colossus, who scanned it.
The shapes of both Dune and the "dune_par_erea_gate" passage can be seen in a picture with a bird's-eye view of the general area from the Japanese magazine CG World.[1]
Test Stage[]
Textures of Stage 16.
Before being placed on the Ancient Lands, Worm was tested in Stage 16. This stage only has two textures listed in its texseg. Both of them appear to be the same ones seen in the screenshots of Worm, indicating that the stage itself was likely only the hole in the middle of the desert, as the rest of it has no importance in the battle.
Location[]
The location of Dune in a mockup version of the early map.
Dune was placed in an early version of quadrant G1, before it was inhabited by the 15th colossus, as it used to be located in H1.
An interview with the development staff of Shadow of the Colossus released by the Japanese graphical design company CG World[2][3] contains a drawn bird's-eye view map showing, among other things, the rough shape of the G1 quadrant before the 15th colossus was moved into the site. The map proves that G1 used to consist of a large, circular pit encircled by sand dunes, with a narrow pathway, or 'gate', connecting it to H1 (Parthenon) around the southeast. Those features are highly consistent with what is known about the Worm colossus and its arena, as explained above.
Dunes in G1 from the final game.
After the world map was reduced, Parthenon was moved and merged with G1. Because of that, the ground outside of Parthenon was also changed from grassy to that of a desert. The dune mounds were moved to the southwest of the quadrant, and were made to be much closer together. The hole where Worm was battled was replaced with a save shrine.
Trivia[]
Early ambient texture of G2 from the PSU Preview and E3 Demo versions of the game showing an earlier version of the G2 quadrant from above.
An old ambient texture of 'G2' (Poseidon's Lake) found in earlier versions of the game shows an extension of the desert connecting to F2, F1 and G1; with what appears to be a border of the earlier version of the G1 quadrant back when it housed Worm. No feature like this exists in any actual model from the versions available, and it can be assumed that the texture is from much earlier in development.
The image from CG World magazine showing nine quadrants of two different versions of the map seems to separate normal explorable locations and colossi arenas by having them be red and blue in color respectively. In the left image the arenas in blue are: Proto, Poseidon's Lake and Parthenon. In the right image the arenas in blue are: Proto, Canyon, Poseidon's Lake, Leo's Cave and Parthenon. Strangely, Dune isn't blue. This could mean that by this point Worm was already removed from the game.
Worm's arena was previously speculated to have been located at B2 or areas near it, due to some remnants of land being found in the Preview and earlier versions of the game. It was debunked however, when it was discovered that those same types of lands existed all across the map during the period when the world was completely flat; as it can be seen in early footage from the Nico bonus DVD, which shows the same cliffs and ground in the F5 quadrant, near the entrance to the 1st colossus' arena. The same type of land as B2 can also be seen in G0.
Walkthrough