The Colossi

The main

A comparison chart of the sixteen colossi from the official artbook.

goal of Shadow of the Colossus is to seek out and kill the sixteen colossi (巨像 Kyozō) in the Forbidden Lands. The colossi are imposing creatures made of stone and dark fur resembling grass. Surprisingly, not all of them are huge in size, but all of them require some thinking to find (and especially to exploit) their magic sigils.

When Wander is killed while fighting a colossus, a game over screen appears, featuring the head of the colossus he was fighting.

Icon	Number	Dev. Name	Fan Name	Agro *	Time Attack Goals (Normal / Hard)
					PS2	PS4
	I	Minotaur A	Valus	No	2:30 / 2:50	2:30 / 2:45
	II	Mammoth	Quadratus	Yes	4:00 / 4:30	3:30 / 4:30
	III	Knight	Gaius	No	6:00 / 5:00	6:00 / 6:30
	IV	Kirin	Phaedra	Yes	5:30 / 5:00	5:00 / 6:15
	V	Bird	Avion	No	5:30 / 5:30	5:00 / 4:15
	VI	Minotaur B	Barba	No	3:30 / 6:30	3:30 / 6:00
	VII	Eel	Hydrus	No	12:00 / 8:00	9:00 / 7:30
	VIII	Yamori B	Kuromori	No	8:00 / 7:30	6:00 / 7:00
	IX	Kame	Basaran	Yes	7:30 / 5:30	5:30 / 5:45
	X	Narga	Dirge	Yes	6:00 / 5:00	5:30 / 4:30
	XI	Leo	Celosia	No	5:30 / 5:30	4:30 / 4:15
	XII	Poseidon	Pelagia	No	9:30 / 10:00	8:30 / 9:30
	XIII	Snake	Phalanx	Yes	12:00 / 13:00	12:00 / 10:15
	XIV	Cerberus	Cenobia	No	9:00 / 9:00	9:00 / 8:15
	XV	Minotaur C	Argus	No	11:00 / 11:30	7:30 / 10:00
	XVI	Evis	Malus	No	9:30 / 13:00	9:30 / 10:45

Colossus idols

A wallpaper from the official Japanese site showing all sixteen idols.

Sixteen gigantic idols line the east and west sides of the Shrine of Worship's main hall. The idols correspond to the colossi; when Wander defeats one, the idol explodes once he is returned to the Shrine (with one exception: Malus' statue implodes earlier, once Lord Emon's entourage reaches the shrine's main hall).

Even after a colossus's idol is destroyed, it is still available in Time Attack before you clear the game again.

The idols are arranged in a specific order. The southernmost one at the east side of the hall belongs to Valus, and Quadratus' idol faces it on the west side of the hall. Gaius' idol is next to Valus', and so on. The idols are all roughly the same size, despite the actual enormous range of sizes in the colossi (especially the relatively small Celosia and Cenobia).

The black tendrils

Numerous black tendrils - the embodiment of Dormin - rise from a defeated colossus and quickly gather inside Wander.

The colossi exist for a specific purpose: to house and protect the sixteen fragments of Dormin's essence. When Wander kills a colossus, several black tendrils escape from the fatal wound and into Wander. The tendrils cannot be outrun, and can even go straight through solid objects if necessary. When Wander absorbs the tendrils, he blacks out and is later returned to the Shrine of Worship through a mysterious means (his unconscious body begins to levitate, and he travels slowly through the air until he reaches the Shrine once more. In the game's finale, we see the first few seconds of this process.) Dormin's essence accumulates inside Wander with each colossus felled, increasing his health, stamina, and physical strength. This is reflected in the amount of damage a single stab will do to weakpoints; this becomes very apparent with subsequent playthroughs. Four to five games in, Wander can kill single-weakpoint colossi with a single well-charged stab.

Reminiscence Mode

The old-film filter applied to battles in Reminiscence Mode

If you go back to a colossus's lair after you've killed one, you will notice that the corpse of the colossus has turned into a formation of rock and dirt loosely resembling its original form. If you press next to (or on top of) any of the remains, you will pray before them and a prompt to enter "Reminiscence Mode" will pop up. Here, you can choose to fight the colossus again. If you do, the battle will be loaded up again, complete with a vignetted grainy old-film filter.

You are not timed in this mode, so this is not a substitute for Time Attack. Much like that mode, however, the battle will end if you go too far from the arena. Also if you defeat a colossus in reminiscence mode and you die afterwards, you will be teleported to the corpse of the colossus you defeated.

Pillars of light

Great beams of light point up to the sky to indicate a place in the Lands where a colossus has fallen.

After defeating a colossus, a gigantic pillar of light will appear in the skies far above its corpse. These can be seen from every corner of the Forbidden Lands, and serve as a record of Wander's travels and deeds. These have been a part of the game from very early on in its development; even the earliest screenshots clearly show a beam of light shooting in the sky, and the clouds swirling dramatically around it. Their early inclusion in the game, and their profound appearance in general, has led to many theories about what they symbolize, and why it was so important to have them there. One of the most popular theories is that they are only present in order to remind players about the location of a colossus's corpse if they wish to fight them in reminiscence mode.