Unused Colossi

All of the unused colossi shown in the artbook.

Fumito Ueda, the creator of Shadow of the Colossus, originally had 48 colossi in mind when planning the game. Realizing that putting in that many colossi was not possible, the number was cut down to 24. It was only then that Team Ico began to develop the models, according to this section from the artbook interview:

Ueda: At first there were 48 or so. We didn't have anything specific, just a vague idea of the number. Then, once we were down to 24, we started to come up with ideas for the strategy and make models.

Footage from the August 2004 promo disc with 24 idols in the Shrine of Worship. Every idol is identical to the 1st colossus'.

According to an interview featuring Kenji Kaido (the game's producer), they had decided to cut down the colossi again to 20. However, the number of colossi used in the game eventually became 16, with ten of the unused colossi appearing only in the artbook. Some designs were discarded to improve game flow, while others were cut for lack of time and/or budget. Griffin and Saru were originally part of the 24 colossi lineup, but were cut in the early stages of development and replaced with other colossi (the 6th and 15th).

Unused Colossi

Name	Agro	Stage Name	Quadrant
Devil	No	Devil's Plain	D2
Evis	Unknown	Unknown	I1
Griffin	Yes	Valley	None *
Phoenix	Yes	Crater	I4
Roc	Yes	Badlands	D6
Saru	Yes	Cave	None *
Sirius	Yes	Stonehenge	E8
Spider	Yes	Hillock	D3
Worm	No	Dune	G1
Yamori A	No	Sluice	B3

(*) Griffin and Saru are confirmed to have never been placed on the game's proper world map; Griffin was placed briefly on an earlier rejected map as a test, but didn't last long, and Saru could've only been encountered by booting up its test area.

Archetypical Unused Colossi

se-frame-table sheet listing several colossi names.

Also referred as "Datamined Colossi", these bosses do not have any official information on them, other than the PS3 data sheets, leaving their existance as separate from the other colossi not clear.

These bosses were made in the very early days of development when the player character still had horns, and if they had battle strategies, they would likely be simplistic and one-note, as most colossi were at the beginning of development. Most colossi started as an archetype of another colossus, a clear example of this is the 12th colossus, being the same archetype of the 9th, and using most of the elements from its battle - both had horns that the player would need to attack in order to guide them to specific locations (geysers or platforms), both fired pulse beams from said horns, both could be climbed from their backs right away, and both likely had a weak point in their stomach.

Other examples include the 4th colossus being the same archetype as the 2nd, the 11th colossus using Griffin's and the 10th colossus being the same as the 13th.

The best elements of the Archetypical Unused Colossi designs and strategies were probably combined and used for the rest of the colossi. As it's likely the fate that Buffalo had, being mentioned in a more advanced early specification of the 11th colossus.

• Clarification: These colossi don't come from the older 48 colossi idea, as Ueda mentions in the artbook: "once we were down to 24, we started to come up with ideas for the strategy and make models."

Table of known Archetype Colossi in alphabetical order

Dev. Name	Has a texture segment	Description
Buffalo	Yes	Has several control, motions and animations reused from Agro.
Knight_2	No	Likely an early iteration of the Buddha boss, before it was made twice as large. The Buddha boss is labeled as "騎士ボスカスタム" (Knight Boss Custom) in its boss specification document.
Kubinaga	Yes, although it's empty	Misspelled as "KUBUNAGA" in the se-frame-table sheet. This is likely a "Bird" archetype and the colossus that eventually turned into Roc. In the artbook, Roc is referred to as "kubinagai" (long neck).
Quetzalcoatl	Yes	Also known as "Snake 2", this colossus eventually turned into the 10th colossus. It has an old texture from "Phoenix" and another from "Griffin", as well as a scaly skin texture.
Saru_2	No	It's unknown if it was another design of Saru or another colossus using its archetype.
Tobiuo	No	Its name means "flying fish" in japanese. Likely an "Eel" archetype.
Yamori	No	Original Gecko boss, was made into the 8th colossus later on.
Yeti	No	No information besides the name is known.

Idol Statues

Texture segments for all of the unused idol statue models, each listing their own unique textures.

The PS3 sheets revealed that all unused colossi (except for Griffin and Saru), had unique idol statue models with their own texture at one point, not being a copy of the 1st colossus' statue like the ones shown in early trailers.

Texture of Worm's idol.

Worm's idol texture is the only one that survived in the final game, as it shares the 13th colossus' texture file. Evis, while having an idol statue listed, never had its own unique model and texture, being a copy of the 1st colossus' statue until right before the game launched (as seen in the E3 Demo and PSU Preview), when it was replaced by Buddha's idol.

Shot of the early idols. They're much higher quality, not being as pixelated as the textures in the final game.

Screenshot of an early idol.

The textures of most of the idol statues, both from the final colossi and unused, have "_02" added to their name, which may suggest they are later versions with reduced resolution, as the statues from the 1st colossus seen in early trailers and screenshots appear to be much higher quality than the idols from the final version. Since the unused colossi also have "_02" in their name, this means that their quality was reduced before they were removed.

List of all statues separated by type.

A list containing all 24 statues seem to separate them by type, as for example the minotaurs, birds and little colossi are listed together. Evis' idol is on its own since it's for the final boss. However, Spider is also separate from all the others. This could imply that its idol was the most unique of all of them due to its body shape.

Trivia

• The unused colossi did not have a few features which are present the final game. Below is a list of them:
  • The unused colossi had no corpses -. According to the data sheets, none of the unused colossi had models for their corpses. This is further supported by the E3 Demo, where every colossus corpse is a bright white copy of the 1st colossus'.
  • Their arenas had no ending model - Also according to the data sheets, none of the unused colossi had ending models for their arena. This means they were cut long before the ending credits were done.
  • They likely had no music - Although the developers more than likely had plans for the song choices for the colossi, no music sheets for them are found in the files. Only the AdpcmVolControl sheet exists for them, however the contents inside include only one line, likely being a placeholder. This suggests they never had music playing in-game.
  • They likely had no map icons - The icons that appear after each colossus are defeated only existed near the end of development, in early versions small inverted versions of the game_over_bg textures were used as icons, which were created after the cut colossi were removed. All available builds of the game are programmed to expect 16 icons. Hacking the game to increase the number of colossi defeated will successfully add more icons, but with a few issues:
    • It will cause all icons, including the original ones, to appear broken, due to the function that separates the icons from a shared texture expecting a 4x4 grid of 16x16 pixel-wide icons.
    • Additionally, the new icons are placed at the center of the world by default due to not having given positions. Adding positions for more icons in the sheets does allow them to appear correctly on the map, but the glitched look of the icons still occurs unless one mods the game's code to allow for more icons in the texture.
    • Even if one mods the game to allow for more icons, the boss_icon_set texture only has icons for the 16 remaining colossi.
  • They had no game over screens - Also added fairly late into development. They are in the files of the E3 Demo, but aren't activated, showing the usual game over screen with the symbol in Wander's clothes no matter if you're fighting colossi or not. Textures for the game over screens for the unused colossi do not exist in the sheets.
• The "AdpcmVolControl" type sheets used for controlling the bosses' music volume were likely added fairly late into the game just like the music sheets. Strangely, only 21 colossi in total had this type of sheet: Devil, Phoenix, Roc, Sirius, Yamori A and the rest of the final colossi. The missing ones being Spider, Worm and Evis (and Griffin and Saru, although those were removed much earlier than any other, which means they had barely any sheets related to them). This may line up with the interview featuring Kenji Kaido, where he mentions the game having 20 colossi at one point.
• The st_changePlayerInspireLevel() field which can be found inside the BossStatus sheet from the E3 Demo, has hex values for each colossi seemingly in a wrong order. The value of the final colossus is "0x17", which is hex for "24", meaning that this field existed back when there were 24 colossi. It's possible that setting the values correctly could reveal an earlier order the colossi were fought in back when there were 24 colossi. Unfortunately, however, only the final colossi are listed in the sheet, leaving the unused colossi spots, aside from Evis, empty. The list in its correct order is below:
  • 0x0 / 01 - Minotaur A
  • 0x1 / 02 - Mammoth
  • 0x2 / 03 - Kirin
  • 0x3 / 04 - ???
  • 0x4 / 05 - Kame
  • 0x5 / 06 - Leo
  • 0x6 / 07 - Knight
  • 0x7 / 08 - ???
  • 0x8 / 09 - Narga
  • 0x9 / 10 - Bird
  • 0xA / 11 - Poseidon
  • 0xB / 12 - Minotaur B
  • 0xC / 13 - ???
  • 0xD / 14 - Eel
  • 0xE / 15 - ???
  • 0xF / 16 - Snake
  • 0x10 / 17 - ???
  • 0x11 / 18 - Cerberus
  • 0x12 / 19 - Yamori B
  • 0x13 / 20 - ???
  • 0x14 / 21 - ???
  • 0x15 / 22 - Minotaur C
  • 0x16 / 23 - ???
  • 0x17 / 24 - Evis

External links

Interview with the game director and project manager, from the official guidebook and artbook.