GAME · 2005
Shadow of the Colossus
- Developer
- Team Ico
- Publisher
- Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Platforms
- PlayStation 3
- Original title
- Wanda to kyozô
39 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
31 Facts From the Development of Shadow of the Colossus
- #001
Director Fumito Ueda and producer Kenji Kaido returned for Shadow of the Colossus, along with the rest of the team from the development of Ico.
- #002
Shadow of the Colossus began as one of Fumito Ueda's concepts, developed directly after the team submitted Ico for publication; Ico was released in late 2001 for the PlayStation 2.
- #003
Fumito Ueda cited The Legend of Zelda series as an influence on Shadow of the Colossus, saying he grew up wanting to make a game like Zelda and designing the Colossi bosses as "inverted Zelda dungeons."
- #004
Shadow of the Colossus originated from an idea by Ueda that the team considered alongside another game developed at the same time. According to Ueda, that second game was unrelated to his former concept.
- #005
While the concurrently developed game was in development, the team gave it no working title and did not outline its design.
- #006
Ueda described the finished second title as in many ways a game for boys and men, while the separately produced game was fashioned to appeal more to a female audience.
- #007
The untitled game did not use 3D graphics, whereas Team Ico applied them to their published game; the team eventually scrapped plans for this counterpart title, which had been advanced into further development.
- #008
Before development began, Team Ico considered making its next project a sequel to its first game, Ico, but some staff members opposed the idea, arguing that the earlier title's story and gameplay were largely self-contained and that demand for a new Ico game was questionable.
- #009
According to Ueda, Team Ico believed that building levels for a single-player game like Ico would require elaborate puzzles, an approach the staff wanted to avoid.
- #010
After lengthy deliberations, Team Ico decided against an Ico sequel and chose instead to make a standalone game provisionally called NICO, a portmanteau of the Japanese word for two, ni, and Ico.
- #011
Team Ico initially agreed to develop NICO as an online multiplayer game that, unlike Ico, would not require complex level design; according to Kaido, the foundational goal was a technology demo representing a tentative version of the game's fictional world and features. Development started right after Ico's Japanese release in December 2001.
- #012
To develop the concept video for NICO, Team Ico formed a small internal group made up of Ueda, one of Ico's designers and an animation team of roughly 10 people.
- #013
The first storyboard outlining the NICO concept video was drafted in January 2002, and the short film itself was finished that May.
- #016
According to Kaido, the team considered the demonstration video to have reached a very high level of completion and used it as a reference point throughout production of Shadow of the Colossus.
- #017
Although the visuals of Shadow of the Colossus were modified from the demonstration reel, its themes of fighting a giant enemy and exploring a giant field were carried over into the final game design.
- #020
In June 2002, a small group of Team Ico staff began building a prototype known as NICO for testing purposes, work that preceded Shadow of the Colossus.
- #021
As producer, Kaido assigned the team to add technological features he considered important development milestones, including what he called "organic collision deformation" — his concept of realistic character physics tied to how the colossi move.
- #022
Kaido expected that a player could run across a colossus' limb as if it were any other flat surface whenever that limb was horizontal.
- #023
Ueda and Team Ico programmers spent more than six months producing a working version of that functionality, starting by placing a character in a virtual environment where the figure could climb a pole-like object; a priority was coding a physics-based simulation of characters being shaken off or narrowly avoiding being stomped on.
- #024
In May 2003, Team Ico assembled a demonstrational build known as NICO and presented it at a production meeting. Full development of Shadow of the Colossus was sanctioned directly after it was pitched and began the same month.
- #027
Shadow of the Colossus began as an online-only project called NICO, but Team Ico judged its limited personnel and their professional profiles unqualified to deliver such a game and reformulated NICO as a single-player title.
- #028
For Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico set aside the development tools and engine used on Ico and wrote new programming utilities and a dedicated game engine.
- #029
Although Team Ico had intended to reuse its Ico development practices for Shadow of the Colossus, the move away from the older game's technology meant the successor was built almost from the ground up again.
- #030
Production of Shadow of the Colossus began in September 2003 after a lengthy preparatory phase.
- #031
Publisher SCEI granted Shadow of the Colossus more development time, funding and creative freedom than the Ico team had received, a decision the company based on Ico's critical success.
- #032
Kaido and Ueda sought new collaborators for Shadow of the Colossus, especially artistic specialists, through job advertisements in Japanese trade media and word of mouth; ten of five hundred applicants were hired.
- #033
Ueda felt that only one or two of the ten recruits met his criteria, as he expected every facet of Shadow of the Colossus to be as well-crafted as possible.
- #034
Kaido stated that his colleagues needed to move into full production because they had already invested extensive effort in preparing the game's technology.
- #035
Character designer Shinpei Suzuki recalled that development of Shadow of the Colossus began experimentally and advanced through trial and error.
- #036
During development of the colossi, the team had difficulty choreographing certain enemy motions to match staff expectations, prompting Team Ico to rework the original programming solution that animated the colossi's movements.
- #037
Suzuki described the team's early accomplishments as empirical, with staff routinely testing and adjusting anticipated components until they confirmed they functioned properly.
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Shadow of the Colossus — Wikipedia
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work