Boss/Level: Environmental Procedure in Shadow of the Colossus.

As far back as the arcade classic Donkey Kong, action gaming and platforming titles in particular have followed a methodology of asking players to navigate an in-game world of perils and foes, vicariously, through their player characters.  The characters traverse terrain hazardous both in its environmental design and its population of simple enemy characters who attack the character, attempting to reduce his or her health to zero, resulting in a game over.  Although many types of enemy characters live in the game world, they are generally no real match for the player character.  The real struggle arises when the “boss character,” a stronger enemy at the end of a level, makes its appearance.  The boss character in gaming is generally larger and more intelligent than other enemies; s/he also deals more damage and poses a serious threat to the player character.

For example, in Super Mario Bros., players would direct Mario to jump over bottomless pits and onto the heads of Goombas, walking mushrooms that injured Mario at touch; and Koopas, pacing turtles that did the same; in multiple environments before finally fighting the boss character at the far end of the level.  In this case, it was Bowser, a large fireball-spitting turtle, in a castle.  Bowser moved quicker, and in more erratic patterns than the Goombas and Koopas before him.  His projectile attack challenged players much more than the preceding idly shambling creatures.  A substantial portion of titles in the gaming industry followed suit, designing levels with small enemies to test players’ mettle and prepare them for the awaiting boss battle.  From action titles like the Super Mario franchise and The Legend of Zelda to RPG’s like Final Fantasy, gamers became accustomed to journeying far and wide to slaughter simple enemies on the way to the “boss fight.” 

Then, In October 2005, Shadow of the Colossus was released on the PlayStation 2 console in Japan and North America and turned the boss concept on its ear.  Wander, a redheaded young man on horseback, brings a young woman named Mono to a temple called The Shrine of Worship.  Mono has been sacrificed and is now dead, but an invisible entity named Dormin has told Wander that Dormin can resurrect Mono, if only Wander defeats 16 “colossi” that roam the open land in which the game takes place.  Wander systematically finds each colossus by riding atop his horse Agro and using his sword as a compass to locate the colossi’s lairs.  The light reflects off Wander’s sword and narrows as he turns to the direction he should travel.  Once a player finds a colossus, he or she must control Wander to defeat it.  Once the fight is over, Wander finds himself back at the temple, where Dormin summarizes the fight and provides clues as to the nature of the next colossus.

Where Shadow of the Colossus excels – even more so than its beautiful world and character design – is in its execution of each “level.”  The journey to the colossus is little more than a short horse ride that leads Wander to one of the 16 spacious “boss fight” arenas scattered around the open world map.  There are no basic enemy characters along the way.  This leaves almost the entire level structure to be composed of the open arena.  There is very little to each area in which Wander fights the colossus, and yet this leads to the true brilliance of the title: in Shadow of the Colossus, the boss is the level.  To achieve this innovation, each colossus ranges in size and form, from a large bull-like creature to a 200-foot iron-clad humanlike behemoth, and players will spend as much time learning to climb and fight each colossus as they would journeying through an entire level in a different action title.  To defeat it, players must exploit hidden targets on its body, called “vitals.”  Vitals only illuminate when Wander – or more specifically, his sword – is near them.  Wander stabs a vital to reduce the colossus’s health, and generally one vital will fade out and become worthless before the battle is over, forcing the player to find as many as four more.  In true “David and Goliath” fashion, gamers may spend up to 30 minutes guiding Wander up a colossus’s body from foot to scalp or from ankle to wrist before delivering a killing blow to its forehead or palm, respectively.

Again, the boss is the level.  Like any game, each level differs.  The first colossus is a humanoid creature players must climb to stab an exposed weak spot on his left calf, which will bring him to his knees.  Players can then jump up his leg to his waist and climb his furry torso to a glowing blue sigil on top of his head.  This sigil denotes the vital on the colossus.  Each full stab to the vital point will deplete 15-20% of the colossus’s health.  Eventually, after trying to shake Wander off, Wander can kill him with repeated blows to the head.  The most important aspect of the first boss is the weak spot in his calf.  Exploiting the weak spot to gain access to the rest of the body, which then takes some time to circumnavigate to find the vital point, constitutes the same traversal and execution of play as a tutorial level in another game.  The strategy, puzzle-solving and unlocking of the next area of the colossus follows patterns set forth in countless action and platforming titles of yesteryear, which would lead gamers to open locked doors and proceed further through the level by finding keys, stepping on specific areas of a floor and so on.  In Shadow of the Colossus, especially when fighting colossi like the first one, the room behind the locked door is simply a higher point on the colossus’ body.

Proceeding along one of the giants shares traits with traveling along a typical game world in many other encounters.  Most notably, the twelfth colossus resembles a walking four-legged island more than anything else – and here is where director and lead designer Fumito Ueda’s living, breathing level and boss character meld the most seamlessly.  In a cutscene preceding the fight, the land mass-like colossus is shown lying dormant on a lake bed.  It clearly resembles a grassy, rock-strewn hill before awakening and surfacing.

The twelfth colossus wades through a lake deep enough for Wander to swim in but shallow enough to cover the giant only to its waist.  Wander must quickly swim around the beast to its tailbone, where he can climb up its back.  Wander’s journey is slow, as his grip is limited and the colossus tries to shake him loose.  Once Wander finds himself atop the creature’s back, he can run to the top of its head, where sits a crumbling crown.  By striking his sword on the left or right sides or the front of the crown, he can guide the colossus to move in any of those three directions – left, right or forward.  Then Wander jumps onto a raised platform he couldn’t reach without using the behemoth, which then jumps up on its hind legs to search for him.  At this moment, the hero can run and jump to the colossus’s furry belly and attack its vital point.  Aside from the pre-fight cutscene, the monster’s inadvertent aiding of Wander speaks volumes about the environmental nature of the colossi.  Before embarking to find this colossus, Dormin – the invisible entity which clues players in on their next fight – even refers to it as “a bridge.”  Using the colossus’s back and crown in tandem with the previously-inaccessible raised platform shows us most literally that the boss is the level in Shadow of the Colossus.

The thirteenth colossus resembles an often-seen airborne level in action titles.  This colossus is a flying dragon-like creature high above a desert.  It has three air sacs that slowly inflate and deflate, keeping it in flight.  Wander must pierce each of the sacs with his bow and arrow, leading the targets with ample time for the arrow to fly through the air.  This will cause the colossus to lower itself for nearly a minute near the ground, its wings dipping into the sand dunes.  Fortunately, these wings are ridged and Wander can ride alongside them on his horse, Agro, jumping onto a wing and climbing it like a ladder.  Once Wander nears the creature’s main body, it takes to the skies again, leaving Agro and the desert far below.  Wander and the thirteenth colossus are airborne, together for a dangerous battle.  In many action titles or platform games, players must fight through a large blimp or flying fortress – most notably the pirate ships at the end of each world in Super Mario Bros. 3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System – and true to form, the colossus appears to be several hundred feet long.  Wander must find its vitals and stab them, but not before being taken on a ride that involves barrel rolls and hard turns to either side.  Depending on the creature’s behavior, it can take several minutes for Wander to travel from its head to its tail.  Also, after each vital is stabbed enough that it fades away – which necessitates another area to exploit – the colossus dives into the sand, forcing Wander off.  It then resurfaces from underground and the process begins anew.  This way, Wander will have to scale its body no fewer than three times.  The sand dunes are flat, uneventful and inconsequential, working as a safety net on which for Wander to fall off the true game world: the flying fortress/colossus.

In case gamers didn’t get the message of cohesion between the boss character and the game world, Ueda makes it crystal clear with the final colossus.  This sixteenth giant is a 200-foot humanoid wearing a hakama – wide trousers that protect its legs, similar to a samurai outfit.  The hakama is in fact a series of platforms and ledges that Wander must grab, climb and run across in order to reach the colossus’s waist.  The climb itself takes several minutes, and at one point the camera stylishly pulls back to a wide shot of the action.  Wander appears as little more than a pest wriggling up the colossus’s legs, and by showing so much of the veritable tower Wander’s climbing, the game developers seem to be reminding us that this final battle is all about the journey – and maybe, by extension, the whole game always was as well.

 Once Wander reaches the small of the colossus’s back, a small weak spot appears that Wander must stab.  The colossus’s hand reaches back in reaction, and Wander can grab it and be lifted to chest height on the creature.  In a series of subsequent minor attacks and careful maneuvering, Wander reaches the sixteenth colossus’s head and delivers the final blows that kill him and end the adventure.

Unlike action games with enemies that can be killed with a number of weapons, power-ups and magic, there is only one possible way to kill each colossus.  Like a linear game world – best exemplified in first-person shooters like Call of Duty or the virtually constant trip from left to right in platforming titles – each colossus only offers a singular, definitive path from beginning to end.  In Shadow of the Colossus, the path is simply upended – literally, most of the time, to a vertical ascent.  In most modern games, environments are unflinchingly rigid; in Shadow of the Colossus, the procedure for killing each colossus follows suit.  The developers lay out a very strict, arguably confining method for conquering each foe the way that, to proceed in many games, players must move ever forward.

From the first to the last, nearly every colossus in the game is as much its own game world as it is a damaging boss character.  Players adapting to varying enemy offenses and defenses is a part of fighting in most gaming, but often in Shadow of the Colossus the strategies gamers must develop hinge as much on traveling to new portions of the boss/level as they do on besting an opponent.  Whether clinging for dear life on a journey underwater or high in the sky, exploiting weak spots to reveal vital Achilles’ Heels or climbing an endless tower of metal, Wander achieves the rare feat of navigating a level and killing a boss character simultaneously.  The combat and the journeying seem endlessly intertwined, in a symbiosis that ensures one cannot exist without the other.  That Shadow of the Colossus remains one of the most iconic games on the PlayStation 2 is no coincidence, and Shadow of the Colossus is frequently cited as a prime example of gaming as art.  This core gaming mechanic flirts with genius and its memorability is only matched by its sheer level of enjoyment.