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Post-release quotes
Fumito Ueda talks about Shadow of the Colossus

Fumito Ueda talks about the development of Shadow of the Colossus.

“I wanted Shadow of the Colossus to have no constraints. The stage for ICO was a comparatively small castle. I wanted Shadow of the Colossus’s stage to be vast and boundless.”

“To be honest I just try to make a good game. I try to express things in ways that only video games allow, and I simply pursue what video games can actually show.”

“I would be very happy if video games became a cultural equivalent to movies and music. There are many people who play video games at a young age but stop playing when they get older. I hear about people ‘graduating’ from video games but I hardly hear about those graduating from films or music. I believe this is because video games are acknowledged as immature. If this preconception can be changed it would be most wonderful.”

“It is probably not impossible to move the gamers’ emotions through storytelling. But I feel we would never be able to beat the movies this way.”

On initial and later stages of development.

“The main difference between other game production teams and my team is that we create a visual image along with a simple planning sheet. We then use a drawing engine - to be accurate an ‘event demo reproduction engine’ - to create real-time rendering on the PlayStation 2.”

“I was the one to judge those ideas brought by other staff as well. Also, as for the storyboards, I concentrated in drawing them in my free time.”

“First of all, I come up with a simple strategic idea, create a rough sketch and 3D models. With that model, without any detailed textures, I move the player and experiment with different movements according to the strategic ideas. If there are no major problems found, I go into the details. So the designing and modelling is related to the gameplay very much.”

“If we were to make a tree branch texture, we would do the modelling of the tree branch, give a realistic material to it, and then use the rendered version of it. Particle textures are fifty per cent 3D rendered and fifty per cent hand-drawn. Particles themselves will be judged not on the reality of each particle but whether the movement overall is realistic or not.”

“I concentrated on creating the game world as if it was from long, long ago, and not something that was created for the game. It was, of course, important to make a great game field but what was important to me was to create reality in the space given.”

“The most difficult challenge was the PS2 memory space. In Shadow of the Colossus there are no loading screens. All loadings are dynamic. For this reason, memory space that can be shared for the game field becomes less compared to other games. And within that limited memory, there has to be reality and I wanted to design a vast field.”

“The seamless system of the vast field wasn’t found in other games at that time, so the challenges to realize these were fascinating, yet difficult.”

On the size of colossi.

“That is nothing but the expression of scale density. It is the same on a still picture, but the information density in a moving picture is also a very important element. If there is not enough information, the scale of the enormous colossi cannot be conveyed, so I concentrated on being able to express the movements in detail.”

On the horse.

“Nothing special was done for the modelling but I wanted to design a powerful farm horse rather than a small thoroughbred horse. Motion capture wasn’t used, although the core members of the Shadow of the Colossus team went to research the actual horses at the start of the project.”

On next-generation platforms.

“This is something I am most worried about now as well. The level of beauty will become higher.”

“Technically clever is good. But it’s not enough.”

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