Shadow of the Colossus, the legendary PlayStation 2 game about traveling a moody open world to slay melancholy beasts, was actually partly inspired by Battlefield 1942, of all things. At least, Battlefield was the inspiration back when the classic game was being made as a co-op beast hunter.
To celebrate Shadow of the Colossus' colossal 20th anniversary, Design Room spoke with 11 people involved in the making of the iconic game, including its hugely influential director, Fumito Ueda, who said he "wasn't playing many offline games back then" and was "really hooked on Battlefield 1942, an FPS."
Ueda explained he "felt immense potential in the experience of that as a competitive game, where you'd shoot at or help out other players you didn't know." The desire to create his own online game led to the initial idea for SOTC: "a game where you cooperate to defeat giant monsters." Kind of mind-blowing for a game so renowned for its beautiful loneliness.
SCEA producer Kyle Shubel recalled a bit of what that idea would've looked like. "I'm going to stun it. I'm gonna tie its leg while you mount on top of it. I'll go in front of it and blind it while he takes it out — that concept, and then jumping back off onto your horses, and riding off in the sunset — yeah, if we could have pulled that off, everyone would be talking about this game," he said.
Ueda explained that the project hadn't gotten very far in development before he decided to scrap the multiplayer component to "concentrate resources." Plus, "adding network support would also require the player to have more hardware to play, limiting those who could experience it."
Design Room even contacted Battlefield 1942's lead programmer, Johan Persson, about the revelation. "That is truly a surprise! It's such a different experience," he said. "You tend to just assume these ideas were the result of someone having a eureka moment, waking up one morning, without any context."
Team Ico never ended up making another multiplayer project, but it gave players a massive, equally exciting virtual companion in The Last Guardian. Fumito Ueda is now working at his own studio, genDesign, on an unnamed title published by Epic Games, which recently got a short teaser showing off - surprise! - another massive thing to climb on top of.
The games industry might be built on borrowed ideas, but new ones have to come from somewhere – even if Fumito Ueda says "the era of game mechanics is over."
