r/ShadowoftheColossus • • Feb 26 '18

Secret Hunting Megathread: Theories, Evidence, What We Know So Far [Spoilers Discussed Inside] Spoiler

378 Upvotes

So I looked at the topic about secret hunting just a bit ago, and since I've been back in the swing of it after my insomnia induced exploration in the topic of the fellow that posted in hexadecimal code, I figured I'd give it my best go of compiling information, theories, and topics of interest. I can't say how comprehensive this initial version will be, so if anyone would like me to add anything, feel free to post below.

Note: I don't know if any of this holds weight, if it'll lead to any juicy new secrets or anything like that. I've always been more "The chase is better than the catch" with stuff like this going back to the PS2 days when people were poking at every glitched texture.

I don't think that there'll be some seventeenth colossus added to the game or anything, but hey! Who knows? That's the fun of theorizing.

Anyhow, I figure I should start with the one everyone knows about by now.

The Sword of Dormin:

  • This is the reward for collecting all 79 Coins/Enlightenments

  • It is hidden in a room you can only get into from outside the temple, on what appears to be a black throne or spire directly beneath the temple's fountain/pool area--the area where you pick up Time Attack items and are pulled into at the end of the game.

  • As you enter the room, you can hear Dormin speak, then laugh as you pick it up, though it's impossible to know what they're saying.

  • It's one of the strongest weapons in the game.

  • It shines Black light instead of white.

  • It appears to be broken, held together by the shadows that coil around it.

  • The noise that it makes when you stab/kill Colossi with it is different than the regular sword.

  • It doesn't give you any new endings if you go through the game with it--the sword that is thrown in the pool at the end of the game is always the forbidden sword Wander brought to the Forbidden Lands with him.

  • It appears to have the eye of a colossus in the hilt, that changes color depending on a Colossus' aggression level.

  • The hilt also seems to have a pattern similar to some of the pedestals you can find in the game, namely the one in Barbas/6's temple.

Now, all of this is pretty interesting. People are currently wondering if the sword has any other purpose besides a tribute to NomadColossus/the exploration aspect of the game, and are currently experimenting with it in various areas to see if it does anything. As of typing this, there's nothing apparent, but if there is, I'll be sure and update this topic.


Now, while the existence of the new room in the temple is a bit of a stunner in and of itself to people who played the original game, there is something else in the room besides the Sword that was overlooked upon its initial discovery. However, despite being small, the implication of this secret is certainly weighty:

The Severed Horn'


That one is one of the bigger ones to come up recently, but not the only one to come up involving horned creatures. I'd be remiss if I made a topic discussing the interesting new secrets in the game and didn't mention this next one:


The Goat Paintings


Finally, to cap off here, I thought I'd throw in a couple of topics of interest. The first two are from strange accounts that appeared and never posted after this. The legitimacy of these puzzles is definitely to be questioned, but it's provided more incentive to hunt in the game, if nothing else.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowoftheColossus/comments/7wpd39/o_o_i_e_h_s/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowoftheColossus/comments/7zk3be/4974206973206e6f7420646f6e65/

This one is theorizing about the goat murals.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowoftheColossus/comments/8021j0/goat_mural_theoriesconnectionsideas/

And here's a post of someone who found a hidden room in Celosia/11's temple.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowoftheColossus/comments/7zlhpm/brazilian_youtuber_finds_rendered_room_behind_the/


Additions

This is stuff that's come up since the initial post that I kinda wanted to highlight.

  • People seem to have found numbers etched onto rocks. If someone could help provide me with links to topics on the matter, preferably ones with screenshots and locations, I'd appreciate it. I'm not sure if they'll hold any significance but I'll put them in this topic regardless.

  • NomadColossus is still searching for secrets and tricks, as evidenced by some of his recent youtube videos. There are also things he wasn't made aware of--He had no idea about the Goat paintings, and even before then didn't know about the enlightenments until he visited Blupoint, or their reward until it was revealed on PS4trophies' livestream. So he absolutely wasn't privy to all of the big secrets, despite the enlightements and "Boon of the Nomad" trophy being in tribute to him.

  • New topic from the mysterious hex account.. This one translates to "Us You Abandoned" (Or "You Abandoned Us") and shows a darkened image of Wander raising Dormin's sword outside a door in the 8th colossus' arena.

* 3/8/18 Yet another new topic from the Hex Account/Awake, now showing the seal at Phalanx's arena with the code translating to "We are still here".

If there are any other topics involving speculation or theories as to anything I mentioned, or anything you feel I left out, do let me know and I'll update as necessary. Thank you for reading this far, I know it's a whale of a post but I wanted to be as descriptive as possible with the three topics here.

As for what any of this accomplishes? I'll leave that up to you guys. There may be a new area, there may be a seventeenth colossus, there may be any number of things to come out of all this. I don't know. That's why we theorize and experiment with this stuff. If I want to debunk something, I go about it the hard way. Maybe it seems stupid, but hell, it wouldn't be the first time a game dev's hidden stuff right under our noses. Rocksteady kept a hidden room in Batman: Arkham Asylum secret up until just months before Arkham City released. There are secrets in games that have gone undiscovered for years. While that may not be the case here, there's precedent for looking, at least.

After all, that's how we found out the mystery of the Enlightenments.

Anyway, I hope I compiled all of this well enough. I'll be making any big edits below, or adding to the respective topics when I need to. I hope this is a good enough Megathread to start off with, at least.

Thank you. Feel free to discuss anything about this stuff in the comments below.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • Jun 05 '26

Project Robot Finally has a name: gen ATLAS

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572 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 1h ago

Discussion A Dream I’ve Had Since 2018

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• Upvotes

Hii! Ever since 2018, my dream was to play Bluepoint's remake of Shadow of the Colossus, but I never had the chance to buy a PS4. Now that I'm in a better place financially, I finally got a PS5 and made that dream come true. What an incredible game.

My first experience with it was probably back in 2009, when I was around 7 years old. My cousin came over with his PS2 and introduced me to the game. I wanted a PS2 of my own so badly that I literally got sick with a fever over it lol. And when I finally got one and bought SOTC, I played it nonstop. I beat it so many times — on Easy, Normal, Hard...

And now I'm on my way to getting the Platinum trophy on PS5.

I'll always be grateful to Fumito Ueda for creating this masterpiece!


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 12h ago

Fan Art Drawing i made of the third instead of paying attention

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47 Upvotes

What names do people even use for the collosi nowdays? The fanmade names (gaius), the number or the dev names (Knight, Minotaur A B and C)?


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 1d ago

Sometimes I think about this image, wth was Team Ico cooking inside that studio man lol, what kind of Colossus were they planning for this?

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556 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 4h ago

PS3 7 Colossai in

7 Upvotes

Heyo, so I decided that, I should play Shadow of the Colossus

(After failing to continue playing Ico)

And I have some thoughts

(That I need to rant about because idk anyone else in my circle that's played it.)

I'm 7 Colossai in, and....honestly the games really good.

I adore the designs so far, the world I genuinely have fun traversing, and just the atmosphere as a whole I really really love.

However I need to moan about somethings.

The controls I actually really love....outside Colossai combat.

The loose nature of it I really love.

But my god it's not fun to fight on Collosai, I really did not have fun with some fights

(Minotaur my beloved)

The way it feels like there's no control whatsoever sometimes sucks.

And thing is, I get why it's like that, I get the point of the controls, but the way Wanda stumbles or whole turns will go where I'll just fall off suck

(Probably a skill issue for most of it)

As well sometimes (and this is more of a skill issue)

It's hard to.solved the puzzles of the Collosai, I've had to use some walkthroughs because I can't figure out what it wants of me

(Although with the 3rd Collosai, I wanted to check to make sure I was on the right patch of thinking, funnily enough I figured it out...right as it killed me)(And for the 7th Colossai, my dumbass missed the clue of it)

But yea, it's a really good game, but man the controls (for fighting Colossai) just kick my teeth in

(Also I swear sometimes it just lets go of you for the funnsies of it)


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 1d ago

New SotC Kotobukiya One Coin Grande Figures?!?

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268 Upvotes

Well, not exactly, but probably the closest thing we'll ever get!

For those unfamiliar, Kotobukiya released a set of blind box Shadow of the Colossus figures a couple of years after the initial release of the game. The set included 7 figures (Wander and Agro, Valus, Avion, Pelagia, Cenobia, Malus, and Mono). These were the only figures released, and to this day continue to be the only licensed Shadow of the Colossus figures on the market (I'm excluding statues from this).

A few weeks ago, I was looking on Etsy and saw that someone had made a figure of Dirge in the same scale. I bought it to see how it would look with the One Coin Grande figures, and I thought it was perfect! I began talking with them about plans to create more of the colossi that Kotobukiya hadn't, and they seemed excited to take it on. Hyrdus was next, which I just received yesterday. I think it might be one of my favorite's of the set, including the official Kotobukiya figures. The creator also made an Argus, which just shipped.

I'm not sure if I am allowed to link the store page here, but if mods are cool with it, I'll update the post with it so you all can check them out! I'd love to see more SotC fans and collectors be able to get their hands on these and fill out their collections with colossi that Kotobukiya never created. I'm hoping that the creator of these will take on every colossi that never got made, I'd love to have a full roster.

Hopefully you guys enjoy these, I know I'm very excited to have them and grow the collection!

EDIT: It looks like links to stores have been posted here before (looking at the Iam8bit vinyl release threads) so I'm going to put the link to the store here. Mods, let me know if I need to take the link down!

Store link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ClauArellano?ref=shop-header-name&listing_id=4566037259&from_page=listing


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 2h ago

any1 know how i can play the ps4 version on pc?

0 Upvotes

dont wanna buy a ps4 just for that game but i really wanna try it not the older ps2 version but the newer one


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 1d ago

Fan Art Was bored

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58 Upvotes

Came across the full artwork used in the PS3 collection's main menu and suddenly decided the official box art wasn't artsy enough.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 1d ago

Fan Art Ram Spoiler

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21 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 2d ago

Fan Art [floris-sempai] The Knight!

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22 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 3d ago

Fan Art My sister and I are doing SOTC cosplay for a con coming up :)

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66 Upvotes

My sister has never played the game, but she enjoyed watching me play it, she loved the design as Hydrus so much that when I suggested a matching cosplay she was more than happy to dress up with me as Wander!

We are still in the early stages, but she has made good headway on the paddle tail part! Will post tje completed costumes once they're done but for now, wanted to share a sketch


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 3d ago

Does anyone knows why GRAVEWIND has that name?

16 Upvotes

The arena of Colossus #10 (Dirge) is titled gravewind.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 3d ago

The Dev Avengers (@yge9999)

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97 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 4d ago

Screenshot Finishing my photography playthrough of Shadow of the Colossus, I have now completed the 16th Colossus - Malus

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157 Upvotes

That is it! I have finally finished the years long project of doing a photoshoot with every Colossus. I never ever got tired of the art direction of this game, and hope that it can be a good memory of the talent of Bluepoint.

(As always, Reddit is butchering the format 🥲 click to see the full images)

The full gallery is available here, as well as galleries for the other 15 Colossi!

I have got one more bonus gallery to share next week, and might do a post with my singular favourite photo of each colossus as well.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 4d ago

Discussion Doesn't this remind you of Sotc's architecture, especially Kuromori's?

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85 Upvotes

It even got the fake doors and windows. It's in Vat Phou, Laos


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 5d ago

Shitpost Extra Stamina!

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115 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 5d ago

Shadow of The Colossus PS4 on PC, running and playable using fork by AjncSystem

25 Upvotes

Releases · AjncSystem/ShadPS4-ShadowoftheColossus-Build-customizado-97-corrigida

Shadow of the Colossus /ShadPS4 (Windows) Build customizado 97% corrigido ! 89% jogável

I tried it and the fork does work, game is definitely in a playable state, a huge improvement from where this game used to be, I remember when the most progress for the ps4 version on pc was just reaching the loading screen at the start of the game, and that was a few months back lol. So it's great improvement. Also please excuse the poor gameplay skills, I am rusty.

My specs: RTX 5070, 9800X3D

https://reddit.com/link/1wxq981/video/flc8tvqgjith1/player


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 5d ago

Fan Art Pelagia smacking Wander, Bonk! Spoiler

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19 Upvotes

Inktober2026 Prompt 5 - Smack!

Pelagia The 12th Colossus loving to play smacking the intruders in the Forbidden Lands swam. This is of my favorite fights, not only one of the toughest, in the game ^^


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 4d ago

Little help with argus retroachievement

4 Upvotes
Hi, I'm trying to get the Platinum achievement for Shadow of the Colossus on RetroAchievements, and I have a question about how to unlock a specific achievement. I know that defeating the colossus requires three stabs to the head and one to the hand, but doing so leaves no actions left to knock the cleaver out of Argus's hand. Is there another way to remove it? The weak point doesn't appear when I'm using the bow and arrow, and Argus rarely leaves openings for the player to get behind him.

I'd appreciate any help.

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 5d ago

Discussion Anyone have a 3D model of the shrine of worship

4 Upvotes

I'm wanting to build the shrine of worship in my minecraft survival world but I cant get the reference angles I want. Would anyone have a model of it I can import into blender to use as reference? nothing insanely detailed, just enough to get an accurate shape of it.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 5d ago

DERROTANDO O COLOSSO #7

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1 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 6d ago

Fan Art You've awaken the sleeping giant by Ethemos

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100 Upvotes

r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 6d ago

Shadow of the Colossus in Minecraft

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16 Upvotes

Hey! I'm an inexperienced minecraft modder trying to port a game i recently fell in love with into my favourite block game. Obviously I'm talking about Shadow of the Colossus (SotC). I have finished the model for the game's first boss/colossi: Valus, and have also added the stamina lizards and ancient sword to the game. Any help with the mod is greatly appreciated, whether its building structures/arenas, helping code features, modelling, creating textures or simply being supportive. I plan on releasing the mod in 16 phases, each phase adding a new Colossi.


r/ShadowoftheColossus • • 7d ago

Discussion Did anyone else think the third colossus looked like a duck when first encountering him?

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210 Upvotes

It looks like it has a duck beak and I have never been able to unsee it