



About Me

I was first introduced to the game when my older brother lent me his copy. He had played it briefly but couldn't even get to the first colossus xD. That is he made it to the first colossus area, climbed up the ledges but failed to do the backwards jump from the pillar to the ledge. He's more into in war and racing games anyway, so he wasn't really interested. But he mentioned that it had received a 98% rating in an Australian game magazine, so that peaked my interest.





So I played the game through almost without any help... I must admit I got totally stuck on Dirge the first time I played - the whole shooting its eyes from horseback thing, so for this colossus I sneaked a peek online for help. But I think anyone who plays the whole game with a walkthrough is missing out on a great experience. Working out how to scale and defeat the colossi was what made this game so memorable (for me anyway).





So I played it through a couple of times then returned it to my brother and that was that. It was much later that I happened upon a Youtube video of the climb to the secret garden, I knew nothing of this previously and so I got interested again. I went out a bought my own copy (which was the PAL version) but then discovered that there was no rest spot half way up the climb as I had seen in the video. So I had to play the game through four times to get enough grip to make it up there #$%@*. But it was very satisfying when I finally did.





About this time (around June 2009) I happened upon the Playstation 'Quest for the Last Big Secret' forum and from then on I was hooked. There was something special about this group of people who all had the same hope of finding an unknown secret in the game years after it was released. They called themselves 'Secret Seekers' and all manner of crazy theory was put forward, from stabbing the sand under the Ico rings with the Queen's sword to draining Hydrus' lake in the hopes of uncovering a sunken city!









The logic was that the secret extra item you received in ICO (the Mace) was obtained in such an obscure manner as hitting a special tree with the wooden stick, that it was quite possible some even more obscure item or secret could be found in Shadow of the Colossus. It was speculated that the ICO secret had been leaked to the public, but that Team ICO had kept tight lipped about the secret in Shadow of the Colossus... if only this was the case. It's strange that even today, six years after its release there are still many who think there is a secret to be found, but for those of us who spent months or years posting on the Playstation forums the truth sank in quite early on.





This was all due largely to Pikol, WWWArea and to a lesser extent Radical Dreamer who had the means to get to places by hacking and/or emulator glitches. Radical Dreamer was the hacker, but he didn't hang around very long (this was before I joined) but Pikol opened up the game with his now famous videos. But I was inspired by their work and desperately wanted to explore these unattainable areas myself.









The first thing I wanted to do was get onto #8's temple. There was a short video of Baxtertimewell Agro launching up there but try as I might I could never make it. I must have tried 100 times at least on the console but never came close.





See Baxter's short Agro Launch video here: https://youtu.be/NMaCfgEJdQY





I later learned that this is only possible in the NTSC version, but it taught me how to Agro launch, so I started exploring the lands to see where I could get with this new found technique.









The first off limits area I made it to via Agro launching was a small grassy ledge at B5 on the map. It's right next to the south side of Dirge's cave and although there's nothing there it was very satisfying to explore a previously unexplorable area for the first time!





Shortly after this I began using the PCSX2 emulator, and although it ran the game 'very' slowly it allowed me to at least make videos that I could post on Youtube so that other secret seekers could see what I was doing. The in-built recording function used to crash the emulator so I was using a screen recorder at the time then speeding up the videos when I rendered them, but the quality was pretty terrible. In fact the B5 ledge launch video is my earliest upload, check it out here http://youtu.be/JoRhnuQAvHs#t=1582 (Note: You may have to manually goto 26:22 as Youtube's time indexing function doesn't work sometimes).





The next thing I did was launch up to the embankments in the E5 (Autumnal) forest. There is a huge area up there to explore which surprisingly no one had yet mentioned or made videos of, even though the game and its secrets had been discussed for a long time on the Games F&Q and Playstation forums. The area is full of void pits so it's clear you are not meant to get up there, but I found my way behind the E5 towers which was another exciting discovery for me!





Behind of the E5 forest towers





So I was Agro launching everywhere trying to get to places that Wander alone could not. I found a small area next to the entrance to #14's cave (at the end of the path lined with columns) that led underneath the lake with the island in the centre. But it is full of invisible walls and once there you get stuck and end up falling into the void. I later saw that Khfan1 had already done this, both he and Baxtertimewell were famous among fans for their Agro launching and flash arrow climbing discoveries.





But I wanted to find a legitimate area that had no invisible walls and would lead to a secret, and shortly thereafter I found one! I launched up to a ledge that snakes along the cliffs at the north side of #15's temple, it's high up and hard to see from below but from a distance it's visible. Once up there you can run along the cliffs and end up at the front section of the temple, that is the part with castle like turrets and platforms that you can only see from the top of the stairs once you enter.





This was as close as I ever came to finding what I was sure was a secret area. You could get there legitimately, there were no obstructions and it led to an off limits area... it was an amazing moment.









The first thing you see are the giant eye glyphs staring down at you, it was an ominous feeling as if some guardian of stone was keeping watch over the northern entrance. As far as I knew no one had ever been here before as I'd never read on any forum about this area, only that people had noticed the ledge, nor had I seen a video about this (Note: Pikol had been here but he used the emulator glitch to do it). It also looked like it had been planned for players to get here, with what looked like an entrance leading in. If it had been a solid wall then I might have thought otherwise, but it was clearly designed for Wander to be able to explore.









You can see it's an amazing area with the castle/temple platforms laid out before you, the central stairway running through its centre. But sadly, a great view of the temple was all it offered. The whole area has no collision detection and disappears and reappears depending on where Wander is standing, as if the textures can't decide whether to be on or off. You can run along the northern edge up to one of the main turrets but that's as far as you can go, any further and Wander falls into the void. I was disappointed to say the least, although I still think it classifies as a secret area, the only other similar area is the top of #8's temple which also requires Agro launching.





So I've always wondered if Team Ico had plans for this area but ran out of time to finish it, explaining the glitchy textures, or if it is just a unintentional result of the game physics engine. Perhaps Team Ico didn't realize that Agro launching would get players up here? Like #8's temple which also has glitchy textures once you are on top of it. ( Edit: In the PS2 PAL/PS3 versions this area is blocked by an invisible wall, so it's clear they didn't want you to get up there, it was just an unintentional result of the programming it seems, never intended for any purpose).





Video here (August 1st 2009): http://youtu.be/lKgbkhz5Ef4#t=4490





Updated HD video here: http://youtu.be/JLO2YxFzbNU





When I ran out of places to Agro launch I wanted to take it to the next level, which required hacking the game. I had no idea how to do this but I got a clue from one of Radical Dreamer's videos.





Radical Dreamer video using Tsearch to hack Wander



