Shadow of the Colossus has been analyzed to death since it first came out over 13 years ago. But given that it is one of my favorite video games of all time and I recently played it for the first time in half a decade (or rather, it’s new PS4 remake), I may as well give a quick breakdown on why I think this game has such a lasting legacy.

SotC is a triumph of minimalism. It creates a hauntingly beautiful world packed with enough atmosphere, mystique, lore, characterization, and excitement to make SotC one of the most well-respected and studied games of all time. And it does this precisely by doing so little of all of it.

SotC is a perfect demonstration of how a bare outline of concepts can be made so well that a nearly empty experience can feel full. Take any single part of the game and if you look at it closely enough, you’ll realize that there isn’t much there… but you’ll probably love it anyway.

Take the combat, for instance. When I most recently played through the game, it was my first attempt in probably five or six years, yet I glided through it on Hard difficulty in just over four hours. A combination of muscle memory and having the contours of the game seared into my mind through dozens of replays when I was young left little challenge for me. And as a result, I have to admit that a lot of SotC’s more glaring weaknesses came to light.

Usually people complain about the Wander’s controls and the equally wonky camera system. Those certainly have their problems, but this time my attention was captured by an arguably deeper flaw in the mechanics – the colossi puzzles are simple. There’s no other way to say it. I know this is speaking from tremendous hindsight, since more than one enemy took me over an hour to beat my first time through the game when I was a teenager, but nevertheless, I maintain that the puzzle mechanics themselves are overly-straightforward. They have a bit of a “magic trick” feel to them, where once you know what to do, beating the colossi seems almost patronizingly simple.

The worst offenders are the colossi which require you to go trough the exact same actions repeatedly to access adjacent weak points. Consider Hydrus (#7, the Fish), which forces you to wait in the water for an attack, grab its fur at the last minute, and then wade forward to its heads, twice! Or Phalanx (#13, flying dragon) where you have to shoot its three sacks, ride Agro alongside the colossus as it flies low, jump on its wings, climb up to the main body, and run down its back to its weak points, thrice! To me the worst offender is Kuromi (#8, lizard) which on hard mode required me to goad it into climbing the walls of the arena to shoot out its legs six times. Similar repetition can be found with Dirge (#10, sand worm) and Pelagia (#12, standing water beast).

Why not have the colossi respond differently with each attempt? Maybe Hydrus could do rolls than leave a smaller window for grabbing on. Or perhaps Kuromi could jump around the area after sustaining too much damage to make the shots on its legs harder? But no, none of this ever happens. The game requires pointless repetition to pad the fights.

And yet I love each and every colossus. I love that even though many of the fights are simplistic, repetitious, and occasionally boring (especially when you know how to beat them), they still feel epic. Climbing the beasts is a like a mythical struggle our of Greek mythology, and whether you’re steering, sneaking, climbing, shooting, stabbing, or leaping on any individual colossus, it’s still feels like a grander fight than almost any other seen in a video game.

The power of these fights for the player is greatly amplified by one of SotC’s paradoxically most defining features – the lack of almost anything else but the colossi fights. There are no side quests, no towns, no NPCs, no new weapons or upgrades (until New Game+), no trash mobs to tear through, only long journeys through lonely landscapes and the colossi fights. This purity of experience makes each and every encounter a seminal event in and of itself. The colossi are not slightly bigger version of other enemies, they aren’t markers of progression or gates to new levels – the colossi are the progression. They are purpose of the game, the focus on the story, the emotional resonance of Wander’s journey, and therefore SotC makes absolutely sure that there is nothing at all to distract the player from experiencing them.

That is the power of SotC’s minimalism. Even though there isn’t that much to its fights, they still feel great because they hit exactly the notes they’re supposed to – scale, grandiosity, mystery, triumph, and sorrow. This is why I and so many other players return to he same 16 bosses over and over, year after year (or at least enough times to warrant a PS2 Greatest Hits edition, a PS3 Remastering, and a PS4 Remake). A little high-quality work can feel much greater than it really is.

For another example, see SotC’s story… to the extent there even is one. I’d say 95% of the game’s plot occurs during the prologue (before the player even picks up the controller) and after the 16th colossus is defeated. Everything in between, with a minor cutscene exception, is a straight line connecting the beginning and end without the slightest hint of deviation.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just… not much of a thing at all. SotC barely has a plot, and what story it does have is characteristically vague. We know basically nothing about Wander or Mono, and only slightly more about Lord Emon and Dormin. We know the protagonist is solely motivated to save Mono’s life, but we don’t even know why he has that motive (many players think she’s his sister) or what his ultimate end goal is. Likewise, despite vague hints at a grander mythology and an entire civilization beyond the Forbidden Land, we, the players, know less about the world of SotC than literally any single character within it.

And yet SotC’s story has been endlessly analyzed and praised since its inception. The potential meanings, motivations, and designs of its sparse characters are the stuff of discussion board legends. Questions about Wander’s relationship with Mono and Lord Emon, Dormin’s past and trustworthiness, Lord Emon’s honesty, and the Forbidden Land’s future continue to be debated to this day. SotC’s ending is considered one of the all-time best of any video game, ever. (Even if you don’t quite appreciate the ending to that degree, it cannot be denied that it puts a rare level of emphasis and subsequent quality into a part of the story that video games sadly neglect.)

One thing that especially stood out to me during my most recent playthrough is how much work was put into creating a game world with a legitimate sense of place. I was consistently struck by how many times I saw elaborate ruins built into mountainsides or in canyons that I could never reach. Or how there are massive (and often beautiful) areas of the map which will almost certainly never be seen by the player. These designs make the Forbidden Land seem sprawling and formerly occupied in a way that no other video game set in post-apocalyptic ruins (and there are a lot of them) ever has.

Yet again, the key to SotC’s enduring story is how little it tells. We get the faint outline of a plot and grander world-building project, and from those foundations we can imagine the potential of an entire, fleshed-out world. We know so little about the lands Wander, Mono, Lord Emon, and Dormin inhabit, yet what we do know creates endless questions that we can’t help but dwell on. But it doesn’t provoke Lost or Game of Thrones-style plot investigations, rather SotC fills us with a sense of wonder. Its figures are more mythical than grounded, and their struggles are more emotional than calculated.

I could write endlessly about every dimension of SotC that perfectly uses minimalism, but for this piece, I lastly want to focus on an under-appreciated component of the game – characterization.

As mentioned, SotC only has a handful of characters, none of whom we are told much about. We are never told Wander’s background and after the intro and a brief cutscene mid-way through the game, he never speaks again. All we know about Mono is that she was sacrificed for being cursed, and she doesn’t talk at all, even after she wakes up at the end. Lord Emon and Dormin have a bit more exposition, but we still only have a surface-level presentation of their motives and ends.

And yet, through some beautifully integrated character design and modeling, we can learn a surprisingly amount about these characters. The best example is Wander since we control him directly – this is where SotC’s infamously wonky controls come into play. Not only does Wander not handle like a traditional third person action protagonist in a video game, but he can border on spastic. Wander trips and falls with sudden movements, he swings his sword with a child-like two-handed flail, and he often tumbles from heights at odd angles resulting in awkward landings that can’t feel good in the morning. And yet, Wander is also clearly athletic. He can hang onto writhing colossi and scale beasts and buildings with nimble ease. Plus he rides Agro and uses a bow (from horseback no less) with incredible skill.

In a lesser game, this uneven physical characterization would be a product of clumsy design, but in SotC it’s a way to subtly reveal the character’s back story. Wander’s climbing abilities, connection with Agro, and use of the bow mark him as physically capable, yet Wander’s sword flailing and nimble frame indicate that he is no knight or brawny powerhouse. During the events of the game, he gives the general impression of being a physically gifted and capable individual who is somewhat out of his element. At the end of the game, Lord Emon’s retinue of warriors are all noticeably stronger than Wander, plus use swords or crossbows.

Therefore we can infer that Wander is probably not a fighter, but was undoubtedly a physically active, outdoorsy type. This is why Wander has a nasty habit of tripping, and flopping, and swinging his sword like an idiot. He is as graceful as could be expected from someone who isn’t used to fighting but is trying to fight. However, Wander’s close bond with Agro and horse riding ability indicate he may have been some sort of herdsman or hunter which would not only make him (relatively) well equipped to hunt down the 16 colossi but thematically connect him to Dormin (which is “Nimrod” spelled backwards, a hunter in the Old Testament). And Lord Emon’s reaction to seeing Wander with the sword likely means that though Wander was not a warrior, he lived near Emon and the warrior class.

Granted, this is all speculation, but it’s speculation with grounding in evidence provided by the games. Just from the contrast between the way Wander swings a sword and uses a bow, we can infer intriguing insights into his past. Likewise, the way Dormin manipulates both light and darkness in differing ways provides clues to his true nature, and the presumed bias of Lord Emon’s description of the Forbidden Land says more about his agenda than he ever does. Once again, SotC uses the minimalist details to hint at a bigger picture and lets the player’s imagination carry the experience to greatness.