Theory - Phoenix was at I4

Found at Tem Ico Wiki and picture was uploaded by GertdeHond

Note: The other images on here were found on Nomad's blog, I am not too sure if that's the original source. Some could be found on other parts of the internet too though, but I still want to link to his blog. :)
Nomad's blog page: http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.com/2011/07/unusedbeta-colossi.html

I4 is a beta location in Shadow of The Colossus, it was a place I always hoped to see and explore one day. Sadly today, and even with the new build recently found, I4 is still that cursed white null object sitting there in the middle of the quadrant. In fact, all of those white null objects including the one way south and a bit west of the map still remains even in the "PSU Preview" build. But recently I was comparing the pictures of Phoenix to J4, which is not cursed (still exist as actual land) to many sections of the Phoenix area, and I was able to find some shocking matches. The reason why I compare J4 is because J4 is supposed to be very connected to I4, so I assume I4 is supposed to have a lot of similar textures to J4.

So are there similarities?
Here are four pictures I found from Nomad's blog:

The first picture and last two pictures seem to remind me of J4, which is connected to I4 deeply.
The ground and the mountain are very similar to this:

From "PSU Preview" with debug iso hack on thanks to wisi.

 In J4, there is a very familiar style to a couple of pictures from the Phoenix arena. During the time I was comparing it, I don't think I found the fourth picture at the time, so at the time, it was hard to tell what those mountains were.

Then later, I found the fourth picture... but it wasn't the one on Nomad's blog and was too small... Then I went to Nomad's blog and discovered the picture and was much larger, and thanks to that picture, that's where things got really interesting...

First, here is the texture that's used in J4:

I think J4 is the only place that uses this so far.

I have a folder called Barba filled with probably every texture from the preview. I sadly don't exactly remember who sent me it though. However some textures might of not been ripped correctly. It's not the texture ripped from PSU Preview, but I assume it's the same texture.
Anyway, let's now look at this too:

Let's look closer...

Left: From Phoenix picture. Right: From the J4 snapshot.

Examples, there are more to compare.

It's probably not the most accurate and we are mainly comparing the texture pattern itself, the actual 3D model may not be the same, but we are trying to show how similar the nto texture itself is. 3D model form can also possibly distort the pattern.

But wait, we are not done!
In the NICO.dat file of the PSU Preview, I was able to find a bunch of "i4" names at the end of a couple of main nmo areas. One of them was the geyser area (the turtle colossus arena), and the other was the 3rd arena. At an geyser model, the following I know were found: "i4_a_tree_large", "i4_branch_parts", and "i4_tree_trunk02". I think the same goes for at least one of the 3rd arena parts.
There was also some i4 names at the end version of the 3rd arena one but couldn't be found in the preview if I'm guessing right.

I am not sure exactly what the names are at the end of the nmo file, but I think I usually see this as different name versions of textures, as if this was the material name from the PC editor. When I rip a model using a converter made by wisi, I see the different names in the material list instead of the nto ones. I am however not so sure if these alternative names can have other things other than textures however.
Anyway, these names seems to reference to trees obviously and if you look back at Nomad's blog, you can see how similar the trees are to the Phoenix pictures. There are also similar trees found at the 3rd colossus arena. I am not so sure if these trees can be found anywhere else. So far, they seem to match the the information found in the NICO.dat file.

So things to note:
That texture in J4 cannot be found anywhere else in the current known builds, the texture is very similar to the one at Phoenix's arena, the ground in J4 is even similar to the ground in some of the Phoenix areas, and there are trees in the Phoenix pictures that look similar to trees in two arenas where in NICO.dat, there are "i4" tree names at the end of such nmos.

In theory, Phoenix was actually in I4.
I also had a theory that many beta low polygon mountains has used another texture before, and it seems the PSU Preview proved my theory. Haha

Shadow of the Colossus - Journey

This is WWWArea, which I like to be called SpaceOmega5000 now. I personally don't want to tell why for the change, but yeah. I honestly felt like I should of been active on the journey.

I have made this article, but sadly paused it and should of continued, but maybe I still can:
https://sites.google.com/site/wwwareaplace/shadow-of-the-colossus

Sadly during many days, I felt like we were running out of stuff to do, then for a while, I started to kinda move on. However, I started to come back again, especially when someone in the name of wisi came and was able to do some very interesting things with the preview build of Shadow of the Colossus, and one of the amazing things was that he was the one to break open those forgotten quadrants (the square map locations) which were I1, and I7.

Originally, these places would "crash" the game when you go even near these locations in the preview build. In the final build, I7 was completely replaced with a single polygon which happens to use either a blue texture, or a colored non-textured color that was blue. However, I1 was still the same maybe.

In the preview, we (me, Nomad, and wisi) have a version of which both quadrants are free to explore. They are both a bit glitchy and I7 has a risk of crashing. Some PCSX2 emulators might even crash the game somewhere in I7 while the one where it isn't the same has a rare chance of crashing.

Beyond that, I came back and recently things were getting very interesting involving the debug stuff. I guess we are so lucky the preview version exists!

A dirt path in I1, in a low polygon area.

I think the main reason why I write an article was because I felt like I've been missing out. Nomad Colossus, an awesome friend by the way, has been mentioned in a way by the company that made Shadow of the Colossus for the PS4, and I'll say, that's really cool! There was even one mention but I don't think I can say on here that I thought was cool and interesting.
At the same time, that's where I felt like I missed out a lot, of course, he still deserves credit even though I was the one to help him a lot years ago. I am sadden I'm not mentioned though, but I guess that's where I should of been more active. Maybe at least with a site? But even then, I failed to have such thing...

Recently, even if it's too late, I am inspired to use a blog as well. I used to have a site where I talked about my personal journey, which I linked of course, but I would rather use blogger since Google Sites is rather limited.

Good luck on the game, and I hope it sells well! ;)

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Note: This blog post was mainly made over a week ago. I edited at least one small part though.