The Forgotten Beach - Shadow of the Colossus

A couple of months ago, I was still exploring the E3 5 demo build of Shadow of the Colossus, a special E3 early build with thankfully the entire lands, new game intro, colossi, and ending not being deleted for the demo. In fact, the only thing that was likely placed and deleted for the demo were: The large rocks, the missing rock bridge pieces, and maybe most of the extra items including some of it's functions.

Anyway as I was exploring, I went ahead and explored more of G8, then upon exploring, I discovered a brand new cave (granted, a small one) leading right to the end of a cliff.

In the PSU preview and beyond as far as I know, the cave was removed. When I first saw this cave entrance, I 'froze' for like 6 seconds in shock. I guess seeing a brand new cave was the shocking part. On the other side of the cave, there happens to be multiple cliffs leading down, suspiciously forming a trail that would be perfect if there were vines leading down.

Unfortunately, the collision was designed to avoid going down there safely. The moment you try to jump down to next cliff after the cliff you can explore, Wander will roll. It seems the collision tried to 'wrap' around the lower cliffs showing the collision was made after making those cliffs likely.

Upon further research, it turns out there is a full blown beach all the way down! (note: I don't think I first discovered this, and will likely update this once I remember name), but it's covered by a separate water surface object. You remember that small patch of "beach" land next to some rocks? Well, there is more of that. (Note: Model was extracted through Wisi's converter tools, and through a special Blender version Wisi helped me with.)

This entire area (including the cliffs above) has a ridiculous amount of geometry detail. Perhaps one of the most detailed areas in game. Though there is an ugly water layer that actually is part of the seamless (main land) model, but it does expose more beach than what the separate prettier water layer does. I've modded the collision (big thanks to Wisi) to help explore, and also show the special water.

Water layer turns dark when sword is raised.

Though the water layer doesn't render in a pretty sight. There is several geometry rendering problems with it, but it's likely that such layer was designed after (or even if they even did) so-called blocking access to the beach.

Layer problems. There is more some geometry past the white/grey water too.

Could This Beach Be Explored at One Point?

This is the moment that I care most about I think. There appears to be some design evidence that it could actually have been explored. The cliff pattern, the amount of geometry the exposed beach has, the fact that there is alpha shading detail all the way down here, and that there is beach land hidden under the separate water layer. However, not knowing 100% has often bothered me, especially since there are a couple of small ideas, and maybe even clues suggesting that it wasn't.

In the assumption that it was, this was likely a build where it was after such time. There is concrete evidence of vines being added later in some parts of the main east cliff side in one spot, but the collision here seems to point that the so-called vines were rather removed.

Some of the rocks has death collision, cliffs wrapping around the lower cliffs, and no collision on main beach thus player falls through, but the beach is hidden by a separate solid water layer object, suggesting the collision was designed with that in mind. Only catch is one rock above the separate layer not having collision.

There is also the possibility that it was just never finished, then canceled out. There is signs of that for the main garden temple in the game, so I wouldn't be too surprised if this applied here too.

For the idea part, one idea is that perhaps the beach was only meant to be viewed from above. There is a small opening on main land above where you can see some of this beach, and the lowest ground parts of such a beach doesn't have an even height layer, though the broken water height covers it all.

The thing I am wishing to know so much is if the same geometry found in this build (the vertices) was the same exact ones that could be explored, assuming this could normally be explored at one point? Of course the vines and (maybe) actual normal water was removed if so, but I only care if the main cliffs and beach land was the same or not. There is a chance the geometry was somewhat altered during the so-called cancellation thus losing the true original image of such a place. Hopefully an answer will be given at one point.

At least for now, we know for sure that there was a full-blown new cave to explore normally and at the moment leading a new mysterious wonder for a beach with it. There is also the fact that the large cliff at the end of the larger cave (which mainly exists (but geometry slightly altered) in the NTSC build) was longer.

I still am thinking of making a video about this beach by the way and also, this article might get modified in the future.