Shadow of the Colossus is one of the great achievements of videogames. I tend towards comparing it to Super Metroid, although one could go other directions. Both games cultivate an atmosphere of solitude and the uncanny, focusing on a solo protagonist in an alien place. They’re not only masterfully executed, great fun as games, but also are achievers of a high ambition in games: they expand the player’s sense of the possible. The team who built Ico expanded and refined their ideas, and as a result, Shadow was a truly great game, expanding a mass audience’s sense of what the medium of videogames was capable of.

All of this is on my mind because I recently encountered a Eurogamer article, “The Quest for Shadow of the Colossus' Last Big Secret,” pointing out that a game pushing ten years old is still drawing a small crowd of searchers determined to find everything that can be found in the game. I’m pleasantly reminded of how the executive-meddling-crippled KOTOR II was the beneficiary of a fan effort to restore cut content and fix outstanding bugs. The story of the searchers here is a compelling one, and I recommend it to you along with other fan-made amplifications of the game.

If you’re feeling particularly nostalgic, you may wish to watch this playthrough of the HD version of the game as you read: