--------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Shadow of the Colossus E3 2005 Demo | | Climbing the Temple FAQ | | v1.50 | | by Matt Miller, aka ArcadeCrusade | | mattroid |at| arcadecrusade |.| com | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [10] I. Introduction [20] II. Version History [30] III. Things You Need To Know [31] i) Climbing [32] ii) Grip Meter [33] iii) The "Vertical Angle Jump" Glitch (VAJ) [34] iv) Jumping Across to Other Walls [40] IV. Walkthrough [41] i) Full Guide [42] ii) Quick Quide [50] V. Once You're At The Top... [51] i) To The Left [52] ii) To The Right and Behind [53] iii) Straight Ahead [60] VI. Legal Stuff / Credits To jump to a section, simply do a search for the shortcut in brackets to the left of the section. The first number corresponds to the section number (I, II, etc) while the second number corresponds to the subsections, if any (i, ii, etc). When searching, obviously, include the brackets. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION [10] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to my little walkthrough on how to climb the temple in the E3 demo of Shadow of the Colossus. I'll start by giving you all some basic info concerning the demo that this FAQ is intended for. Note that this FAQ is made for the E3 Demo ONLY! This is not made for the "Stand Alone Version" or the final version of the game! A similar method can be used in the final release of the game, but the top of the temple is VERY different. Please do not email me telling me that my FAQ is wrong about the top of the temple when you're not even playing the version of the game that this FAQ is about! Places to find the E3 demo: -September 2005 issue of PSM -October 2005 (#97) issue of Official US PlayStation Magazine -The "Playstation 2 Holiday 2005 Demo Disc" that Sony sends out (Thanks to Paul Rudoff for this last one!) If anyone knows anywhere else to get it, let me know. There have been a lot of people asking around lately as to how to get to the hidden section on top of the temple, so I decided it'd be best to make a separate FAQ all about it for easy reference. Please note that this, as far as I know, WILL NOT work on the "Stand Alone Demo" which can be played/had at various GameStops and other retailers. The Stand Alone Demo is more recent, and as such, has been updated to not include the "vertical angle jump" glitch as well as the crossable bridge to the far NE of the temple. However, if anyone knows of a way to do this in the Stand Alone Demo or of any other neat glitches/secrets, let me know. Also, a lot of the graphical errors and such in the E3 demo are smoother in the newer stand alone version. I guess I should tell you all the few things you need to know about this FAQ and what exactly it's for. This is my first FAQ, so please bear with me and if you have any suggestions, email me and let me know. As stated above, there is a hidden section on top of the temple (now known as the "Secret Garden") where you start the demo. This section can be reached by taking advantage of a "glitch" that allows the player to jump upward while climbing without draining his or her grip meter. I say "glitch" even though the hidden section was probably left there on purpose as well as the method of getting there. Note that we now know that this can be accomplished in the final release of the game, but only after you've expanded your grip meter well beyond what your start with. I read somewhere not to attempt it until you've passed at least the first seven colossi. At that point, your meter should be enough to reach the top (I've not confirmed this, though). You can also earn more grip by eating the tails of the white tailed lizards you see near save temples. Also note that since this FAQ was originally made for the demo version, I will not be including a bunch of details about climbing the temple in the final version of the game. However, this FAQ CAN be used as a guide for the that version as well. Just be aware that the vertical angle jump DOES drain your stamina in the final game. In other words, the path to the top is the same, but the use of the "VAJ" glitch is useless. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. VERSION HISTORY [20] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- v1.50 - February 15, 2006 Added the "Quick Guide" walkthough section for those who want it in a list-type format. Added section search feature. Many phrases/sentences reworded in an attempt to be more clear for the reader. Also, several sections have been slightly updated with new information. Nothing important for those who've used this guide in the past. Included quite a bit of new information regarding the final version of the game and how this FAQ can be useful for it in addition to the demo. Several typos fixed. v1.02 - November 19, 2005 (Unreleased) Added a little to the intro. Some stuff about the relevance of of this FAQ to the final release of the game as well a couple more places to find the demo. Also added some info on the different sections of the Secret Garden in the final version of the game and how it's different from the demo. This can be found in section V. v1.01 - October 22, 2005 (First public release) Only a few minor fixes. Nothing important. v1.00 - October 11, 2005: Initial Release (Unreleased) Pretty much has everything it needs, really. Complete walkthrough on how to get to the top of the temple and what you'll find once there as well as some tips along the way. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW [30] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, here I will tell you the simple trick to this. All of this is pretty basic, but you may want to practice some of these moves a little before you attempt to climb the tower since getting to top and then falling simply because you didn't know how to jump AWAY from a wall can really piss you off and waste time. With some patience and luck, you can make it to the top in one try. ----------- i) Climbing [31] ----------- In order to climb any climbable surface, you generally need to first jump to it by hitting the /\ button. Once you jump to it, hold down R1 to grab on. You'll need to continue holding R1 the entire time you are climbing or else you'll let go and fall. Even if you drop down, though, you can grab back on with R1 assuming you're still facing and are close enough to the wall to do so. -------------- ii) Grip Meter [32] -------------- As you should know simply by reading this far, you have a "grip meter." Basically what this means is that while climbing, you can only hold on for so long before you let go and fall. The grip meter is the lower right corner of the screen and is the kind purple/pink circle. When all the color go away at the center, you'll fall. ------------------------------------------- iii) The "Vertical Angle Jump" Glitch (VAJ) [33] ------------------------------------------- It works like this. While hanging from vines, ledges, or whatever, if you move left, up, right, down, or jump straight up, your grip meter decreases. However, if you point the left analog stick at an upward angle (ie: up-left or up-right) and jump, your meter won't decrease at all. Basically, using this technique will allow the player to continue to climb any wall or other climbable surface for as long or high as they like. It is because of this glitch that we can reach the top of the temple, so use it well. Because you can charge your jump, I've found that it's faster to only charge a little bit and jump diagonally a short distance rather than taking the time to get a full charge and jumping further. The ideal way is to time figure out how long to charge your jump so that you grab the wall at the peak of your jump. A little practice, and you'll find yourself up at the top sooner than you think. --------------------------------- iv) Jumping Across to Other Walls [34] --------------------------------- You can jump in any direction from a wall or ledge. This includes behind you. Basically, while holding down /\ to charge your jump, rotate the left analog stick until your character lets go of the wall with one hand and faces the wall behind him. This is when you want to release /\. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. WALKTHROUGH [40] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- What follows are two sections which will get you to the top of the temple. One is a more complete and detailed guide and the other is more of a quick reference guide in list format. You may consider using the quick guide first and only consulting the full guide if you get stuck. That may make it a little more fun for you, but if you want to be sure to make it in one shot, use the full guide. Also, there are a few points that can be difficult to explain without going into detail. Especially one inparticular. In this instance, I noted in the quick guide that you may to refer to the full guide just in case. ------------- i) Full Guide [41] ------------- I'm going to write this as if you are starting at the beginning of the demo. So first things first, get on your horse. Ride outside and take a left. Follow the temple around making sure you can see the wall on the left side of the screen just a bit (use the right analog stick to help you keep the temple in view). Not too far around, you'll see some bare roots sticking out from a ledge near the top of the screen. Get pretty close to where those are and stop. Get off your horse and face the temple. Just left of those roots, you will see a large patch of green ivy going up the side of the temple. Our adventure begins here :) Walk to the wall and jump. Grab onto the wall at the peak of your jump to save a little time climbing. Remember that you want to use the vertical angle jump (VAJ from here on out) glitch so that you don't deplete your grip meter. If you don't know how to do this, please check out the "Things you need to know" section just above the walkthrough. As you climb, you'll want to follow the dark green leaves up the right path. This is true pretty much the whole way up - follow the dark leaves. Going up and left really won't do you much good and it's simply faster and easier to go up and right. Pretty soon, you'll see a ledge on the right side of the screen. Ignore it and just keep going. Again, following the dark leaves will get you where you need to go, but generally staying to the right side of the screen is also a good idea since the next ledge is also on the right and that's where we're headed. When you finally see the second ledge, get right up to it on the side of the wall and do your VAJ to hang from it. From here, you want to shimmy right until you have to jump to next section of the ledge. Don't worry, you can use up some of your grip here since we have a place to rest soon. However, don't use too much in case you miss the resting spot. I'll leave it up to you to decide if you want to use your grip to shimmy across here or VAJ across. I've fallen several times VAJing too quickly, so be warned. Anyway, you want to get all the way to the right side of this ledge where your back will be facing another ivy-covered wall. You want to jump across to this wall (see the section above if you don't know how to jump to it). Once there, you want to go up and right until you see the ledge behind the wall you're on. There's a small tree there and this is your resting spot in case you've used up some grip. From my experience, the best way to get to this ledge is to climb as close to the edge of the wall BEFORE the character starts to turn sideways. What I mean by this is that the character is still vertically oriented on the wall. He seems to move his legs up and behind him the closer you get to the edge. The point is, every time I've jumped facing that way, I've fallen past the tree ledge and grabbed onto the little grassy lip right below it. If that happens, don't worry, that's where you want to be anyway, you just missed the resting point is all. However, jumping while still oriented straight up and down and VAJing towards the ledge somehow makes him land behind the tree. If you made it to the rest point, hold R1 and walk to the edge and let yourself drop and grab onto the ledge. Now you want to release R1 and then hold it again so that you'll grab onto the small grassy lip below as I mentioned above. Once there, I'll leave it up to you again to decide if you want to shimmy across or VAJ across. You've come a long way and I'd hate for you to fall now. Anyway, follow this ledge around to the right until you get in the corner of the wall you're on and another one where you can see ivy again to the upper right. Here you're going to want to fully charge VAJ towards that green. Sometimes you'll grab high, sometimes you'll almost miss and grab real low. Either way, you should make it. VAJ up and right to the next wall. You should now see another ledge which you can simply climb over to and automatically grab onto. Follow this ledge all the way right doing what you need to do to get there until the character is just behind a little leaf or something. Directly behind the character is a giant cylinder of some kind covered in ivy. Jump to it from here and you'll grab on near the bottom of this new structure. All you need to do here is VAJ up and right again until you get to the top to the right of some more roots. Rotating the camera here as you climb may help put your mind at ease since the columns can get in the way of your view at times. From here you should be able to see the path. Go up and left to the next structure. At this point, if you managed to save most of your grip, you can probably just climb the rest of the way. Or, you can VAJ as well, it's all good. Whatever you want. Just keep going up a little ways and you come to the top ledge. Once there, hit /\ to pull yourself up. Congrats! You're now at the top. --------------- ii) Quick Guide [42] --------------- What follows is a simple list of steps to make it to the top. For a more detailed guide, please use the section above this one. You may want to consider only consulting the other one if you get stuck. That is, if you're more adventurous. -Get on Agro and turn left out side the temple -Keeping the wall in view on the left, stop when you see roots above you -Climb the ivy on the wall using the VAJ and follow the path to the right -Follow the darker colored leaves and pass the first ledge -Jump to the second ledge you come to -Work your way accross the ledge to the right -Jump to the next wall you see -On this wall, climb up a little and get close to the edge -Jump to the ledge with the tree (See detailed guide above for further deatil. This can be tricky!) -Rest for a moment on the ledge -Walk towards the edge and drop down to the ledge below (If you missed the rest point, hopefully you managed to grab on here) -Shimmy over to the corner of the wall your on and the next one -Jump towards the wall that the ledge meets -Jump again to the next wall -Climb to the next ledge and grab on -Shimmy yourself until you're behind a small leaf -Jump towards the giant cylinder behind you -Continue up and to the right of the roots -Go up and left to the next structure -Continue up the rest of the way and pull yourself up to the top -Let out a sign of relief Congrats! You're now at the top. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. ONCE YOU'RE AT THE TOP... [50] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now that you're at the top of the temple, what do you do? What's here? Is there a secret colossus waiting for you? Well, sadly, there's no colossus up here, but there are some pretty neat things to explore. To the left there is a path, ahead of you is a doorway, and just to the right and behind you is that log bridge you can see in almost every screenshot of this game on the net (unless there are more than one, I guess). Note that each way you go has ways of falling into an endless death or trap of some kind. In other words, you might have to climb the tower three times to visit all three sections. Also note that this info DOES NOT apply to the final version of the game! Each section of the "Secret Garden" is different in the demo. In each section, I'll note what that area is like in the final version of the game, but I won't go into detail since this FAQ is intended for the E3 Demo only (As you all should know by now!) -------------- i) To The Left [51] -------------- If you go to the left, you'll follow a path up and around the side of the temple. As you go, you'll notice that the graphics get more buggy and incomplete. Keep going and you'll find a doorway on the right. If you go past this doorway, the character will begin to walk OFF of the ground as if he's in zero gravity or something. Nothing else there, really. If you go inside the door, the first thing waiting for you is a rather creepy looking decapitated female body. Just standing there! You can run right through her as if she's not even there. In fact that's true for lots of objects in this room. There are trees, what look like incomplete waterfalls, several platforms and a moat going around the whole thing. From the little exploring I did in here, there's nothing more than what you see except for TONS of glitches. If you drop down in the moat, the water effects aren't complete and once you get in, you can't get out. The game will not allow you climb out at all from what I saw. Eventually, my character just went into an endless falling animation in the middle of the moat and I had to restart the demo. *In the final version of the game* The path to the left is pretty much the same, but without all the glitches and incomplete areas. --------------------------- ii) To The Right and Behind [52] --------------------------- If you go right and then turn away from the temple, you'll see a seemingly endless bridge. From what I can tell, you can't do much here except run for a long time until the you fall through the bridge and splat on another platform below. You can get some pretty cool views of the surrounding areas here, though. Eye candy *drools* *In the final version of the game* You can run and run and run until a strong gust of wind keeps you from crossing the end of the bridge. How sad. ------------------- iii) Straight Ahead [53] ------------------- As soon as you pull yourself up to the top of the temple, you'll see a doorway directly ahead of you. Please note that as soon as you go inside this door, YOU CANNOT GET BACK OUT. For whatever reason, there's like an invisible wall there and you can't get back to where you just were to explore the other areas. When you go in the door, you'll be going down some stairs. It won't take long before you reach the end. And boy, is it the END. Rotate the camera around to see a bunch of other areas of the game. If you jump off and into the void, you'll end up in a white screen death. Kinda neat :) *In the final version of the game* The door is closed here and there is no way to open it. This way cannot be explored in the final game. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. LEGAL STUFF / CREDITS [60] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obviously, I don't own the rights to this game or anything related to it in any way. Nor do I claim to. Thanks to Sony and the ICO Team for bringing us this awesome demo and game. Yeah, I wrote this FAQ and I wrote it specifically for GameFAQs.com. However, you can post it anywhere else you want to if you feel the need as long as it's unmodified. I'd like to know if you do use it, though! Why? Because I like to feel special. Please don't modify it without asking me first. I'd prefer that you simply email me and let me know of the changes you'd like to see and perhaps I'll make/add them. This guide is Copyright 2005 Matthew Miller