Thursday, June 28, 2012

Monkey

Let's kick this blog off with my first post here, and take a look at Monkey, my personal favorite of all the beta colossi! Why is monkey my favorite you ask? Because he's one of the only  beta colossi that you can, without a doubt, pin to a specific location on the beta map!

Let's take a look at what information we have from the artbook.



Translated pictures from the official artbook courtesy of the wonderful GlitterBerri!




So we know that he was in a cave, and hung from the stalactites on the ceiling. There are a few caves in the game...but none of them have many stalactites, or are nearly large enough to house monkey, who appears to be a fairly big colossus. So where on the map could monkey have been?

...I really don't know how no one else has noticed this yet. (At least as far as I know they haven't. feel free to correct me if I'm wrong XD)

Look at this close up of square I-5 on the beta map -


Anyone else see the Gigantic cave on that beach? If not maybe this will help!





Still not convinced? Well, not for long!


Voila! one cave, large enough to house a whole colossus! In fact...
what is that on the beach...



Could that actually BE monkey?! It's hard to say for sure, but
it's a possibility! :)

Oh, and anyone remember that unused track on the soundtrack "Voice of the Earth"?
Gee, I wonder where that might've played? XD

I've had some suspicions about the land above the cave in I4 being the "Wetlands" that another of the unused tracks went with too. And if that's the case...well, I don't know whether to chalk it up to coincidence or Team Ico's amazing attention to detail but, if I remember correctly stalactites, stalagmites and many other cave formations, are formed by dripping water over a long time. This would have been one of the only caves in the game with formations, and if the wetlands are indeed above it, then one of the only caves that would theoretically, have the water supply around to cause said formations. The other cave with formations is the little one on the way to the 14th colossus Cerberus, and it has a good bit of water too.

So that's all I've got on this subject for now. I'd love to hear anything you've got to say so please, feel free to comment! Tell me what you think! Don't hesitate to correct my mistakes if I've made any! XD


7 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed your post! Interesting speculation, I think you may have something there. I look forward to hearing more from you. :D

    ~GlitterBerri

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    1. I'm so sorry I didn't reply to this sooner! So many things have been going on lately that I just spaced out and forgot to update this place! XD
      Thank you very much for the compliment! It means a lot coming from someone like you, as I love reading your posts over on your website! :)

      I will hopefully be updating again sometime soon!

      ~Yamori_B

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  2. Did you get my email response about this post? I didn't hear back so I'm not sure... but I was wondering will you be making any more posts? I'm looking forward to any other ideas you have about the game.

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    1. Sorry I didn't get to this sooner! I spaced out and forgot I had a blog for a while there...but I'm back now and I intend to hopefully post something soon! :)

      To answer your question though, no I don't think I got that e-mail...Do you know what e-mail address you sent it to by any chance? I can't find it but I might be looking in the wrong place.

      I look forward to hearing from you again soon! :) And sorry again for taking so long to reply! XD

      ~Yamori_B

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  3. As much as I enoyed every bit this game in it's released form, I would have gladly given up one of the two "minivan" colossi for Monkey! I'm rather partial to the bottom right of the artbook sketches with the four arms grabbing onto the stalactites. For that matter, I could part ways with one of the minotaurs (do we really need 3?) if it gave this guy a chance. Give Valus a beard and I could have done without Barba!

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    1. I think I have to agree with you on that point! :'D Funny thing is, it appears Valus actually did have a beard and use the same fight mechanics as Barba early in development - http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.com/2011/07/valus-first-colossus.html XD

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  4. The concept art looks more like the one for Quadratus area, in fact Nico dvd only shows stuff for the currently playable area. Even the small sketch looks totally like Quadratus and in any coase not like monkey which is supposed to be a good colossus and stay in his cave, like Dirge.
    But still I think you are right that I5 used to be something, mostly because looks like there was a path to it starting from H6.

    I gotta disagree on Phoenix too: it's not important where Basaran was supposed to be, probably it didn't even have an arena before taking over phoenix's one. It's not like they had all the 24 locations set when they scrapped out 8 colossi, since they did that "halfway through" the development of the whole game (as Ueda said in his last interview at Edge magazine) most of them were in the same situation as Griffin's, with a beta arena.

    So most likely Phoenix had that area before they decided to focus on Basaran.
    It's proven by the trees (ok, solid proof) and by the fact that on the artbook it's said a lake was needed to fight him and Basaran's description states he rests in a "dried lake bed". Final proof there actually was a lake in the preview version inside basaran's cave as you can see at the bottom of this article: http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.it/2013/03/9th-colossus.html

    Anyway I like your job and Nomad's ;)

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