39,327
edits
Shadow of the Colossus/Characters: Difference between revisions
m
update links
m (revise quote template spacing) |
m (update links) |
||
Line 12:
* [[Action Survivor]]: Wander isn't the most athletic or [[Badass]] protagonist, yet he keeps killing Colossi anyway. Then again, {{spoiler|at least part of his increase in skill and power was his transformation into Dormin's new container..}}
* [[Always Save the Girl]]: Leave the girl you once loved, or take down sixteen Colossi, which you've only just learned about, to get her back?
** [[Deconstructed]]: {{spoiler|The girl is saved, but he died, and also possibly committed genocide}}.
* [[And Then John Was a Zombie]]: One interpretation of the ending is that Wander becomes the seventeenth Colossus after Dormin possesses him.
* [[Anti-Hero]]: [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes|Type III or IV]]. He'd probably be a lot less morally ambiguous if he didn't live in such a [[Crapsack World]].
Line 18:
** [[Horse Archer]]
* {{spoiler|[[Back From the Dead]]}}
* [[Badass Normal]]: Wander stumbles often, has poor balance, is untrained with his newly-acquired magic sword, and can only hold onto ledges for no more than a few minutes, yet still manages to murder his way through a veritable menagerie of mythic monsters. On the other hand, he can shoot arrows accurately while riding at full gallop, which takes ''years'' of training in real life. He's also able to take a multi-story fall and essentially ''walk it off''.
** [[Badass Abnormal]]: Wander actually gets stronger with each Colossus he kills plus heals automatically from his wound. This strength is due to the fact that after every kill {{spoiler|he gets possessed by more of Dormin's essence.}}
* [[Bishounen]]: He ''is'' rather pretty, and is often mistaken for a girl by those randomly popping in on a player. His hair and head band really don't help.
* [[Black Blood]]: Appears to throw up a stream whenever a Colossus' essence enters him. {{spoiler|Later sprays a whole bunch when he's stabbed by Emon's men.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Black Eyes of Crazy]]: Once he's fully possessed.}}
* [[Blue Eyes]]: Quite striking too, considering the lack of bright colours elsewhere.
* [[Bottomless Bladder]]: Wander never has to eat, drink, or do anything else throughout his long and arduous quest. His life throughout the game consists of finding and killing Colossi. On the other hand, though optional, he can eat lizards and fruit for stat boosts, and sleeps when the player isn't playing: loading a save from a shrine involves waking him up with a button press.
* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: He never runs out of arrows. And he can pull them out of absolutely nowhere. If you're bored enough, try climbing a tree and firing arrow after arrow into it - eventually the arrows will teleport back to Wander's hands! And if that gets old, you can also riddle the Colossi with the ''Harpoon of Thunder''.
* [[Bow and Sword In Accord]]: Both weapons need to be used to even stand a chance of taking down the Colossi.
* [[Cursed with Awesome]]: {{spoiler|At the end of the game, Dormin possesses Wander's body completely and turns him into what is presumably Dormin's true form, which the player has full control over. The only problem is he's so big compared to the hall he's in that he can't stand up to his full height and has to crawl (slowly) and can't turn around properly. }}.
* [[Determinator]]: Is he ever; since he's not the best fighter, this is his biggest strength in fighting the Colossi.
* {{spoiler|[[Disney Death]]:}} In a sense.
* [[Evil Makeover]]: If you pay careful attention, you can actually see Wander start changing from a clean, flushed appearance to a dark, dirty, and pale one as early as Gaius. It only becomes apparent near the end that something is really wrong...
** [[Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette]]: How he appears as the game goes on.
* {{spoiler|[[Horned Humanoid]]: Starts growing a stubby pair at the end, and in baby form has some fairly long ones.}}
* [[Girly Run]]: Though in his defense, he is holding stuff.
Line 56:
** Not even just compared to the Colossi. Wander isnt even shoulder high to his own horse, and at the end he is small even compared to the other humans. Wander is either in his young teens, or a ''very'' small 20ish.
* [[Possession Implies Mastery]]: Averted! Wander is quite possibly the only sword-wielding video game character in existence who ''isn't very good with a sword''. He swings randomly, and is thrown off balance by the simplest attempts at offence. Most of the actual damage he does with it is inflicted with deliberate, clumsy stabs. Meanwhile, he's almost supernaturally steady with the bow, showing he has had a lot of practice with it.
* [[The Power of Love]]: Wander's motivation for hunting down and slaying the Colossi.
* {{spoiler|1=[[Raise Him Right This Time]]/[[And Your Reward Is Infancy]]: He gets turned into a baby at the end, but whether or not it's to redeem him is left up to interpretation.}}
* [[Screw Destiny]]: Whether Mono's fate was [[Curse|cursed]] or not, Wander is going to do whatever he can to reverse her death.
* [[Spell My Name with a "The"]]: Because of ambiguous characters in it, his name is variously translated as "The Wanderer", "Wander", and in what is almost certainly a mistranslation, [[Gender Blender Name|Wanda]]<ref>"Wander" and the transliteration of "Wanda" have the same characters in Japanese</ref>.
** The official Sony Entertainment Japan page of the [[PlayStation 3]]-based re-release spells his name "Wander" in Romanji.
Line 77:
* [[Badass Normal]]: Talk about an [[Made of Iron|iron]] [[Just for Pun|horse]]...
* [[Cool Horse]]
* [[Determinator]]: Gets blown up, knocked over by creatures the size of buildings, and {{spoiler|''falls down a massive ravine.'' This gives her a ''limp''.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Disney Death]]}}
* [[Friendly Fireproof]]: Played straight with the sword, but averted with the arrows. Get the sword out and no matter how many times you strike Agro it doesn't hurt the horse. But get out your bow and arrows and aim them at Agro, and Agro will whinny and gallop away.
Line 93:
{{quote|Voiced by '''[[Hitomi Nabatame]]''' (yes, she has a voice, although you only hear it distantly)}}
The object of Wander's quest is to bring her back to life after being sacrificed, and she's thus the reason he's willing to free Dormin.
* [[Back From the Dead]]: The entire point of the game is to bring her back. {{spoiler|It works!}}
Line 102:
* [[Friend to All Living Things]]: [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090522005837/teamico/images/4/40/SecretGardenMono.jpg Apparently]. She's even got the squirrel standing by her foot looking up adoringly at her.
* [[Human Sacrifice]]: In the backstory. At least, according to Wander, who may or may not be a reliable source; we never find out the details.
* [[The Lost Lenore]]: Wander thinks of her almost all the time and sets off the events of the game out of love for her. Also she's young, beautiful, tragic etc.
* {{spoiler|[[Unexplained Recovery]]}}: Courtesy of Dormin.
* [[Woman in White]]
Line 174:
=== {{smallcaps|Tropes common to all Colossi}} ===
* [[Advancing Boss of Doom]]: One of the thrills of facing any Colossus is watching them come closer to you, looming over Wander as they slowly approach him. Their approach is [[Mighty Glacier|almost always slow]], but you know when they get there that you haven't much of a chance. Valus, who is only the first boss, is pretty alarming when he spots you, never mind when he starts wielding his club.
* [[Achilles' Heel]]: Pretty much the only way to kill the Colossi. The number of weakspots vary from Colossus to Colossus.
* [[Animal Motifs]]: Several Colossi are based on animals, usually multiple animals. Exactly which ones is debatable.
* [[Ambiguous Robots]]: The Colossi are either gigantic robots of stone, or huge hairy monsters. The mechanical faces of the Colossi are clearly artificial, but parts of their bodies are quite biological. This contributes the mysterious and haunting nature of the work.
Line 182:
* [[Black Eyes]]: Any Colossus that can lose sight of Wander will revert to having calmer [[Black Eyes]], which only flare whenever they spot him, and flare red when they are attacked. Their eyes also fade to black when they die.
* [[Boss Arena Idiocy]]: A few of the Colossi on their own would be nightmares to fight were it not for some element in the background that Wander could exploit.
* [[Colossus Climb]]: [[Trope Maker]] and [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Contractual Boss Immunity]]: Wander gets {{spoiler|exploding arrows and the spear of thunder}} in the [[New Game+]] and they still can't be used to actually kill the Colossi. See also [[Annoying Arrows]] in general. [[Justified Trope]], since the sword, the only weapon capable of killing the brutes, holds some mystical power, heavily associated with the Colossi. Dormin admits that the sword is the only thing Wander has that can make the Colossus quest possible.
* [[Damage Sponge Boss]]: Once you're actually up on them, most bosses become this.
Line 202:
* [[Red Eyes, Take Warning]]: This is how you know you've got a Colossus' attention. Which tends to follow shortly by you being under their foot.
* [[Single Specimen Species]]: Each of the Colossi is completely different from the others.
* [[Skippable Boss]]: Averted. Each time you start a game, if you want to see any Colossus after the first one, you'll have to kill them in order. Even if you only want to unlock the Time Attack mode, which lets you face any Colossus in any order and gives you the option of quitting rather than seeing the battle through to the end, sooner or later you'll have the complete a game first, and that involves killing them.
* [[Square-Cube Law]]: Sadly, for all that they are slow-moving and conservative in their movements, it's unlikely that creatures the size and shape of the Colossi could exist, never mind actually walk. Probably explained by [[A Wizard Did It]] reasons, since their world has obvious supernatural elements incorporated into it.
** The upright, sometimes thin and pointed, limbs of some, for instance, would be dangerously inefficient at balancing their immense weight. This is particularly severe in Phaedra's case, where nearly all its multi-tonne weight is focused on four ridiculously thin points at the ends of its legs. A creature that size shouldn't be able to get up on such spindly feet, and using them as a stamping weapon would probably risk throwing it off balance.
Line 209:
* [[Taken for Granite]]: Every slain Colossus is covered by something dark after its death. If Wander returns to the arena where it fell, he will find a stone corpse partly molded into the rock beneath it. There will even be some greenery growing on its body. {{spoiler|Press O to pray on the ruins, and you can enter Reminiscence Mode}}.
* [[That's No Moon]]: One or two Colossi look like ruins until you get up close. {{spoiler|The last colossus looks like it is perched on top of a mighty tower. As you get closer, you realise that the tower is part of the colossus.}}
* [[Time Limit Boss]]: Averted for all the bosses the first time you play the game. There is a Time Attack Mode, though, which lets you fight each boss in any order you want, but when the battle begins, so does a timer. Beat the record time by killing the Colossus as fast as possible and get goodies.
* [[Turns Red]]: Either inverted or not played one way or the other: some bosses remain the same, while others actually become weaker and easier to beat as the battle proceeds or after you injure them (Gaius and Phaedra, notably). For instance when you've stabbed one of their vitals but fallen off before you can complete the job, they will find it difficult to move said injured part and may sometimes lean over, making it easier to reach their other vital parts.
** Arguably, the [[Colossus Climb]] sections are a manifestation of this trope: the Colossi do tend to shake a lot when you're climbing on them, which often makes the climb the most difficult part of the battle.
Line 266:
* [[Acrophobic Bird]]: Inverted; the Colossus spends all its time high up and won't come down unless you trick it into doing so. Working out how to do so is part of the strategy.
* {{spoiler|[[Annoying Arrows]]: Annoying enough to force it to attack you.}}
* [[Big Badass Bird of Prey]]: ''Very'' big. Its tail alone is about fifty feet long.
* [[Feathered Fiend]]: A [[Double Subverted]] Type C example: Despite its menacing appearance, Avion is one of the least aggressive of the Colossi ... ''until you make it angry''. It's [[Took a Level In Badass|even worse]] in Hard Mode, where, if it misses Wander, it will turn around and divebomb him again, ''and'' it's a [[One-Hit Kill]] if it hits you.
* [[Giant Flyer]]: It enters the arena by soaring in and perching on a tower in the middle of the lake.
Line 310:
Colossus number nine. Resembles a tortoise.
* [[Boss Arena Idiocy]]: Basaran, Basaran. Why would you live someplace that houses {{spoiler|geysers that can flip you over}}?
* [[Luck-Based Mission]]: Sometimes to the point of being [[That One Boss]] for some players. Flipping it is a fiddly process dependant on {{spoiler|the timing of geysers}} and whether or not it works is up to Basaran as much as it's up to you.
* [[Mix-and-Match Critters]]: He's mainly a tortoise, but he has fur and thin, crab-like limbs.
Line 350:
* [[Body Horror]]: You see those things on the top of his head? Those are his ''[[Fridge Horror|teeth]]''.
* [[Chasing Your Tail]]: When you're trying to get up on its back and it's simultaneously turning around to follow you.
* [[Confusion Fu]]: What it tries to lure Wander out of his hiding spot.
* [[Eyeless Face]] / [[The Faceless]]: This is the only Colossus that doesn't even bother with [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|eyes]]. Instead, you tell if it's aggressive if its ''horns'' turn from blue to red. See the Your Mileage May Vary page for more information.
* [[Eye Beam]]: It's attacks become this if you believe it has eye-stalks as opposed to horns.
* [[Our Monsters Are Weird]]
* [[Puzzle Boss]]: Especially noticable since the [[Colossus Climb]] turns out to be only part of the puzzle.
* [[Shock and Awe]]: It has "control over thunder", though that should be "lightning" as it generates lightning bolts from between its horns. The resulting blasts can knock Wander pretty far back, but Pelagia avoids [[That One Attack|having that one attack]] like Basaran has by being in an arena with plenty of cover. {{spoiler|The attacks can't shock you if you dive below the water.}}
* [[Turtle Island]]: Though not a turtle, Pelagia does have a shell on its back which resembles Basaran's. Unlike Basaran's shell, it has green grass/moss/hair growing on it and fewer spikes. Dormin's intro even says "paradise floats on its back".
Line 362:
[[File:phalanxx_7015.jpg|frame]]
Colossus number thirteen. Has variously been described as a flying serpent or dragon, and it can also burrow underground.
* [[Cowardly Boss]]: Phalanx spends half of the battle out of range and the other half trying to flee from Wander. When Wander actually gets on it, after a while {{spoiler|it dives back into the sand, knocking Wander off its back. This is the only time Phalanx can actually hurt you, and it's a side-effect of fleeing rather than an actual offence}}.
* [[Extra Eyes]]: It has four eyes rather than the usual two. Get close to its face and you'll see them.
Line 375:
Colossus number fourteen. The other small Colossus, for a certain value of "small".
* [[Boss Corridor]]
* [[Bullfight Boss]]/[[Lightning Bruiser]]: If you touch the ground, Cenobia will be upon you. If you you lose footing on ''higher'' ground, Cenobia will be ''ready'' to be upon you. If Cenobia is upon you, [[Bullfight Boss|dodge]]. If you fail to dodge, hope that Cenobia [[Punched Across the Room|flings you to the nearest gutter, out of reach]].
* {{spoiler|[[Didn't Need Those Anyway]]: The aim of the battle is the same as that of the battle against Celosia, but you'll have to use other tactics to achieve it.}}
* [[Panthera Awesome]]: Mostly resembles a lion in appearance and sound, [[Recycled in Space|much like Celosia resembles a tiger]].
** [[Full Boar Action]]: For someone else, YMMV.
* [[Palette Swap]]: He has different armor and fur than Celosia, but not much other distinction.
* [[Pint-Sized Powerhouse]]: {{spoiler|He can knock down some of the larger pillars, which are about as thick, large, and sturdy as Valus' leg}}. He's only the size of an SUV.
* [[You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again]]: Like Cenobia,[[Subverted Trope|subverted:]] it will reserve its attack until Wander is getting up, giving the player a ''[[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|very]]'' limited window of opportunity to dodge roll out of the way, even on Normal. Too soon and it will turn towards you at the last moment; too late and you'll just get hit.
Line 388:
Colossus number fifteen.
* [[A Load of Bull]]: Though it is more humanoid than Valus and Barba in appearance, it does still have hooves.
* [[Achilles' Heel]]: All of the Colossi have a weakspot, sure, but Argus stands out in that it has a weakspot on its hand that holds an extremely small portion of its health, and is probably the last weakspot the player will take out.
* [[Boss Corridor]]
* [[Collapsing Ceiling Boss]]: Argus will occasionally try to smash you with its club. When you're up in the ruins, this can cause the ceiling to fall in.
| |||