Shadow of the Colossus - To the Ancient Land-Kow Otani

Fumito Ueda is a treasured figure in the Japanese video game industry. Like his contemporaries Hideo Kojima and Hidetaka Miyazaki, Ueda is one of the few creators who has elevated video games—a medium initially intended for mass entertainment—to the height of artistic creation. Following the massive success of their previous work, ICO (also known as Castle Mystery), his team, Team Ico, continued its exclusive partnership with Sony's PlayStation 2 platform to craft Shadow of the Colossus.

However, this time, Ueda did not offer players the joyful and happy gameplay that his last game did (and by that, I mean the sweetness of holding little sister Yorda's hand while exploring the castle). Instead, players are dumped into a barren wilderness, where our only friend is a horse named Agro, leaving us to our solo isolation and sadness. The story follows a boy named Wander, who carries the body of his girlfriend, Mono, into the Forbidden Land to ask a local deity to revive her, but the price is to track down and destroy the 16 colossi roaming the land.

Through a tragic narrative that corrupts the protagonist, this game tells a cruel and heartbreaking story that shook players deeply, as if reminding us how heavy and tragic a price must be paid by those who trespass against the forbidden laws of nature. Yet, the merciful Ueda still leaves players with a newborn hope at the end of the game, knowing that the human race, like lost sheep, can only find courage to live on in this cruel world by clinging to hope for the future. Upon release, the game was a great success, and it is now widely counted as one of the "Top 10 PS2 Games of All Time" by most mainstream media.

Most of the original soundtrack was composed by musician Kow Otani, who is already well-known for his work on the Gundam anime series. The piece I have arranged and performed this time is the iconic opening theme, "To the Ancient Land."

Compared to Kojima and Miyazaki, Ueda may not be considered a prolific producer, but the quality of his work is beyond question; every single title is a highly polished piece of art. After leaving Sony's first-party studio, Ueda established his independent studio, genDESIGN, but still cooperated closely with Sony to finish The Last Guardian in 2016. At the Summer Game Fest 2026 held in L.A., genDESIGN made a high-profile gameplay presentation of their next title, gen ATLAS, drawing widespread attention from the industry.