Shadow of the Colossus

July 24th, 2016 marks the day the black hole event ended. Countless amounts of players participated by taking arms and combating the evil that manifested Animation Studio. In its final moments, Timmy the Harbinger presented himself to address the denizens of Animation Studio of the last trick up his sleeve. He then summoned: the Colossus.

Courtesy of DaDerpLizard

In the early stages of the update, we weren't sure what exactly would be the final boss or even if there was going to be one. We joked around about adding a giant Shadow of the Colossus-sized enemy attacking the studio. Shortly after the joke, MisterObvious began constructing the Colossus and shortly animated him after. With no space to fight the alleged boss, we expanded the map wide enough to fit the soon-to-be boss. We wanted to make something that hasn't been seen before, a massive wandering NPC that fights the player back. The Colossus stands at 228 studs tall, nearly half the size of the starting baseplate. When far away, the Colossus wanders the area whose giant footsteps echo throughout the map with every step. When a player was near, he slowly walked towards the player until he was within reach of his massive blade. With his massive strength, he lifts his enormous sword above his head and violently slams it into the ground causing the ground to break. Any unlucky soul who was under the sword when it landed would take insurmountable amounts of damage while the shockwave produced from the collision would hurt players who did not jump over it. Due to time constraints, we were only able to fit one move into the boss. With this in mind, we didn't want the battle to be tedious so we kept its health on the lower end of the spectrum. Even then, however, with it being a raid boss, we opted on giving him an incredible amount of health at 1.25 million max health, but even with this amount, the Colossus was no match for the players of Animation Studio who took him down within 7 minutes of his summoning.

Timmy the Harbinger appeared before everyone to announce his final move. Once his speech was finished, the screen faded to white and their cameras panned to the center of the new empty field. The Colossus appeared; crouched and slowly rising from the floor as Shadow of Colossus music played. As the player's camera snaps back to their character the health bar, drawn by BlazerC, tweened from below. The amount of hype from the players almost put a tear in my eye; to see all of our work be cherished amongst everyone invoked pure jubilation. Some yelled battle cries as the battle began, others swore to take it down. Everyone was excited to tackle the Colossus. Everyone knew a boss was coming, but they didn't think it was this. It was an amazing boss fight to an exciting event, but that wasn't the end, the finale was much bigger than the Colossus.