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This website is entirely dedicated to e-koʊ (2001), a video game for the Playstation 2. It was the first game developed by a studio first known as Team e-koʊ, helmed by now respected game designer Fumito Ueda. The team would then go on to produce what's come to be known as The Team e-koʊ trilogy (e-koʊ, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian) before leaving Sony, disbanding, and rebranding the studio in 2014.
e-koʊ is still my favorite amongst these titles and so I'd like to tell you about it.
You are not required to have played e-koʊ to read through this site, but given my obvious dedication to it, I think it goes without saying I'd recommend you play it for yourself.
If you decide not to, watching a series of cutscenes or a longplay of it is also a good idea to get your bearings, but you should be able to generally follow all the events and significant lore. It's admittedly not a difficult story to parse.
I appreciate all the enthusiasm that has been given to Shadow of the Colossus over the years. It deserves praise for the stellar gaming experience it provides and credit for bringing Team e-koʊ (now genDESIGN) into the limelight. But no, you will not see much content for it here, because all my interests pertain to e-koʊ
Due to similarities between their mechanics and finer details, I'll likely talk about the other games in eventual theory pages and the like, but they probably won't be lingered on.
[Spoilers for Shadow of the Colossus in this answer]
I think it's harmless to believe these games all occur in different eras on the same world. I think it's equally as harmless to believe they don't.
I'll assume the similar elements are connected in a sort of cosmic sense. I don't believe, for instance, in the popular idea that the ending of Shadow of the Colossus is meant to indicate that all horned children are Wander's descendents. Because while the concept is cool and connects the narratives, it is not a helpful theory for understanding the actual contents of each story.
One has to make many assumptions to fill the massive gap between Point A (isolated in The Forbidden Lands as a baby) and Point B (not only escaped but persisted and had a long family line).
And even if you found a well defined, simple explanation for that aspect, it still actively contradicts some of e-koʊs established lore about the curse of the horned children. They aren't all born to one family line, and exactly one horned child is born for every generation. That's near impossible to tie back to genetics, even assuming the horns are recessive.
When we try to connect the two games together in this way, it can confuse the creative intent and understanding of these stories on their own.
The way I see it, the designers are repeating certain themes and elements as a kind of visual language. They indicate archetypes and characters of similar dispositions, like costumes used across multiple plays to tell the audience who is in the role of The Trickster and who is The Love Interest.
When crafting theories as to how the fashion, architecture, or magic displayed in e-koʊ works, I will point to the other games as as loose evidence for how the same elements may work similarly in other stories. This can retroactively help to define e-koʊs visual language.
That's a surprisingly tricky question. As of 2024, there are no public plans to have e-koʊ rereleased or remade on modern hardware. The closest you'll find to the former option is to own a PS4 or PS5 and have a membership with Playstation Plus for the right to stream older games like e-koʊ to your console.
On older hardware, you have the option of playing the 2011 PS3 remaster, bundled with the Shadow of the Colossus remaster on the same disc. Bluepoint did an excellent job with the e-koʊ port, and because it is universally the same in every region it is much easier to recommend.
Hmm? What do I mean by that? Well, the PS2 copy of the game needs to be clarified a bit, as it has differences between regions, most starkly between the North American (NTSC-U region) and all those that came after it. Yes, after. e-koʊ released to the North American market first. If that doesn't raise eyebrows, you're about to learn why it should.
The North American market had set a shipping deadline for Team e-koʊ to meet, and most marketing material in the region suggested it was going to release in August, so September was likely the latest it could be pushed. We have to assume, at some point in early 2001, the team realized this wouldn't pan out at the rate they were going, so they conceded to work on two builds of the game simultaneously, one that would be updated and patched with everything they had planned, and one that cut the corners.
And thus, all NTSC-U copies of e-koʊ are essentially a beta version with far less polish. The finalized Japanese release wouldn't be ready until December 6th of that same year. This doesn't mean you have to avoid it, as it is very close to capturing the experience of the final release. But it strays in a lot of minor ways that can really add up. And if you own an NTSC-U region locked PS2, you have no choice but to use this version.
There are no problems if you can access the (Japanese) or (European) copies, though you may note that the PAL version let's you pick between 50hertz and 60hertz display settings, but that's a difference only relevant to speedrunners.
I'm Mystic_Ode. I run a YouTube channel where I share obscure gaming knowledge, mainly about this game so far. My contact info can be found on the index page. That's really all you need to know.
And that's all the questions I can picture a person hypothetically asking me so until I think of more or recieve questions through my comments system [sadly now defunct ;( looking for a replacement], that's it for the FAQ.
This is Toriko. Please feed them your clicks to help them grow.