Incredibly, Battlefield 1942 inspired an all-time great videogame despite its total lack of guns, tanks, and multiplayer

I love how games inspire one another. Game creators, developers, writers, and everyone involved in the production of our virtual pastime love games. Whether it's Bomb Rush Cyberfunk apeing Jet Set Radio or Blasphemous utilizing plenty of Castlevania innovations, indies are especially honest about wearing inspirations on their sleeves. One case I didn't expect, however, involves Shadow of the Colossus. Fumiko Ueda's kaiju-scaling masterpiece is one of the most atmospheric and unique games I've ever played, and it turns out it was created because he was playing so much Battlefield 1942. Yes, you read that right.

So how did an atmospheric kaiju battler spawn from an FPS game? Sure, Battlefield 1942 is a classic, but it's hard to see what parts of it went into Shadow of the Colossus. There are no rifles, no armies, no multiplayer. It turns out that one of those things was a core part of the original premise, and it certainly wasn't rifles.

After the critical success but commercial failure of Ico, Ueda was keen to make something that succeeded on both accounts. Given practically a blank slate by Sony, he played a ton of Battlefield 1942 and was struck by how players cooperated in multiplayer matches. Could he translate that to a game about slaying colossi?

"In terms of inspiration, I wasn't playing many offline games back then," Ueda tells Design Room in a new interview. "But I was really hooked on Battlefield 1942, an FPS. I felt immense potential in the experience of that as a competitive game, where you'd shoot at or help out other players you didn't know.

"That desire to create a network game-meaning a game where you play together, battle, or cooperate with others online-led me to start with the idea of a game where you cooperate to defeat giant monsters."

His terminology may sound Kojima-esque, but Shadow of the Colossus started life as a multiplayer game. The early concepts showed multiple players taking on different roles in order to tackle a much larger foe. However, Ueda quickly moved away from the concept due to the amount of resources it would require.

"We probably hadn't gotten as far as testing multiplayer, or maybe we just connected two controllers on a local network and were able to move characters around," he explains. "That was about the extent of it. We hadn't reached the point where you could play online. Personally, I thought we could attempt making a multiplayer game because we were developing within Sony's first-party studios. But looking at the production resources at the time, I decided that we couldn't realistically do it. To efficiently concentrate resources, we cut the multiplayer portion."

What could have been, eh? While Shadow of the Colossus is considered a stone-cold classic, it's still relatively niche outside of hardcore gaming circles. However, maybe it could have pierced the mainstream consciousness with a Battlefield-esque multiplayer element. Or maybe that would have ruined the atmosphere and Ueda would forever be considered a flop.

It's impossible to know how a multiplayer Shadow of the Colossus would have been received, but I'm willing to bet that Ueda would have made it work. Staff at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan were "impressed" by how quickly he nixed the idea, but Kyle Shubel, producer at Sony Computer Entertainment America, believes it could have taken the game to the next level. "If we could have pulled that off, everyone would be talking about this game," he says.

Well here I am, talking about this game, irrespective of its lack of multiplayer functionality. And if you want more like it, with an intense atmosphere and terrifying creatures, try our list of the best RPGs. If you want something more Battlefield-coded, we've got a great list of the best war games and some fantastic guides for its latest iteration, like the best Battlefield 6 weapons.

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