Fumito Ueda was inspired by… Gustave Doré's illustrations for La Grande Bible de Tours (1866).
I already knew that Shadow of the Colossus featured things from Genesis - the secret garden with its forbidden fruit (Garden of Eden) and Dormin is Nimrod spelled backwards (Nimrod was killed by Shem who scattered his body parts across the land of Shinar as a warning against idolatry).
Is Lord Emon based on Shem?
Do Wander's actions that cause Dormin to be resurrected amount to a sort of original sin?
@easternmind identified Gustave Doré's Bible illustrations on Fumito Ueda's shelf in this post, so I had a look at them, particularly the first 41 that are for Genesis and Exodus. The engravings show dramatic, awe-inspiring and destructive scenes in epic landscapes, which describes the look of Shadow of the Colossus pretty well. The ones that jumped out at me though were of Moses in the Bulrushes, and they did so for seeming like a story influence for Ico.
The story from Exodus goes that Pharaoh put out an order for all male Hebrew babies to be drowned in the Nile, so Moses' mother placed him in an ark and concealed it in the bulrushes by the riverbank. The baby was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and raised as an Egyptian. Apparently, there's also a similar story in Genesis that involves Nimrod. Nimrod fears the birth of Abraham who will be his downfall so he too orders the killing of all newborn babies. Nimrod and Pharaoh are both archetypal cruel and persecuting kings with stories that seem to be reworking some of the same ideas.
In Ico, the Queen is killing horned boys and where Moses was placed in his little boat by his mother and then retrieved from it by Pharaoh's daughter, Ico is placed in his little boat by the Queen's daughter and baby Wander is retrieved from the pool by Mono and taken to the secret garden.
Is the Queen killing all horned boys because she believes that Wander’s descendants are dangerous to her? Is Ico perhaps a prophesied saviour archetype, similar to Moses and Abraham?
Children are also taken in The Last Guardian where they are a source of energy/power.
I had another look at Jacob Geller's video essay called The Decade-Long Quest For Shadow of the Colossus’ Last Secret and spotted a Doré Bible Illustration for Isaiah called 'The Destruction of Leviathan' that's very reminiscent of Hyrdus.
I'm sure that many of my observations were made 15 plus years ago by people like Ascadia whose quest to understand Shadow of the Colossus is at the heart of Jacob Geller's video.
If you watch the video, make sure you read the pinned comment below it - Ascadia's cousin shares the sad news that Ascadia died very young in 2018. Well done him for doing such good work analysing Ueda's masterpieces.
