Despite being featured on the cover of the "Extra Large" version, Donkey is absent in both versions of the game. In fact, the only elements from the movies that appear are Shrek, a brief mention of Fiona, his swamp, and the Magic Mirror, leading some to speculate whether or not this game was originally meant to be a licensed Shrek game.

The original Xbox release of Shrek is noted as being the first commercial game to use "deferred shading," a technique where light is only calculated for the pixels it actually interacts with, meaning multiple light sources can be used at a lower cost than standard shading techniques and allowing the game to better imitate the ambient lighting of the original film. This technique would later be seen in Battlefield 1942, another game developed by DICE and released the following year.