There seems to be a prevalent expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.
Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.
The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.
While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.
This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.
What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.
This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.
I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.
I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.
Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.
The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.
While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.
This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.
What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.
This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.
I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.
I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.
"I know a lot of gamers out there don't have much patience". This line was as true in 2007 as it is now. With that in mind, it's easy to see why The Last Guardian is a pretty divisive game. Doesn't help that the game's lack of polish makes it kinda hard to tell what's intentional and what isn't, at least at first.
To anyone that played ICO, the parallels in The Last Guardian are obvious. In ICO you're in the position of power, taking care of a defenseless girl, in TLG you're actually the small one and have to rely on a huge bird dog thing for pretty much anything, bar some choice moments. While not really original, this dynamic is rare enough to feel different, and the game makes sure to always involve both the player and Trico (hugebirddogthing) at the same time. For people who stick with the game, this is very effective: eventually you'll feel some sort of bond with Trico, considering you went through so many puzzles/platforming sessions with it, making the narrative moments much more earned than they usually are in games of this type.
Trico itself is the main point of contention with The Last Guardian. Instead of what other developers would've done, and probably would've been more immediately functional, TLG aims to make Trico and the experience of bonding with it as realistic as possible: you don't press a button to make it do something, as much as you suggest it does something. You'll point where to go, tell it to jump or break something, and see how Trico reacts to it. This requires patience especially early on, as Trico won't react much to your commands and its animations will be much longer for everything. This is where I think people are mistaken when they say that Trico has faulty AI: they see that their command isn't getting an immediate response, and so they try different things or keep telling it to look at something, when the game did in fact read the command, it's just that Trico itself has to process what's going on. The trick is all in observing the creature, how it moves, how it reacts. I'm not sure how much trickery there is to Trico, but it really did seem like its AI was improving, or at least understanding the commands better, as the creature itself got faster at responding and by the end of the game even mostly understood by itself where to go. What's really impressive is how second nature this becomes eventually, you don't even notice that you're waiting a few seconds every time Trico has to jump, and you figure out when Trico is in the process of doing something or waiting for a command. If Trico were just a big item like in something like Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (raise your hand if you're one of the 5 people that played that) the game wouldn't resonate nearly as much, for better or worse.
What isn't a point of contention, at least from where I'm standing, is how unpolished the game is. There's some framerate issues, some visual glitches, some really bizarre physics engine flubs, but what I really can't excuse is how bad the camera is. It generally does a good enough job as the game is pretty slow, but in platforming and generally more action-y sequences it has a really hard time tracking what's going on. Which can be made even worse by the fact that the game's collision detection isn't great, especially when it comes to recognizing ledges to grab. I died in perfectly normal platforming sequences more often than I'd like to mention because the boy just doesn't feel like grabbing onto a platform.
Despite all my reservations built up over years of word of mouth, I think The Last Guardian is a worthy sequel to ICO. I can't say everyone who liked ICO will enjoy TLG, as it's not nearly as immediate and requires a lot more time to soak it in, but I would recommend it to anyone who wants something a bit different out of their videogames. Now if you'll excuse me I have to wait for Trico to take a dump for the trophy
To anyone that played ICO, the parallels in The Last Guardian are obvious. In ICO you're in the position of power, taking care of a defenseless girl, in TLG you're actually the small one and have to rely on a huge bird dog thing for pretty much anything, bar some choice moments. While not really original, this dynamic is rare enough to feel different, and the game makes sure to always involve both the player and Trico (hugebirddogthing) at the same time. For people who stick with the game, this is very effective: eventually you'll feel some sort of bond with Trico, considering you went through so many puzzles/platforming sessions with it, making the narrative moments much more earned than they usually are in games of this type.
Trico itself is the main point of contention with The Last Guardian. Instead of what other developers would've done, and probably would've been more immediately functional, TLG aims to make Trico and the experience of bonding with it as realistic as possible: you don't press a button to make it do something, as much as you suggest it does something. You'll point where to go, tell it to jump or break something, and see how Trico reacts to it. This requires patience especially early on, as Trico won't react much to your commands and its animations will be much longer for everything. This is where I think people are mistaken when they say that Trico has faulty AI: they see that their command isn't getting an immediate response, and so they try different things or keep telling it to look at something, when the game did in fact read the command, it's just that Trico itself has to process what's going on. The trick is all in observing the creature, how it moves, how it reacts. I'm not sure how much trickery there is to Trico, but it really did seem like its AI was improving, or at least understanding the commands better, as the creature itself got faster at responding and by the end of the game even mostly understood by itself where to go. What's really impressive is how second nature this becomes eventually, you don't even notice that you're waiting a few seconds every time Trico has to jump, and you figure out when Trico is in the process of doing something or waiting for a command. If Trico were just a big item like in something like Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (raise your hand if you're one of the 5 people that played that) the game wouldn't resonate nearly as much, for better or worse.
What isn't a point of contention, at least from where I'm standing, is how unpolished the game is. There's some framerate issues, some visual glitches, some really bizarre physics engine flubs, but what I really can't excuse is how bad the camera is. It generally does a good enough job as the game is pretty slow, but in platforming and generally more action-y sequences it has a really hard time tracking what's going on. Which can be made even worse by the fact that the game's collision detection isn't great, especially when it comes to recognizing ledges to grab. I died in perfectly normal platforming sequences more often than I'd like to mention because the boy just doesn't feel like grabbing onto a platform.
Despite all my reservations built up over years of word of mouth, I think The Last Guardian is a worthy sequel to ICO. I can't say everyone who liked ICO will enjoy TLG, as it's not nearly as immediate and requires a lot more time to soak it in, but I would recommend it to anyone who wants something a bit different out of their videogames. Now if you'll excuse me I have to wait for Trico to take a dump for the trophy
my fav of the three ueda has directed so far. all of them are miracles in their own special ways but this is the one i had the strongest emotional connection with. the one where i didn't just simply contend with characters enacting stories about love and how they love but where i myself contended with love, every time i looked into trico's face during some quiet moment. i dont care abt the framerate or annoying tutorial prompts or the camera or occasionally weird puzzle design or whatever. i love you trico
I think this game is hella slept on. There were a lot of complaints that the pet is impossible to get to do what you want, but those people fail to realize that's part of the experience. If you let yourself be immersed in the world of the game, and treat trico like she has a mind of her own, and that you have to 'build trust' and understand how she thinks, it makes it an extremely emotional experience.
The Last Guardian is the last PlayStation 2 game ever made. Perhaps to some this implies the technical aspects of PlayStation 2 games - and while to an extent this is sort of true - I’m referring to the heart of its design and the fact that games like The Last Guardian will never be considered AAA ever again.
It was the last drop to fall from the wrung cloth of PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 design philosophy [of first party Sony titles]. That era of game design lives on within indie games. Even the new Ratchet and Clank game on PS5 (a fantastic game) does not fully embrace its PS2 roots. It has traces of it, but it completely wraps itself with modern game design ideas.
The Last Guardian visually looks quite modern, and Trico is shockingly advanced on an animation level, but its narrative delivery and level design is completely married to its predecessors. One of which was intended to be a PlayStation 1 title.
Ico not only has a similar gameplay blueprint as The Last Guardian, it even shares a console generational bridge within its development. Ico started as a PS1 game and eventually stretched itself onto PS2 which helped it realize its full potential. It is now regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time (or has this reputation as “your favorite game developer’s favorite game” or “the best game you never played”. Play Ico, it’s really good!) The Last Guardian had similar obstacles. It was teased as a PlayStation 3 title and even had a trailer included in the ico/shadow of the colossus HD remaster for PS3. Of course most of the conversation around this game is about how this caused poor performance to manifest in the Playstation 4 version. The PS3 game that became a PS4 game tends to be its legacy for a lot of people who didn’t pay the game any mind. Some people I know even sold the game a couple days after buying it because it just felt like a PS2 game and they heard it was too short. If you’ve played any GenDesign (previously Team Ico) video game, it was most likely Shadow of the Colossus. Some people perhaps assumed that The Last Guardian would build upon Shadow of the Colossus’s open world nature. Instead it sort of reverts back to the level design of Ico and incorporates mechanics from both titles. There’s really not even any combat except as an observer.
The Last Guardian makes you play the inverse role of both previous GenDesign titles. Instead of protecting your companion [Ico], you completely rely on your companion to fight for you and help you cross obstacles. Instead of fighting gigantic creatures [Shadow of the Colossus], you befriend one and collaborate with it. Even game design ideas that are typically seen as the worst parts of any game are the defining aspects of this trilogy. Ico is a permanent escort mission. Shadow of the Colossus has a big empty world with ‘nothing to do’ in it. The Last Guardian forces you to rely on companion AI to complete most tasks. You don’t even get a stick to hit dudes with! These are all typically low parts or criticisms of a lot of games. Escort missions are rarely praised as a fun thing, open worlds with nothing to is considered lazy design, and complaining about companion AI is still a topic of conversation in modern games. Take Resident Evil 5 for example. A really fun co-op game, but when you play alone and rely on the AI of your companion it ruins the game for many. Some people say The Last Guardian is exactly that. A good game that is commonly interrupted by Trico’s faulty AI. However I truthfully believe that Trico is one of the best examples of AI being at its most effective.
Of course I’m not going to pretend that the AI is perfect. No AI is. The huge amount of variety in your actions that the AI needs to take into account for anyone who plays it is astronomical. There will for sure be times of error and things not working as intended. However, I firmly believe the tedium and contrast of Trico’s AI early on compared to later is completely intentional. Trico is in the literal sense - an NPC that serves as a game mechanic. But if you’re not boring and use your imagination, Trico is a real animal. Trico is believably a wild animal at first as well. Trico is the world’s most most advanced tamagotchi. Trico does not trust you at first because he doesn’t know you. Like most animals, you need to put in time and effort to develop your relationship. He fights for you and you tend to his wounds. You can pet Trico, get rid of obstacles that scare Trico so he can progress, you feed Trico. The game doesn’t diminish our imaginations so much as to include a “trust meter”. The trust is developed in real time and displayed through gameplay. You will notice that commanding Trico becomes vastly easier. It’s like training a dog. Sometimes you need to tell a dog to sit multiple times before it does, but eventually it takes no effort. Trico’s AI behaves in this way.
The Last Guardian forces us to experience tedium early on because when you develop a bond with Trico, moments of danger become incredibly visceral. I imagine a lesser game having a relationship bar that shows you the stats of what kind of bond you currently have with Trico. Allowing this to play out through visual gameplay alone makes it feel like a genuine relationship that we develop ourselves. The boy we control doesn’t fight and lacks a traditional way of taking damage in combat, but when Trico takes damage, it almost feels worse than getting hurt ourselves. Removing spears from Trico and cleaning blood from his feathers isn’t always required, but we feel drawn to do so because…well I can’t imagine what kind of freak wouldn’t have an ounce of empathy for this creature in those moments.
I specifically recall playing this game the week it released. I was still living with my parents and I thought I was home alone. Headphones on and blasting the volume far too loudly, I experienced a moment that made me yell [out of concern for Trico]. I reacted as if one of my actual pets was about to be hit by a car. Not knowing my dad just came home, he burst in and said he thought I had been hurt or that I was having a nightmare. It’s a hilarious memory for me and I still wonder how confusing it was for him to see me emotionally reacting to a video game like that. That’s the core of this game to me, genuine emotion. This trilogy of games goes beyond simple game design for me. Shadow of the Colossus will forever remain my favorite game of all time, and the Last Guardian was completely fulfilling to me as a follow up from these developers. The Last Guardian represents a delayed ending to my favorite era of video games. It feels like a miracle this even came out. What should’ve been a PS3 game became a PS4 game. It held on a little longer just like Ico. It struggled to fully take advantage of the new hardware, and its introduction to a more general audience was rather divisive as it isn’t the kind of game people associate with the PlayStation brand anymore. PlayStation still makes great games, but the ps1 and ps2 era was exploding with experimental ideas and creativity. The Last Guardian was the final breath of this era. To a lot of people it was simply a weird follow up to that Shadow of the Colossus game that they’ve seen some YouTube videos about - but to me it was a continuation of an era that influenced everything I love about video games.
I recall articles circulating about The Last Guardian being officially cancelled. I remember the disappointment I felt. I felt like it was inevitable but I didn’t want to believe it. Thankfully these reports were miscalculated and the game made a return at E3 one year. To see it open the show with roaring applause was wild. PlayStation is a completely different brand today, but in that moment it felt like they returned to themselves. I know not everyone can connect with this. Modern Sony games have a fantastic quality to them and people really love them. I love some as well! Video games aren’t about Sony or Microsoft though. It’s about the developers and people who make them. GenDesign is no longer supported by Sony, but I won’t be any less excited when they reveal their fourth game. The Last Guardian probably shouldn’t have come out at all, but the fact it was given a chance was really important. None of GenDesign’s games had consistent development. They either switched platforms or completely changed what kind of games they were early on. Fumito Ueda says that he doesn’t try to tell a specific story himself, but that he wants the development of the game to guide what kind of story it ends up telling. Making these games is probably messy, but there’s something so human and different about what they become.
The Last Guardian was the last PlayStation 2 game ever made. The future of games is still super cool though, but when GenDesign makes their return, part of me might hurt a little knowing that their art isn’t valued enough to receive the support of a company like Sony or that it won’t be considered AAA. Times have changed, but the stuff we love still lives on through amazing artists despite not being first party for some huge corporate product. The Last Guardian is probably one of the best games of all time that plenty will never play, but I encourage you to do so regardless!
very misunderstood game with much better ai than it's usually given credit for. trico's a great companion, and the way he can either help or hinder you based on how he's treated is a really clever concept that's well executed. only problem is the occasionally terrible framerate
Ueda é diferente de todos, o cara tem uma visão artística absurda de boa, a jornada do menino e Trico é incrível e emocionante, mesmo com quase nenhum dialogo
os gráficos desse jogo é surreal de bom, as vezes eu esqueço q esse jogo é de 2016, a trilha sonora dispensa comentários
mas como todo jogo, esse aqui tem defeitos, como as quedas bruscas de frame constantes, a câmera muitas vezes é péssima em certos lugares, apesar da IA do Trico ser muito boa ela tbm muitas vezes vai te frustrar
embora não seja superior ao seu antecessor, The Last Guardian é uma experiência q vc nunca vai esquece.
os gráficos desse jogo é surreal de bom, as vezes eu esqueço q esse jogo é de 2016, a trilha sonora dispensa comentários
mas como todo jogo, esse aqui tem defeitos, como as quedas bruscas de frame constantes, a câmera muitas vezes é péssima em certos lugares, apesar da IA do Trico ser muito boa ela tbm muitas vezes vai te frustrar
embora não seja superior ao seu antecessor, The Last Guardian é uma experiência q vc nunca vai esquece.
Forget about all the drama and complaints from this game being delayed for so long, this is in my opinion a modern masterpiece that beautifully portrays and builds a bond between a child and a creature (Trico). The setting of the game is mysterious and incredible to look at and experience, as well as being right in line with the previous Team Ico games.
Level design is great and I have to take my hat off to the devs and Fumito Ueda for adapting levels to accommodate both your character (boy) and Trico which are disproportionately different in size and behavior. The same applies with the general progression and puzzles found in the game which involves both characters. The general exploration has a vertical component to it and is handled very well through dramatic camera angles. If there's one criticism that I have is the occasional botched controls and interaction with Trico which can be bothersome, as well as some odd camera angles encountered every now and then.
With that being said, the overall journey is well worth experiencing; I was really impressed, pleased and moved by the overall story and ending in this game. A must-play if you are a PlayStation fan.
Level design is great and I have to take my hat off to the devs and Fumito Ueda for adapting levels to accommodate both your character (boy) and Trico which are disproportionately different in size and behavior. The same applies with the general progression and puzzles found in the game which involves both characters. The general exploration has a vertical component to it and is handled very well through dramatic camera angles. If there's one criticism that I have is the occasional botched controls and interaction with Trico which can be bothersome, as well as some odd camera angles encountered every now and then.
With that being said, the overall journey is well worth experiencing; I was really impressed, pleased and moved by the overall story and ending in this game. A must-play if you are a PlayStation fan.
i dont care if the controls are the jankiest ive seen since i found out there are people still playing doom without a mouse
if you see trico move and dont instantly like this game im coming to renovate your garden and asking the contractors to use the leftover dirt to fill the hole where your soul was supposed to be
if you see trico move and dont instantly like this game im coming to renovate your garden and asking the contractors to use the leftover dirt to fill the hole where your soul was supposed to be
My experience with this game was amazing. Was driven to tears, in fact. The constant tutorials is the only flaw and I don't understand why it was so constant compared to previous Team Ico games but that didn't affect my enjoyment.
the average gamer youtuber will complain that you need trico as much as he needs you to make it through this game, but thats love baby!
It is ridiculous how a game this calm, slow paced and silent can create such opposing contrasts in perception. Up from moments of awe, love and appreciation for the amazing design choices the studio made down to frustration hell like I've never experienced it before.
I can generally accept a game demanding me to be patient, especially when it comes to letting an AI driven NPC find its way through the world. But there are so many times when actions just don't work, are misinterpreted and in few cases even buggy to a point where I had to reload the save file, that it sometimes feels more like being a beta tester to go through all the hurdles so the edges can be smoothed out. But they aren't and its a constant try, try, fail, repeat to a point where I just have my smartphone ready to play something whenever Trico again decided to go into a completely opposite direction of where I need to go. I mean the latter would still be explainable that this game isn't as straight forward accessible as a Super Mario or even Soulslike game where every input matters. But so often it feels less like having to guide a pet or a child even and really just like failing at trying to make that NPC-AI progress through the game. Trico is such an amazing virtual creation of a believable lifeform, that it sometimes feels sort of on purpose, when he (or she?) wouldn't go where you want just to state the fact that this NPC isn't like others. In many cases this indeed creates some nice scenes where Trico actually behaves like its following its own agenda, a concept that Team Ico already mastered in their previous games. Like Agro, the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, already stood out of other horses or even mounts, as he wouldn't just steer with a 1:1 transation of your inputs, but often feel like he would really just carry you and agree to the direction you want him to go. Back then, this workd perfectly fine. Here it often just doesn't.
And still I can only subtract one star as the brave decision to create something so unique over such a long development time that must have been pretty nasty, looking at how often this felt like being in dev-limbo and got delayed, can only be praised with huge respect. I am sure it is way harder to create something outstanding today than it was 20 years ago, at least on an AAA level but that's exactly what Fumida Ueda managed to pull off here.
I played this game halfway through and at some point it got me so unnerved, I had to stop it for a while, not knowing if I'd ever pick it up again. But at some point when playing through the Horizon Zero Dawns and God of Wars of this world, you just want to experience something that stands out so I'm glad I just let go and stopped fighting against that natural gravitation that would drag me back into this great world and its great story.Once you stop caring too much whether you progress or not, it becomes less frustrating. I wouldn't say that this is the message I want a game to have, but at least in this case it definitely helps and rewards you with an amazing journey like nothing that came before or after it that will definitely find a more durable place inside any gamer's heart than the next Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty game.
I can generally accept a game demanding me to be patient, especially when it comes to letting an AI driven NPC find its way through the world. But there are so many times when actions just don't work, are misinterpreted and in few cases even buggy to a point where I had to reload the save file, that it sometimes feels more like being a beta tester to go through all the hurdles so the edges can be smoothed out. But they aren't and its a constant try, try, fail, repeat to a point where I just have my smartphone ready to play something whenever Trico again decided to go into a completely opposite direction of where I need to go. I mean the latter would still be explainable that this game isn't as straight forward accessible as a Super Mario or even Soulslike game where every input matters. But so often it feels less like having to guide a pet or a child even and really just like failing at trying to make that NPC-AI progress through the game. Trico is such an amazing virtual creation of a believable lifeform, that it sometimes feels sort of on purpose, when he (or she?) wouldn't go where you want just to state the fact that this NPC isn't like others. In many cases this indeed creates some nice scenes where Trico actually behaves like its following its own agenda, a concept that Team Ico already mastered in their previous games. Like Agro, the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, already stood out of other horses or even mounts, as he wouldn't just steer with a 1:1 transation of your inputs, but often feel like he would really just carry you and agree to the direction you want him to go. Back then, this workd perfectly fine. Here it often just doesn't.
And still I can only subtract one star as the brave decision to create something so unique over such a long development time that must have been pretty nasty, looking at how often this felt like being in dev-limbo and got delayed, can only be praised with huge respect. I am sure it is way harder to create something outstanding today than it was 20 years ago, at least on an AAA level but that's exactly what Fumida Ueda managed to pull off here.
I played this game halfway through and at some point it got me so unnerved, I had to stop it for a while, not knowing if I'd ever pick it up again. But at some point when playing through the Horizon Zero Dawns and God of Wars of this world, you just want to experience something that stands out so I'm glad I just let go and stopped fighting against that natural gravitation that would drag me back into this great world and its great story.Once you stop caring too much whether you progress or not, it becomes less frustrating. I wouldn't say that this is the message I want a game to have, but at least in this case it definitely helps and rewards you with an amazing journey like nothing that came before or after it that will definitely find a more durable place inside any gamer's heart than the next Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty game.
Just fucking exceptional. All the times Trico wouldn't listen, all the times I let go and fell sideways, even that time Trico threw me on his back in a cutscene and I bounced off and fell to my death, all of that is forgiven because the whole of this game is a beautiful masterpiece, so consistently gorgeous and evocative that I say swears about it.
Although The Last Guardian is definitely plagued by unfortunate frame rate issues and some mechanically clunky bits (in line with previous efforts from Fumito Ueda), overall I would still consider the conclusion to the legendary Team Ico trilogy pretty damn underrated and probably even a minor masterpiece. For one thing, I'm just immensely impressed with Trico, the level of verisimilitude here is worlds beyond any AI companion I've seen in any video game. While I can certainly understand other people's frustrations with Trico's occasional unresponsiveness, I was surprised by how much patience I had with Trico. It genuinely felt like I was gradually bonding with a scared animal that needed me as much as I needed it, making it difficult for me to be mad if Trico didn't always immediately obeyed my commands. And of course, the breathtakingly gorgeous, fully realized and brilliantly interconnected game world is a true marvel to behold and stands testament to a team that has mastered the art of virtual architecture. I don't have much more to say; I suppose I could keep on gushing about how much I want to have those Ueda aesthetics injected directly into my veins, but I'd rather leave you with a nice little video essay by Jacob Geller, confidently titled The Most Beautiful Moment of the Generation (though it goes without saying that I strongly encourage you to finish the game yourself before watching that video).
This review contains spoilers
In The Last Guardian, you play as a boy trying to find his way home with a majestic creature named Trico. There is never a moment where the game abandons this concept; through thick and thin, for every puzzle, every lever, every otherworldly encounter, every small instance of flight, for every quiet moment inside this ruined castle, you are a boy with a beast trying to get home. Over time, the player themselves learn to love Trico. Their journey is the boy's, and the boy loves Trico. As the hours pass in such an empty world, you'll always have a companion. Trico is easy to love.
However, the journey is arduous, and circumstances lead to the boy and the beast both returning to the village severely injured. Trico, wishing no harm to the villagers, returns the boy in hopes of them nursing him back to health. Trico mourns for the boy, but the villagers misinterpret this mourning as a threat and attack Trico. The broken creature is forced to retreat, and presumed to have died without aid.
After credits we return to our story after it ended, the boy now an adult. After so many years, he recalls his story and pays tribute to his old friend. It is then we cut back to the ruined castle he escaped from. For the last few seconds of the game, we see two pairs of green eyes in the dark. The end.
So...is Trico alive?
I don't know.
I consider The Last Guardian a tragedy. Like all good tragedies, it warns us about the danger of a particular action or attitude. In truth, despite Trico and the boy's difficult journey home, and despite their bond, they could never remain together. Stubbornness and ignorance drove Trico away, and the player receives the ultimate punishment: the lack of closure.
If Trico was shown to have lived, the player would be satisfied and content. If Trico was shown to have died, it absolutely would be sad for the boy/player, but death can be accepted with time. Mourning eventually makes way for closure. The player receives neither of these endings, leaving the status of Trico a mystery. The boy/player may have formed a bond with Trico, but the world refused this bond, and severed this relationship. Trico has been completely removed from the life of the boy/player, so just as the boy, the player becomes a victim and is left only with uncertainty. Trico might have lived, found a mate, and began to reproduce his species free of the influence of the castle's arcane magic. Or he might have died, and those eyes belong to the only survivors in the species remaining. Maybe there were even more of this type of creature that we have yet to discover. We don't know, and now we never will.
By leaning into the nature of the gaming medium, through encouraging the player to engage with love through their interactions with Trico, and subsequently ripping that love away from you, The Last Guardian forces you not just to understand or empathize, but to feel the tragedy first-hand. This is why I find it so easy to dismiss many of the technical imperfections, because the game provides an entirely unparalleled, deeply personal experience.
However, the journey is arduous, and circumstances lead to the boy and the beast both returning to the village severely injured. Trico, wishing no harm to the villagers, returns the boy in hopes of them nursing him back to health. Trico mourns for the boy, but the villagers misinterpret this mourning as a threat and attack Trico. The broken creature is forced to retreat, and presumed to have died without aid.
After credits we return to our story after it ended, the boy now an adult. After so many years, he recalls his story and pays tribute to his old friend. It is then we cut back to the ruined castle he escaped from. For the last few seconds of the game, we see two pairs of green eyes in the dark. The end.
So...is Trico alive?
I don't know.
I consider The Last Guardian a tragedy. Like all good tragedies, it warns us about the danger of a particular action or attitude. In truth, despite Trico and the boy's difficult journey home, and despite their bond, they could never remain together. Stubbornness and ignorance drove Trico away, and the player receives the ultimate punishment: the lack of closure.
If Trico was shown to have lived, the player would be satisfied and content. If Trico was shown to have died, it absolutely would be sad for the boy/player, but death can be accepted with time. Mourning eventually makes way for closure. The player receives neither of these endings, leaving the status of Trico a mystery. The boy/player may have formed a bond with Trico, but the world refused this bond, and severed this relationship. Trico has been completely removed from the life of the boy/player, so just as the boy, the player becomes a victim and is left only with uncertainty. Trico might have lived, found a mate, and began to reproduce his species free of the influence of the castle's arcane magic. Or he might have died, and those eyes belong to the only survivors in the species remaining. Maybe there were even more of this type of creature that we have yet to discover. We don't know, and now we never will.
By leaning into the nature of the gaming medium, through encouraging the player to engage with love through their interactions with Trico, and subsequently ripping that love away from you, The Last Guardian forces you not just to understand or empathize, but to feel the tragedy first-hand. This is why I find it so easy to dismiss many of the technical imperfections, because the game provides an entirely unparalleled, deeply personal experience.
Can’t believe Dunkey really tricked nine million gamers into thinking The Last Guardian was this broken dumpster fire devoid of any fun or joy. Shaking my head. The gaming community really let me down with this one, maybe some other content creator a decade later will realize it was actually good when it’ll be +120$ on retro game store shelves.
Okay, being more rational here, I’ve always found the mixed reception of The Last Guardian to be rather puzzling. You’d think the third game from industry legend Fumito Ueda, the man behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, arguably two of the most influential PS2 games ever, would come out with more enthusiasm behind it after its infamously long nine-year development time, spanning a whole console generation. But quite literally the opposite happened. The game was so divisive on its release by critics and audiences it’s no surprise nobody wanted to be the guinea pig that invested their time and money into it. Many of its detractors claimed this was because Trico, the big animal companion and the main mechanic of the game, was unresponsive and unreliable too frequently, giving the player more lack of control than necessary and making playing the game more frustrating than it needed to be. Which I’ve always found that odd because I feel lack of control has always been a major theme in Ueda’s games?
In ICO, you play as a little boy trying to escape a big castle with a girl named Yorda who doesn’t speak the same language and can’t make the same jumps or climbs as you, yet is relied upon to open certain doors to progress your escape. You cannot progress without Yorda, you have to work around her limitations to solve puzzles and protect her from the occasional fight with these shadowy figures. If you go too many rooms too far away from her, you risk her getting captured which kills you. So you have to escort her a lot of the time by hand or yell for her to get her to come to you, which her AI has never really been the best to be honest? It was to the point where Team Ico moved development of the game from the PS1 to the PS2 so they can have more processing power to get her to work and it can still be a bit bumbly and finicky at times. In Shadow of the Colossus, you were this warrior who wandered into a forbidden land to make a deal with a deity to resurrect a girl named Mono from the dead by riding to and killing 16 Colossi, these impossibly towering creatures made of stone and fur. You had to climb on these things and find their weak spots to stab as you wrestle with the overwhelming forces of gravity of these massive creatures trying to shake you off, which oftentimes means you have to hang on for dear life for what seems minutes on end before you can keep climbing as you watch your stamina bar get lower and lower, creating more dread of falling off and having to get back on again. It’s not as if oppression by removing control from the player has never been in Ueda’s previous work before, and these are often aspects I’ve seen praised in these two games, myself included. However, I think these are often overlooked when talking about The Last Guardian because there’s always a sense that you have more kinds of control over your own actions in those games at the end of the day. That you are the one who can hold Yorda’s hand and take her where she needs to be most of the time, that you are the one who made the decision to climb upwards on the Colossi at the most inopportune time. Ueda’s games have always had this near-perfect balance of making the grand scenario more and more learnable while still grounding the player in the reality they’re really in.
This is why I feel The Last Guardian was a harder sell for many people. While I argue the journey itself is more tonally lighthearted than his previous work, The Last Guardian is by far Ueda’s most oppressive feeling game. The boy is not The Wanderer, he’s not even Ico, he’s just about as small and frail as Yorda and can only make the smallest of jumps, hang on the tiniest of ledges, and can push only certain objects around in terrain that scales from tower to tower in a journey that asks you to go higher and higher up the clouds. You more than ever have to rely on your partner Trico, this massive impossible mix of a cat and a bird probably the size of a small house. Only she can make you reach heights you otherwise can’t and make those impossible jumps from tower to tower. Trico is probably the most convincing animal in a video game I’ve ever played, but to some, that’s a burden they can’t deal with. Trico will get hungry so you have to look for barrels sometimes to feed her, Trico will get flustered when she attacks these strange inanimate stone guards so you have to pet her to calm her down, Trico gets scared of these glass windows with eye-shaped designs on them so you have to find a way to destroy them even if you have to do some insane parkour to get to them, Trico will sometimes just flat out ignore your yelling commands by design taking longer to do what the player may see as the simplest of jumps. While Trico is the most relied-on partner character ever in an Ueda game, the boy still has to escort and command this man-eating beast from place to place to solve puzzles or to platform around large jumps. In other words, it’s ICO again, but this time the roles are reversed.
Of course the pitch of “you move an animal around that will act like an animal” was only going to appeal to the most committed to its premise, and it being Ueda’s longest game meant more people were going to fall off of it before they got a chance to see its conclusion. But I feel that aspect also overshadowed discussion of other issues the game has to be honest. You can practically feel its nine years of ambitious development time when the game starts to barely contain its targeted 30fps threshold. The environmental flourishes and details around Ueda’s legendarily creative architecture are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and as you get higher and higher up the clouds you see more and more of what you maneuvered around down below, but sometimes I feel this hyper fixation on its details mixed with its advanced lighting system can obfuscate puzzle information more often than it needed to, and I feel Team Ico knew this, which is why the game relies on its tip systems too much. There are not only button prompts that appear frequently on the top right of the screen to give clues on what you can interact with, but narration from the boy's perspective will appear similar to Shadow of the Colossus if the game detects the player being on a puzzle for too long. It’s kind of a shame that Ueda’s games still feature these immersion-breaking UI elements present and criticized in Shadow of the Colossus for years with no real way of turning them off, but I feel the game would’ve only been more frustrating on a first time playthrough if they weren’t there. Then there are the occasional physics engine issues that the game will stumble upon, while I found the physics complied with me more than most Havok engine games do to be honest, I did have a moment in my playthrough where when Trico jumped the boy was suddenly teleported upwards which made me fall towards my impending doom, so it’s by no means perfect even if I had a better time with it. The camera is by far my biggest issue with the game. It’s this fickle mistress that only focuses on what it wants to. Sometimes it’ll autofocus on Trico, or the ledge you need to jump on, and sometimes you have to adjust it yourself. Sometimes the camera will get stuck in tight environments with you and Trico which will reset itself with this awkward cut to black which can repeat over and over again rather than just clipping out of bounds to give the player a better view from behind similar to God Hand. The Last Guardian's technical ambitions from its AI to its environments can be seen from a distance as impressive, but its lack of gracefullness at times can also be seen as its downfall, and it’s no wonder why the game had the hardest time sticking with players the most.
It… might be my favorite Ueda game?
It might be too early to tell as I’m writing this, but it just feels right to say. This game just did it all for me. While ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are up there as some of my personal favorite games, I feel The Last Guardian is the most successful in what it sets out to do: to bond the player with its partner character. I never really particularly cared for Yorda or Mono or even Agro as much as I wish I could despite those characters being the central emotional core of the story. While I appreciate the former for its wordless communication between Yorda and Ico along their journey, I can understand the criticisms against the latter. It’s hard to place the corpse of a woman you’ve never interacted with in front of the player and expect them to care, which is why I feel players connected with Agro the horse a lot more since it’s someone you used to venture around the place even if all you did was ride on it and commanded where to go. Trico is that but taken a step further. Yes, Trico acts like a big dumb animal, but somehow managing to get her around these dark tight corridors with traps or these sky-bound vistas feels like accomplishing little miracles one at a time. The game features Ueda’s most creative puzzle design yet, asking the player to constantly think with Trico in mind, and it’s where the rooms where you are alone without Trico are the most pulse-pounding anxiety-inducing. Without that protection from Trico, you are more in danger from other threats like the stone guards or extreme heights you can’t fall on Trico as a failsafe. About halfway through I looked at Trico less like an obstacle and started to look at Trico as the guardian she really is. And you know what I think?
It’s rad as hell! And it’s fun! Seriously! Every time you get Trico to do her earth-shattering cat pounce from one stone pillar to the next it feels like this major accomplishment that the two of you managed to pull off. Every moment you have to climb around Trico when she sees an eye-shaped glass window hung by a stone tower and then get there by doing some mind-bending platforming as you look down at the stomach-churning distance between you and the ground (no seriously, jesus christ lol) and having to jump all the way down on her back is so immensely intense but pulling it off to progress just works. Every time Trico saves you from an army of mysterious stone guards is the ultimate “sick ‘em fido” of video games, yet the game always reminds you to comfort Trico after with a few pets, and maybe pull out a few spears thrown at her body. It’s this dedication the game has with these moment-to-moment connections between you and Trico as you two help each other out closer and closer to the end that makes the later moments where she starts to break design conventions all the more convincing and powerful. The Last Guardian to me is a game of little accomplishments up to the grand finale.
The Last Guardian is not a perfect game, and it’s hardly one I can see the casual player really sticking with very long. Even I had moments where I wished Trico would comply with me more and wished the game’s framerate didn’t give me a headache, but the last three hours of this game to me are borderline perfect, climaxing to Ueda’s strongest story beats yet, somehow managing to top himself with his best ending yet (a man already known for crafting the best endings ever). All the coincidental frustration I had with The Last Guardian seemed fleeting and diminutive. By the end of it, I was more frustrated at being reminded of its dismissive reputation that caused me to hold it off this long. The Last Guardian should be a testament to Team Ico’s mastery of storytelling through game design, rather than be left in the shadows of its predecessor's legacies, but even if it stays within those shadows of obscurity forever, I’m happy to have stuck with the journey through The Nest, atop Trico’s feathery back.
The Last Guardian is a game of accomplishments, and much like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, stands just as tall as those games do, as the achievement it undoubtedly is.
Okay, being more rational here, I’ve always found the mixed reception of The Last Guardian to be rather puzzling. You’d think the third game from industry legend Fumito Ueda, the man behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, arguably two of the most influential PS2 games ever, would come out with more enthusiasm behind it after its infamously long nine-year development time, spanning a whole console generation. But quite literally the opposite happened. The game was so divisive on its release by critics and audiences it’s no surprise nobody wanted to be the guinea pig that invested their time and money into it. Many of its detractors claimed this was because Trico, the big animal companion and the main mechanic of the game, was unresponsive and unreliable too frequently, giving the player more lack of control than necessary and making playing the game more frustrating than it needed to be. Which I’ve always found that odd because I feel lack of control has always been a major theme in Ueda’s games?
In ICO, you play as a little boy trying to escape a big castle with a girl named Yorda who doesn’t speak the same language and can’t make the same jumps or climbs as you, yet is relied upon to open certain doors to progress your escape. You cannot progress without Yorda, you have to work around her limitations to solve puzzles and protect her from the occasional fight with these shadowy figures. If you go too many rooms too far away from her, you risk her getting captured which kills you. So you have to escort her a lot of the time by hand or yell for her to get her to come to you, which her AI has never really been the best to be honest? It was to the point where Team Ico moved development of the game from the PS1 to the PS2 so they can have more processing power to get her to work and it can still be a bit bumbly and finicky at times. In Shadow of the Colossus, you were this warrior who wandered into a forbidden land to make a deal with a deity to resurrect a girl named Mono from the dead by riding to and killing 16 Colossi, these impossibly towering creatures made of stone and fur. You had to climb on these things and find their weak spots to stab as you wrestle with the overwhelming forces of gravity of these massive creatures trying to shake you off, which oftentimes means you have to hang on for dear life for what seems minutes on end before you can keep climbing as you watch your stamina bar get lower and lower, creating more dread of falling off and having to get back on again. It’s not as if oppression by removing control from the player has never been in Ueda’s previous work before, and these are often aspects I’ve seen praised in these two games, myself included. However, I think these are often overlooked when talking about The Last Guardian because there’s always a sense that you have more kinds of control over your own actions in those games at the end of the day. That you are the one who can hold Yorda’s hand and take her where she needs to be most of the time, that you are the one who made the decision to climb upwards on the Colossi at the most inopportune time. Ueda’s games have always had this near-perfect balance of making the grand scenario more and more learnable while still grounding the player in the reality they’re really in.
This is why I feel The Last Guardian was a harder sell for many people. While I argue the journey itself is more tonally lighthearted than his previous work, The Last Guardian is by far Ueda’s most oppressive feeling game. The boy is not The Wanderer, he’s not even Ico, he’s just about as small and frail as Yorda and can only make the smallest of jumps, hang on the tiniest of ledges, and can push only certain objects around in terrain that scales from tower to tower in a journey that asks you to go higher and higher up the clouds. You more than ever have to rely on your partner Trico, this massive impossible mix of a cat and a bird probably the size of a small house. Only she can make you reach heights you otherwise can’t and make those impossible jumps from tower to tower. Trico is probably the most convincing animal in a video game I’ve ever played, but to some, that’s a burden they can’t deal with. Trico will get hungry so you have to look for barrels sometimes to feed her, Trico will get flustered when she attacks these strange inanimate stone guards so you have to pet her to calm her down, Trico gets scared of these glass windows with eye-shaped designs on them so you have to find a way to destroy them even if you have to do some insane parkour to get to them, Trico will sometimes just flat out ignore your yelling commands by design taking longer to do what the player may see as the simplest of jumps. While Trico is the most relied-on partner character ever in an Ueda game, the boy still has to escort and command this man-eating beast from place to place to solve puzzles or to platform around large jumps. In other words, it’s ICO again, but this time the roles are reversed.
Of course the pitch of “you move an animal around that will act like an animal” was only going to appeal to the most committed to its premise, and it being Ueda’s longest game meant more people were going to fall off of it before they got a chance to see its conclusion. But I feel that aspect also overshadowed discussion of other issues the game has to be honest. You can practically feel its nine years of ambitious development time when the game starts to barely contain its targeted 30fps threshold. The environmental flourishes and details around Ueda’s legendarily creative architecture are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and as you get higher and higher up the clouds you see more and more of what you maneuvered around down below, but sometimes I feel this hyper fixation on its details mixed with its advanced lighting system can obfuscate puzzle information more often than it needed to, and I feel Team Ico knew this, which is why the game relies on its tip systems too much. There are not only button prompts that appear frequently on the top right of the screen to give clues on what you can interact with, but narration from the boy's perspective will appear similar to Shadow of the Colossus if the game detects the player being on a puzzle for too long. It’s kind of a shame that Ueda’s games still feature these immersion-breaking UI elements present and criticized in Shadow of the Colossus for years with no real way of turning them off, but I feel the game would’ve only been more frustrating on a first time playthrough if they weren’t there. Then there are the occasional physics engine issues that the game will stumble upon, while I found the physics complied with me more than most Havok engine games do to be honest, I did have a moment in my playthrough where when Trico jumped the boy was suddenly teleported upwards which made me fall towards my impending doom, so it’s by no means perfect even if I had a better time with it. The camera is by far my biggest issue with the game. It’s this fickle mistress that only focuses on what it wants to. Sometimes it’ll autofocus on Trico, or the ledge you need to jump on, and sometimes you have to adjust it yourself. Sometimes the camera will get stuck in tight environments with you and Trico which will reset itself with this awkward cut to black which can repeat over and over again rather than just clipping out of bounds to give the player a better view from behind similar to God Hand. The Last Guardian's technical ambitions from its AI to its environments can be seen from a distance as impressive, but its lack of gracefullness at times can also be seen as its downfall, and it’s no wonder why the game had the hardest time sticking with players the most.
It… might be my favorite Ueda game?
It might be too early to tell as I’m writing this, but it just feels right to say. This game just did it all for me. While ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are up there as some of my personal favorite games, I feel The Last Guardian is the most successful in what it sets out to do: to bond the player with its partner character. I never really particularly cared for Yorda or Mono or even Agro as much as I wish I could despite those characters being the central emotional core of the story. While I appreciate the former for its wordless communication between Yorda and Ico along their journey, I can understand the criticisms against the latter. It’s hard to place the corpse of a woman you’ve never interacted with in front of the player and expect them to care, which is why I feel players connected with Agro the horse a lot more since it’s someone you used to venture around the place even if all you did was ride on it and commanded where to go. Trico is that but taken a step further. Yes, Trico acts like a big dumb animal, but somehow managing to get her around these dark tight corridors with traps or these sky-bound vistas feels like accomplishing little miracles one at a time. The game features Ueda’s most creative puzzle design yet, asking the player to constantly think with Trico in mind, and it’s where the rooms where you are alone without Trico are the most pulse-pounding anxiety-inducing. Without that protection from Trico, you are more in danger from other threats like the stone guards or extreme heights you can’t fall on Trico as a failsafe. About halfway through I looked at Trico less like an obstacle and started to look at Trico as the guardian she really is. And you know what I think?
It’s rad as hell! And it’s fun! Seriously! Every time you get Trico to do her earth-shattering cat pounce from one stone pillar to the next it feels like this major accomplishment that the two of you managed to pull off. Every moment you have to climb around Trico when she sees an eye-shaped glass window hung by a stone tower and then get there by doing some mind-bending platforming as you look down at the stomach-churning distance between you and the ground (no seriously, jesus christ lol) and having to jump all the way down on her back is so immensely intense but pulling it off to progress just works. Every time Trico saves you from an army of mysterious stone guards is the ultimate “sick ‘em fido” of video games, yet the game always reminds you to comfort Trico after with a few pets, and maybe pull out a few spears thrown at her body. It’s this dedication the game has with these moment-to-moment connections between you and Trico as you two help each other out closer and closer to the end that makes the later moments where she starts to break design conventions all the more convincing and powerful. The Last Guardian to me is a game of little accomplishments up to the grand finale.
The Last Guardian is not a perfect game, and it’s hardly one I can see the casual player really sticking with very long. Even I had moments where I wished Trico would comply with me more and wished the game’s framerate didn’t give me a headache, but the last three hours of this game to me are borderline perfect, climaxing to Ueda’s strongest story beats yet, somehow managing to top himself with his best ending yet (a man already known for crafting the best endings ever). All the coincidental frustration I had with The Last Guardian seemed fleeting and diminutive. By the end of it, I was more frustrated at being reminded of its dismissive reputation that caused me to hold it off this long. The Last Guardian should be a testament to Team Ico’s mastery of storytelling through game design, rather than be left in the shadows of its predecessor's legacies, but even if it stays within those shadows of obscurity forever, I’m happy to have stuck with the journey through The Nest, atop Trico’s feathery back.
The Last Guardian is a game of accomplishments, and much like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, stands just as tall as those games do, as the achievement it undoubtedly is.
Never has a videogame -or anything else for that matter- made me feel and care so much for an AI.
I always wanted a dog growing up but my parents were not okay with it - I feel like The Last Guardian filled that small void in my childhood memories.
Did I sayAI? Scratch that, my heart doesn't feel right when calling Trico that ugly word.
I always wanted a dog growing up but my parents were not okay with it - I feel like The Last Guardian filled that small void in my childhood memories.
Did I say
AI in video games exists to be predictable. Whether it is or isn’t on your side, its actions on first engagement have to be for the player to enact their intended objective in an area or level, and in the case of a companion, it’s all of their actions. Any unpredictability would only take place after its action is made clear, where the AI might consider any number of options that bounce off the game’s systems to follow up on their state inflicted by the player, but similar systems can also be used to better realize this AI as a character in their setting before any engagement. Trico ticks all the boxes, the difference is unpredictability’s been introduced into their initial response to the player.
And it’s not in the way that Trico will ignore what you tell them to do, but that the response is not instant. There’s no list of specific commands you can give to the beast, you can’t directly take control of it, and it won’t teleport to you if you’re too far. You can point to where you want it to go and call out if you want it to come to you. What this can promote in the dense setting of the Nest is situations that can make it hard for Trico to know exactly what you want, jumping ruined column to ruined column over a quiet fog is no problem, but getting on that first column might be. Chances are it was on the player for not positioning themselves clearly enough for Trico to see and hear, but sometimes it can be the creature’s fault. Every bit of gameplay alongside it becomes more than a choice to execute, it’s a moment for you and Trico to learn from, and this takes a unique weight off when you can get past an obstacle because you know you both worked through it together.
What starts as two creatures functioning on survival instinct becomes mutual understanding that codependence would be necessary for this survival, and eventually, a connection that’s so much more. Trico needs you to feed it barrels, to take spears out of its body and tend to the wounds, to take out stained glass eyes it’s afraid of and you need Trico to fight off the Nest’s guards, to climb and jump to places you’re too small to reach, and to dive deep to where you’re not able to swim. Interactions like these teem throughout the game on a micro and macro level, but there come to be gestures of affection like certain spots you can pet eliciting more endeared reactions, which in turn becomes less required as Trico starts to calm down quicker from your presence alone, or Trico perching up against where you went waiting for you to come back. It all forms a bond so deep that it’s motivating beyond the dissonant nature of the checkpoint and failstate to keep going, to avoid death lest my big feathery buddy be left behind.
From the boy’s perspective, it’s certainly the most minimalist amount of interaction a player’s had with the world of a Team Ico game. Puzzles are so abstracted that solutions more often come down to observations around the room or in timing than unique engine interactions and the little occasional engagement with combat you have is pointing to where you want Trico to shoot lightning. Of course, this props up the importance of the beast but it also makes the Nest that much more convincing as ruins reclaimed by nature’s elements as well as your place in it with other inhabitants. Previously Ico would have to concede to more gamey puzzle objects and Shadow of the Colossus plopped a HUD on the screen for health and stamina. Advancements in a purer gameplay direction are welcome, but what opposes it is the blatant handholding through tooltips for what seems like every button interaction right when you might’ve forgotten about them and narrated hints if you’ve been on a puzzle for too long. A regression from the expressive nature the team’s previous works lead you to solutions with but it’s fair enough for this one considering it’s by far their longest.
Ultimately, Team Ico, genDESIGN, whatever, their games are about relationships. Relationships that can be rife with conflict yet continue, but also that these relationships may form with a person or being you might not have expected. Whether your actions are to look after yourself or out of sympathy, it becomes an experience as invaluable and life defining as any other for the player’s character, if not more. Time and time again The Last Guardian delivers on these ideas in the story it seeks to tell and through its mechanics and systems that flourish by themselves, with enough care that it reframes the entire concept of AI and companions in the medium. Knowing the challenge of executing this game’s goal and “development hell” where release was only prolonged from Sony’s decision to move it to the PS4 from the PS3’s arcane architecture potentially warding off devs, it’s tough to tell if this will end up as influential as its predecessors. But that only stands to make it all the more special. I’ll miss you, Trico.
And it’s not in the way that Trico will ignore what you tell them to do, but that the response is not instant. There’s no list of specific commands you can give to the beast, you can’t directly take control of it, and it won’t teleport to you if you’re too far. You can point to where you want it to go and call out if you want it to come to you. What this can promote in the dense setting of the Nest is situations that can make it hard for Trico to know exactly what you want, jumping ruined column to ruined column over a quiet fog is no problem, but getting on that first column might be. Chances are it was on the player for not positioning themselves clearly enough for Trico to see and hear, but sometimes it can be the creature’s fault. Every bit of gameplay alongside it becomes more than a choice to execute, it’s a moment for you and Trico to learn from, and this takes a unique weight off when you can get past an obstacle because you know you both worked through it together.
What starts as two creatures functioning on survival instinct becomes mutual understanding that codependence would be necessary for this survival, and eventually, a connection that’s so much more. Trico needs you to feed it barrels, to take spears out of its body and tend to the wounds, to take out stained glass eyes it’s afraid of and you need Trico to fight off the Nest’s guards, to climb and jump to places you’re too small to reach, and to dive deep to where you’re not able to swim. Interactions like these teem throughout the game on a micro and macro level, but there come to be gestures of affection like certain spots you can pet eliciting more endeared reactions, which in turn becomes less required as Trico starts to calm down quicker from your presence alone, or Trico perching up against where you went waiting for you to come back. It all forms a bond so deep that it’s motivating beyond the dissonant nature of the checkpoint and failstate to keep going, to avoid death lest my big feathery buddy be left behind.
From the boy’s perspective, it’s certainly the most minimalist amount of interaction a player’s had with the world of a Team Ico game. Puzzles are so abstracted that solutions more often come down to observations around the room or in timing than unique engine interactions and the little occasional engagement with combat you have is pointing to where you want Trico to shoot lightning. Of course, this props up the importance of the beast but it also makes the Nest that much more convincing as ruins reclaimed by nature’s elements as well as your place in it with other inhabitants. Previously Ico would have to concede to more gamey puzzle objects and Shadow of the Colossus plopped a HUD on the screen for health and stamina. Advancements in a purer gameplay direction are welcome, but what opposes it is the blatant handholding through tooltips for what seems like every button interaction right when you might’ve forgotten about them and narrated hints if you’ve been on a puzzle for too long. A regression from the expressive nature the team’s previous works lead you to solutions with but it’s fair enough for this one considering it’s by far their longest.
Ultimately, Team Ico, genDESIGN, whatever, their games are about relationships. Relationships that can be rife with conflict yet continue, but also that these relationships may form with a person or being you might not have expected. Whether your actions are to look after yourself or out of sympathy, it becomes an experience as invaluable and life defining as any other for the player’s character, if not more. Time and time again The Last Guardian delivers on these ideas in the story it seeks to tell and through its mechanics and systems that flourish by themselves, with enough care that it reframes the entire concept of AI and companions in the medium. Knowing the challenge of executing this game’s goal and “development hell” where release was only prolonged from Sony’s decision to move it to the PS4 from the PS3’s arcane architecture potentially warding off devs, it’s tough to tell if this will end up as influential as its predecessors. But that only stands to make it all the more special. I’ll miss you, Trico.
My cat does this
a game that is inherently frustrating to play, but somehow that frustration is what allows for the core relationship to feel so incredibly strong. it is also maybe the coolest environment I have ever explored in a game.
Team ico never misses. Of course it's an another flawed ambitious masterpiece. Yes, their design philosophy is also not everyone's cup of tea. But they are the rare kind of game developers. Experimental and original design kind.
Of course experimental type is not everyone's cup of tea I get that. But the amount of work and sweat that gone to this game is simply amazing.
Probably Fumito Ueda, started his ideas from subverting his Ico philosophy. What if we are in need of defending rather than we are the one that defend? What if the only thing we can do is running away and ordering our guardian to defend us? How that would work? And for that, he combined his Shadow of the Colossus climbing to animals mechanic with Ico's environmental puzzles. Lastly added it's own thing, an animal AI.
Of course Ai focused gameplay have it's benefits and harms. At times you feel proud with seeing how the ai uses what you order them, but other times you want to delete the game immediately because ai didn't understand what you meant 10th time. But it wasn't mostly a problem for me other than some small moments. Because if you take your time and make sure your animal sees you and what you pointing, it works. At times he jumped wrong things or climbed wrong things just like Yorda from Ico. But like Ico, if you be patient and not spam the order button, you won't have much problem. At times I just wanted to get a move on quickly so of course I had some frustrating moments with the Ai but not as many as the other players it seems.
My real problem with last guardian is, it's inability to present what is interactable or climbable and what is not. At times, you think it's impossible to order for your animal to jump to a really damn high tower yet he can or sometimes he can't? Or not just that, for us, climbable surfaces are not clear and it just works to send to us our death. Or it's tendency to hide it's interactable to a place the camera can't immediately see(tbh It was on Ico too but it's much more in here). I clearly remember there were 4 times that I had stuck.
One is, after the bridge scene and trying to return to the surface. At there, hiding near the minecarts, there is a separate way to go and for some reason it's pitch dark. After getting stuck for half hour, I had the brilliant idea of upping the brightness and when I saw the pathway I wanted to strangle the person that tested it's lighting.
Next one is, after falling to the water because of the blue liquid cauldron, we need to call our animal to climb it's tail with pushing and climbing a box in the water, but for some reason he didn't put his tail or I didn't understand where to call him so he can drop it's tail. After struggling for another half hour, he just did
(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻
Other one is, in the swim diving puzzle 2, I didn't realize how to get up to the lever(tbh it was my mistake and it was a brilliant puzzle with using water physics). But the reason I am stuck is, at the top, there is a rock formation that looks like jumpable with our pet Trico. I thought I should get something for getting up to the lever so I tried to order to Trico and I got frustrated that ai doesn't do what it supposed to do. But it was actually not interactable...
¯\_ ಠ _ ಠ _/¯
Last one is the final sphere puzzle, firstly game don't give any clues to how that sphere works(what makes it grow faster or slower??) and not just that, it doesn't even present clearly that it's upper surface part is climbable. It's the only part that I looked up a walkthrough for and unfortunately for that reason it kinda left a bad taste in my mind
ತ_ʖತ
Also I have some small nitpicks
Why start game loading screen is just the concept art rather than something from inside the world? It's strange because it takes away from the feeling that you are going to see a mystic world with just showing it's concepts super clearly. I mean even a black screen with symbols on it like the death screen can work better in this case.
Also main menu font is boring.
Another one is, it's insistency on showing button prompts to your face. If it's the reason for the lack of clear implications for objects if it's a interactable or not. It wasn't a great choice.
Lastly, our pet Trico's hungry grumblings if you wait in a place for too long is a bit annoying.
It can look a bit negative but it's time to get positive. Game have outstanding amount of puzzle variety. Climbing puzzles, enemy puzzles, box puzzles, physics puzzles, stealth puzzles, platforming puzzles etc. And when the game mechanics come together without failing, you get an awesome time. Also it's actiony cutscene moments are fantastic as well. You can move in most of them so I can't even say they are cutscenes it's still gameplay! Also when it comes to world building and telling a story, last guardian have the most amount compared to the older team ico's titles!
So yeah, this is a team ico game. At times awesome at times clunky at times polarizing but a rare kind of original work. If you are a patient person and can stay patient even in the face of clunkiness play this. But if you are the kind of that likes action, fasty gameplay and hates escorting an ai, don't play it. But know that this is a rare original work that is bit of a dirty diamond. It's shines when the water applied patiently and correctly after all.
Of course experimental type is not everyone's cup of tea I get that. But the amount of work and sweat that gone to this game is simply amazing.
Probably Fumito Ueda, started his ideas from subverting his Ico philosophy. What if we are in need of defending rather than we are the one that defend? What if the only thing we can do is running away and ordering our guardian to defend us? How that would work? And for that, he combined his Shadow of the Colossus climbing to animals mechanic with Ico's environmental puzzles. Lastly added it's own thing, an animal AI.
Of course Ai focused gameplay have it's benefits and harms. At times you feel proud with seeing how the ai uses what you order them, but other times you want to delete the game immediately because ai didn't understand what you meant 10th time. But it wasn't mostly a problem for me other than some small moments. Because if you take your time and make sure your animal sees you and what you pointing, it works. At times he jumped wrong things or climbed wrong things just like Yorda from Ico. But like Ico, if you be patient and not spam the order button, you won't have much problem. At times I just wanted to get a move on quickly so of course I had some frustrating moments with the Ai but not as many as the other players it seems.
My real problem with last guardian is, it's inability to present what is interactable or climbable and what is not. At times, you think it's impossible to order for your animal to jump to a really damn high tower yet he can or sometimes he can't? Or not just that, for us, climbable surfaces are not clear and it just works to send to us our death. Or it's tendency to hide it's interactable to a place the camera can't immediately see(tbh It was on Ico too but it's much more in here). I clearly remember there were 4 times that I had stuck.
One is, after the bridge scene and trying to return to the surface. At there, hiding near the minecarts, there is a separate way to go and for some reason it's pitch dark. After getting stuck for half hour, I had the brilliant idea of upping the brightness and when I saw the pathway I wanted to strangle the person that tested it's lighting.
Next one is, after falling to the water because of the blue liquid cauldron, we need to call our animal to climb it's tail with pushing and climbing a box in the water, but for some reason he didn't put his tail or I didn't understand where to call him so he can drop it's tail. After struggling for another half hour, he just did
(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻
Other one is, in the swim diving puzzle 2, I didn't realize how to get up to the lever(tbh it was my mistake and it was a brilliant puzzle with using water physics). But the reason I am stuck is, at the top, there is a rock formation that looks like jumpable with our pet Trico. I thought I should get something for getting up to the lever so I tried to order to Trico and I got frustrated that ai doesn't do what it supposed to do. But it was actually not interactable...
¯\_ ಠ _ ಠ _/¯
Last one is the final sphere puzzle, firstly game don't give any clues to how that sphere works(what makes it grow faster or slower??) and not just that, it doesn't even present clearly that it's upper surface part is climbable. It's the only part that I looked up a walkthrough for and unfortunately for that reason it kinda left a bad taste in my mind
ತ_ʖತ
Also I have some small nitpicks
Why start game loading screen is just the concept art rather than something from inside the world? It's strange because it takes away from the feeling that you are going to see a mystic world with just showing it's concepts super clearly. I mean even a black screen with symbols on it like the death screen can work better in this case.
Also main menu font is boring.
Another one is, it's insistency on showing button prompts to your face. If it's the reason for the lack of clear implications for objects if it's a interactable or not. It wasn't a great choice.
Lastly, our pet Trico's hungry grumblings if you wait in a place for too long is a bit annoying.
It can look a bit negative but it's time to get positive. Game have outstanding amount of puzzle variety. Climbing puzzles, enemy puzzles, box puzzles, physics puzzles, stealth puzzles, platforming puzzles etc. And when the game mechanics come together without failing, you get an awesome time. Also it's actiony cutscene moments are fantastic as well. You can move in most of them so I can't even say they are cutscenes it's still gameplay! Also when it comes to world building and telling a story, last guardian have the most amount compared to the older team ico's titles!
So yeah, this is a team ico game. At times awesome at times clunky at times polarizing but a rare kind of original work. If you are a patient person and can stay patient even in the face of clunkiness play this. But if you are the kind of that likes action, fasty gameplay and hates escorting an ai, don't play it. But know that this is a rare original work that is bit of a dirty diamond. It's shines when the water applied patiently and correctly after all.
This is a game that's, in my opinion, a would-be masterpiece hurt by minor problems that are turned major by being so vital to the experience.
I get that there's something to be said about the loss of subtlety with narration compared to Ico and SotC. At first it threw me off a little too, but really it's not nearly as bad as it initially leads you to believe. There's a lot of narration early on to help ease the player into its environment based puzzle platforming, something that shouldn't be new for an Ico or SotC player but will take some time getting used to for a first timer. These games might follow a template that games like Uncharted began to use in the 2010's but the difference is how it's based less on momentum and more on intuition. The Last Guardian isn't going to lay out a pathway that's plainly apparent to follow. Much like in Ico, it uses simplicity as a strength rather than a crutch for lazy design.
When it comes down to it, level design is very basic but you have to pay attention to your environment to find anything that appears off. And this isn't finding the colour coded ledge or rock to climb, though sometimes it may be. That's actually what makes this game so clever. Very infrequently that will be the way forward and it'll condition you to think about the environment like that, and it's not always the wrong approach. You're truly rummaging through dinghy remains of a kingdom of titanic proportions, attempting to find anything that will help you or Trico forward.
Which brings me to the complaint everyone has, that is Trico himself. I hate to agree with the majority here, cause the visual storytelling of Trico and the boy is truly something special. And it's why I have to criticise the volatile AI and control of Trico. While I do think it's not quite as bad as people say most of the time, it's bad enough in some areas that it can make the game miserable to play. Trying to get this bastard to swim underwater unironically took me 15 minutes. Just think about that for a second. This game is pretty slow paced and a heavily atmospheric reliant experience, but imagine playing any other game where you reach an underwater gate you have to swim through to progress and it takes you 15 fucking minutes whether because the mechanics are so cripplingly problematic or because someone takes the controller out of your hand and counts every tedious second in your face.
Thing is, I get not everyone will have the same trouble with swimming that I did. But if it's not the swimming sections then it's trying to get Trico to find a platform to jump onto, or making his tail come towards you so you can climb it, or Trico just jumping all over the place just cause he feels like it. One time he actually got lost and I didn't even know where he went, it took me like 5 minutes to find him.
It sounds almost funny and akin to something like having a pet of your own, and to an extent I can understand why some people even defend this when I look at it like that. It is true that Trico becomes more responsive as the game goes on and it's true that when he cooperates with you this game is really awesome. I'm more of an Ico guy than SotC so I love the increased focus on platforming and level design. It's just that I can't ignore that the moment Trico's being an asshole and making the process take WAY longer than it needs to I'm taken out of the experience. In that sense it's like a real pet being obnoxious and you're trying to get its attention or calm it down. I love him so much and I love the bond you create over this journey but god he frustrated me to no end sometimes.
A more generic criticism I have which would be easily fixable with a good port (or emulation) is this game runs like ass. It barely meets the stable 30fps cut most of the time. And yeah, I get Ico and SotC aren't immune to this either, but it doesn't matter nearly as much in those. Maybe I'm being a purist here, but Ico's dated albeit charming visuals don't need that improved framerate. It'd be a whole lot better sure, but none of the platforming or combat demands enough of you for it to affect your skill expression. SotC I can contest that this criticism is equally relevant, though even so it still hits 60fps pretty often. The distinction here is that The Last Guardian dips below 30fps often. VERY often. There's a few sections in the last third of the game that probably dip down to 10fps and one of them requires you to jump platform to platform to avoid an instant death. It's not hard, but it feels like hell to play in that moment.
Anyway I'm not gonna go too much further into this, I just wanted to get this off my chest. I really did like this game and I'm super happy to have completed the Team ICO trilogy. It's just sad that this game should be fucking amazing. The things that hold it back aren't the level design, the combat or the soundtrack. It's things that could've even been patched. That's why this game needs a port so badly. Give it an unlimited framerate treatment and let the fans fix the AI with a mod. Make that happen and this may be my favourite Team ICO game.
I get that there's something to be said about the loss of subtlety with narration compared to Ico and SotC. At first it threw me off a little too, but really it's not nearly as bad as it initially leads you to believe. There's a lot of narration early on to help ease the player into its environment based puzzle platforming, something that shouldn't be new for an Ico or SotC player but will take some time getting used to for a first timer. These games might follow a template that games like Uncharted began to use in the 2010's but the difference is how it's based less on momentum and more on intuition. The Last Guardian isn't going to lay out a pathway that's plainly apparent to follow. Much like in Ico, it uses simplicity as a strength rather than a crutch for lazy design.
When it comes down to it, level design is very basic but you have to pay attention to your environment to find anything that appears off. And this isn't finding the colour coded ledge or rock to climb, though sometimes it may be. That's actually what makes this game so clever. Very infrequently that will be the way forward and it'll condition you to think about the environment like that, and it's not always the wrong approach. You're truly rummaging through dinghy remains of a kingdom of titanic proportions, attempting to find anything that will help you or Trico forward.
Which brings me to the complaint everyone has, that is Trico himself. I hate to agree with the majority here, cause the visual storytelling of Trico and the boy is truly something special. And it's why I have to criticise the volatile AI and control of Trico. While I do think it's not quite as bad as people say most of the time, it's bad enough in some areas that it can make the game miserable to play. Trying to get this bastard to swim underwater unironically took me 15 minutes. Just think about that for a second. This game is pretty slow paced and a heavily atmospheric reliant experience, but imagine playing any other game where you reach an underwater gate you have to swim through to progress and it takes you 15 fucking minutes whether because the mechanics are so cripplingly problematic or because someone takes the controller out of your hand and counts every tedious second in your face.
Thing is, I get not everyone will have the same trouble with swimming that I did. But if it's not the swimming sections then it's trying to get Trico to find a platform to jump onto, or making his tail come towards you so you can climb it, or Trico just jumping all over the place just cause he feels like it. One time he actually got lost and I didn't even know where he went, it took me like 5 minutes to find him.
It sounds almost funny and akin to something like having a pet of your own, and to an extent I can understand why some people even defend this when I look at it like that. It is true that Trico becomes more responsive as the game goes on and it's true that when he cooperates with you this game is really awesome. I'm more of an Ico guy than SotC so I love the increased focus on platforming and level design. It's just that I can't ignore that the moment Trico's being an asshole and making the process take WAY longer than it needs to I'm taken out of the experience. In that sense it's like a real pet being obnoxious and you're trying to get its attention or calm it down. I love him so much and I love the bond you create over this journey but god he frustrated me to no end sometimes.
A more generic criticism I have which would be easily fixable with a good port (or emulation) is this game runs like ass. It barely meets the stable 30fps cut most of the time. And yeah, I get Ico and SotC aren't immune to this either, but it doesn't matter nearly as much in those. Maybe I'm being a purist here, but Ico's dated albeit charming visuals don't need that improved framerate. It'd be a whole lot better sure, but none of the platforming or combat demands enough of you for it to affect your skill expression. SotC I can contest that this criticism is equally relevant, though even so it still hits 60fps pretty often. The distinction here is that The Last Guardian dips below 30fps often. VERY often. There's a few sections in the last third of the game that probably dip down to 10fps and one of them requires you to jump platform to platform to avoid an instant death. It's not hard, but it feels like hell to play in that moment.
Anyway I'm not gonna go too much further into this, I just wanted to get this off my chest. I really did like this game and I'm super happy to have completed the Team ICO trilogy. It's just sad that this game should be fucking amazing. The things that hold it back aren't the level design, the combat or the soundtrack. It's things that could've even been patched. That's why this game needs a port so badly. Give it an unlimited framerate treatment and let the fans fix the AI with a mod. Make that happen and this may be my favourite Team ICO game.
Stray was pretty good, but this is the actual best game for cat owners.
we regret to inform you that trico failed his obedience test and has been deemed unfit to become a service animal
A bit late on this one. As a huge fan of his work, I can confidently say that The Last Guardian has scratched the itch of playing a Fumito Ueda game that ICO didn't. While ICO was an important landmark in gaming, it definitely felt like a downgrade from Shadow of The Colossus (which I played first), but The Last Guardian brought back that magical feeling that I was missing so much.
The game follows the journey of a young boy and his unlikely companion, a giant hybrid of a bird and a mammal named Trico ("Terekr"?), centering around their bond as they work together to overcome obstacles throughout their adventure. The gameplay mechanics emphasize the importance of communication and trust, as the player must build a relationship with Trico in order to progress. And this is one of the most impressive aspects of the game, effectively capturing the nuances of companionship and friendship, from the initial hesitancy and mistrust to the eventual deep bond that develops between the two. The gameplay involves a mix of exploration, platforming, and puzzle elements, all while the player builds a bond with Trico by interacting with him. As the game progresses, you learn more about the history of the world they're in as they navigate the ruins of an ancient civilization, fighting off hostile enemies and searching for a way to escape this mysterious place.
For anyone looking to recreate the awe of playing the original SoTC on the PS2, this game does a fantastic job of immersing you in its beautifully crafted environments. Ueda's game artistry is still unmatched, featuring the similar aesthetic and inspired architecture that any SoTC fan loves, with an attention to detail in lightning and atmosphere. I just can't express enough how stunning it looks. Also, I have to mention the soundtrack. While Kow Otani is certainly missed, Takeshi Furukawa is a fine replecement, successfully capturing the scale, wonder, and mystery of the game's world.
Now, it wouldn't be an Ueda game without its usual jankiness. I personally didn't have much trouble with the controls, but the camera angles and the unresponsiveness of Trico did frustrate me at times. Sometimes he would take a really long time to execute a command, ignore it or plain do the opposite. You would point forward, he would go backwards. You would issue him to jump, and he would whine even though it's clear he should be able to. I did find this issue is accentuated if you are on his head though, so consider not commanding him from there. And while before I mentioned how great the game looks, the graphics on the base PS4 are maybe a little too good, because it really struggles to keep up. The fps was really inconsistent throughout and there were many slowdowns. Specially during the best moments of the game, so it did hurt the experience a little. I doubt most people are still stuck with the base PS4, so this is probably a non-issue.
Overall, The Last Guardian is a beautiful unique game, and a great example of a triple A game that is inventive and pushes the boundaries of what is possible in gaming. It might be flawed, but it's a nice change from the usual Ubisoft clones that triple A devs are so keen to these days.
★★★½ – Great ✅
The game follows the journey of a young boy and his unlikely companion, a giant hybrid of a bird and a mammal named Trico ("Terekr"?), centering around their bond as they work together to overcome obstacles throughout their adventure. The gameplay mechanics emphasize the importance of communication and trust, as the player must build a relationship with Trico in order to progress. And this is one of the most impressive aspects of the game, effectively capturing the nuances of companionship and friendship, from the initial hesitancy and mistrust to the eventual deep bond that develops between the two. The gameplay involves a mix of exploration, platforming, and puzzle elements, all while the player builds a bond with Trico by interacting with him. As the game progresses, you learn more about the history of the world they're in as they navigate the ruins of an ancient civilization, fighting off hostile enemies and searching for a way to escape this mysterious place.
For anyone looking to recreate the awe of playing the original SoTC on the PS2, this game does a fantastic job of immersing you in its beautifully crafted environments. Ueda's game artistry is still unmatched, featuring the similar aesthetic and inspired architecture that any SoTC fan loves, with an attention to detail in lightning and atmosphere. I just can't express enough how stunning it looks. Also, I have to mention the soundtrack. While Kow Otani is certainly missed, Takeshi Furukawa is a fine replecement, successfully capturing the scale, wonder, and mystery of the game's world.
Now, it wouldn't be an Ueda game without its usual jankiness. I personally didn't have much trouble with the controls, but the camera angles and the unresponsiveness of Trico did frustrate me at times. Sometimes he would take a really long time to execute a command, ignore it or plain do the opposite. You would point forward, he would go backwards. You would issue him to jump, and he would whine even though it's clear he should be able to. I did find this issue is accentuated if you are on his head though, so consider not commanding him from there. And while before I mentioned how great the game looks, the graphics on the base PS4 are maybe a little too good, because it really struggles to keep up. The fps was really inconsistent throughout and there were many slowdowns. Specially during the best moments of the game, so it did hurt the experience a little. I doubt most people are still stuck with the base PS4, so this is probably a non-issue.
Overall, The Last Guardian is a beautiful unique game, and a great example of a triple A game that is inventive and pushes the boundaries of what is possible in gaming. It might be flawed, but it's a nice change from the usual Ubisoft clones that triple A devs are so keen to these days.
★★★½ – Great ✅
heaven, hell, heaven again
If Andrei Rublev becomes praying through film, teaching us how to bear the cruelty of its passages, The Last Guardian feels like a harsh meditation in which kindness is a piecemeal revelation as the only way to get through. Not as explicitly as an introspection you can hear from the person whose faith is challenged over and over, but even more confidently lies in the power of experience.
The game almost doesn't speak about any monument you're in contact with to the point that dialogues, most of them, feel very redundant because we are not supposed to get too much in the realm of representation. In one way or another, the game named and thought its narrative elements to steal imagination from our control, and that's why dream-like seems to be the proper way to describe it.
Honestly, I believe the unarticulated emotional vibrancy of this game is almost too much, and sometimes it needs the cliche appeal to distract us from the weight of nest's atmosphere. In the last segments (what we usually call a "Final Boss") the space almost drowns, but the peaks of motion, power and narrative intensity that follows are all as close to perfection as any visual media can get.
SOTC definitely handles better the darker themes, making it feel more grounded by giving a greater level of control to the player, but nothing conveys as much life and as much death attached to its gestures so well.
If Andrei Rublev becomes praying through film, teaching us how to bear the cruelty of its passages, The Last Guardian feels like a harsh meditation in which kindness is a piecemeal revelation as the only way to get through. Not as explicitly as an introspection you can hear from the person whose faith is challenged over and over, but even more confidently lies in the power of experience.
The game almost doesn't speak about any monument you're in contact with to the point that dialogues, most of them, feel very redundant because we are not supposed to get too much in the realm of representation. In one way or another, the game named and thought its narrative elements to steal imagination from our control, and that's why dream-like seems to be the proper way to describe it.
Honestly, I believe the unarticulated emotional vibrancy of this game is almost too much, and sometimes it needs the cliche appeal to distract us from the weight of nest's atmosphere. In the last segments (what we usually call a "Final Boss") the space almost drowns, but the peaks of motion, power and narrative intensity that follows are all as close to perfection as any visual media can get.
SOTC definitely handles better the darker themes, making it feel more grounded by giving a greater level of control to the player, but nothing conveys as much life and as much death attached to its gestures so well.
Gigantic fantasy creatures are my kryptonite
An incredibly unique one-of-a-kind game that, upon release, showed me just how impactful video games can be and gave me a completely new perspective on them.
Trico is nothing short of a wonderful programming achievement and I can’t even begin to imagine what a pain he was for the crew. He truly feels like a living breathing creature and is undoubtedly the heart and soul of the game. He is also no where near as difficult to control as people claim he is. Just don’t spam 20 different commands and then expect him to know what you want him to do.
The only thing stopping my from giving this 5 stars is, like with all of Ueda’s games; the camera and controls are fucking ass sometimes. There’s so much grandiose in this game to look at; huge, towering architecture and majestic beasts, but most of the time you can’t cause you’re busy having a fight with the wandering camera. I at least understand the camera complications since big portions of this game take place in narrow corridors with a big ass dog-bird obstructing 80% of your view, so I can see why they struggled with this. The controls though I feel definitely could have had some quick reworking before release that would have made the experience a little smoother.
Overall a brilliant game that overcame development hell, with a truly emotional centre elevated by it’s outstandingly grand soundtrack, and an ending that is as heart wrenching as it is memorable. All these years later, it stays with me and still makes me weep. People were too hard on this.
An incredibly unique one-of-a-kind game that, upon release, showed me just how impactful video games can be and gave me a completely new perspective on them.
Trico is nothing short of a wonderful programming achievement and I can’t even begin to imagine what a pain he was for the crew. He truly feels like a living breathing creature and is undoubtedly the heart and soul of the game. He is also no where near as difficult to control as people claim he is. Just don’t spam 20 different commands and then expect him to know what you want him to do.
The only thing stopping my from giving this 5 stars is, like with all of Ueda’s games; the camera and controls are fucking ass sometimes. There’s so much grandiose in this game to look at; huge, towering architecture and majestic beasts, but most of the time you can’t cause you’re busy having a fight with the wandering camera. I at least understand the camera complications since big portions of this game take place in narrow corridors with a big ass dog-bird obstructing 80% of your view, so I can see why they struggled with this. The controls though I feel definitely could have had some quick reworking before release that would have made the experience a little smoother.
Overall a brilliant game that overcame development hell, with a truly emotional centre elevated by it’s outstandingly grand soundtrack, and an ending that is as heart wrenching as it is memorable. All these years later, it stays with me and still makes me weep. People were too hard on this.
Estamos a todo momento caminhando em trilhas de convenções sociais, no modo como nos comunicamos, como andamos, como comemos. A verdade é que mesmo quando achamos que estamos fazendo algo totalmente inesperado e inusitado, muitas vezes ainda estamos seguindo algum tipo de convenção.
Você pode dizer que não liga para regras e normas, mas elas estão afetando o seu comportamento, mesmo que seja indicando quais caminhos você não vai seguir. Por isso, mesmo que The Last Guardian seja um jogo único, fico na dúvida se ele está quebrando com convenções de video games.
É claro que não é comum ter um jogo cuja principal mecânica está relacionada com lidar com um animal de comportamento realista e que não obedece direito os seus comandos. Alguma coisa dentro de mim diz que uma hora ou outra um jogo como esse iria surgir.
No entanto, independentemente se o jogo está desafiando convenções ou não, eu fico feliz que existam jogos que me façam pensar nisso, que existam pessoas com coragem de desenvolver ideias pouco usuais. Talvez mais importante do que fazer algo, sem sombras de dúvidas, totalmente novo e inesperado, é o exercício de nunca deixar de tentar chegar nesse nível.
The Last Guardian não é um jogo ótimo, mas é um jogo que traz algumas esperanças de que vale a pena tentar lutar contra convenções para fazer algo único. Talvez, com ideias desse tipo, um dia consigamos chegar realmente a quebrar algumas regras e convenções e trilhar outros caminhos, melhores caminhos, diferentes de tudo o que já vimos até então ou que um dia esperaríamos ver.
Você pode dizer que não liga para regras e normas, mas elas estão afetando o seu comportamento, mesmo que seja indicando quais caminhos você não vai seguir. Por isso, mesmo que The Last Guardian seja um jogo único, fico na dúvida se ele está quebrando com convenções de video games.
É claro que não é comum ter um jogo cuja principal mecânica está relacionada com lidar com um animal de comportamento realista e que não obedece direito os seus comandos. Alguma coisa dentro de mim diz que uma hora ou outra um jogo como esse iria surgir.
No entanto, independentemente se o jogo está desafiando convenções ou não, eu fico feliz que existam jogos que me façam pensar nisso, que existam pessoas com coragem de desenvolver ideias pouco usuais. Talvez mais importante do que fazer algo, sem sombras de dúvidas, totalmente novo e inesperado, é o exercício de nunca deixar de tentar chegar nesse nível.
The Last Guardian não é um jogo ótimo, mas é um jogo que traz algumas esperanças de que vale a pena tentar lutar contra convenções para fazer algo único. Talvez, com ideias desse tipo, um dia consigamos chegar realmente a quebrar algumas regras e convenções e trilhar outros caminhos, melhores caminhos, diferentes de tudo o que já vimos até então ou que um dia esperaríamos ver.
I know many love this game as much or more than ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. I thought it sucked sooooo bad :D No, that would be too extreme. I liked the world, graphics and how the relationship between the player and the doggo develops. But the controls and camera were so uuuuuunbelievably shitty, I couldn't believe the game was released in this state. Every second of gameplay was torture for me. As a result, I found it difficult to enjoy the beautiful story and creative world. That's a shame, because this is where the game is really strong. Unfortunately, it plays like ass :/
the weakest team ico game, so far at least. equally contains some of the most beautiful awe-striking visuals and potent emotional moments ive ever seen in a game to some of the clunkiest most frustrating shit ive ever dealt with. trico is an absolute miracle of programming, that i can forgive even when he has his bouts of patience-grinding unresponsiveness. the connection established between him and the boy you play as is quite well handled, though imo not felt as deeply as ICO or SOTC simply because those are beautiful wordless relationships. the environments and puzzle-solving are stellar, although the 'hint' system is really immersion breaking and kind of goes against what uedas games should be all about. its length is another issue, many sections just kind of repeat the same ideas and tension and they add up for a game which is fairly repetitive and long for it. i dont find the music nearly as memorable, either. overall, a fantastic game in many aspects, but one not without its frustrations and weird nooks. also, FUCK THE SOLDIER THINGS JESUS CHRIST