The Last Guardian

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JaySevenZero
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The Last Guardian

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Here's where you can leave your thoughts regarding The Last Guardian for possible inclusion in the podcast when it's recorded.
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Jobobonobo
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Jobobonobo »

Now this is a game where I am all over the place on. When I first played it I could not get enough of it. Trico really is a beautifully animated creature that you can't help but like and it exudes just the right amount of cuteness and intimidation. Sometimes I would put the controller down and just observe Trico washing himself in puddles and was entranced by his behaviour. Puzzles were really satisfying to solve for the most part. I loved the fact that the boy is massively vulnerable to the suits of armour that patrol the area. Having to solve a puzzle while avoiding their gaze were easily some of the tensest moments in the game and the sense of relief you get when Trico gets to save you from imminent kidnapping was immense. Things were good.....

And then I got around halfway through the game and a lot of problems crept in for me. The few barrel puzzles where you need to throw them in a certain place in order to feed Trico were absolutely misery for me. The finicky controls and atrocious camera in those sections just completely drained my enthusiasm for continuing with this game. I seriously would not touch it for days because I dreaded going through this exercise in torture. But I was determined to finish it and eventually, I returned to it, finished the barrel section and was ready to enjoy myself again. Then came the underwater sections. Holy moly, the controls for swimming are easily the WORST I have ever come across in a 3D game. The boy is about as easy to control as a lorry balancing on a rope. Just getting him to turn was teeth pulling. At this stage Trico was starting to grate. Just dive in the water so we can push ahead! His stubbornness could be endearing at times but here I was really ready to just never play the damn thing again. Then there is a section where you are stuck in a cage and Super Monkey Ball this ain't! Again, turning and getting it to go up a step was a stiff and completely joyless exercise. The controls were seriously a huge issue in this game and I am amazed that in the decade that this game was in development that they did not give such an important part of gameplay a hell of a lot more polish. At numerous times I was contemplating whether to pack it in but like Trico my stubbornness prevented me from letting this game defeat me and I sweared and gritted my teeth through all these chores. I was committed now to get this over with.

But then the final third of the game happens and I am immediately sucked back in. The boy's relationship with Trico is a real heart melter and there are moments where my eyes did tear up a bit! The music is also a thing of pure beauty and is expertly placed throughout the game at just the right moments. I adapted to the controls and camera and the worst parts of the game are behind me. Now the story really gets going and I could not put the game down, a far cry from where I was a few hours ago in the game! Story and atmosphere is where this game really does shine.
That such a game could produce such contradictory feelings of love and contempt throughout its playtime makes The Last Guardian far from a perfect game but one where I nevertheless was glad that I got to finish and experience everything it had to offer. It was worth wading through the muck to reach the gold at the end.
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Quiet Paul
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Quiet Paul »

Having only played and completed The Last Guardian a month ago, I feel it’s still kind of fresh in my mind and there’s no shortage of praise I can fling at this delightful journey through the beautiful valley filled with ancient buildings, relics and armoured enemies. Not to mention big feathery, furry... DogCatMonkeyBird creatures.

Having just moved to a new home in December 2017, I had a bit of free time to sit and play a few games which is rare these days beyond an hour or two after work before the girlfriend gets in. I received TLG for Christmas and in my two week winter break hammered through it over the course of two sittings. While I probably didn’t get the most out of it I could, for what time I had spent with it was the most enjoyable, cute, aggravating and heart breaking experience I have had with a game in some time. The PS4 is now sitting in the spare room (future games room!) with the boxes and ever ascending washing piles at the minute so a quick re-visit is off the cards for now but I might sneak it out for another go closer to the time of the podcast.

My anticipation for the game had gone down a similar route to that of Half Life 3 and the next Tool album, many years ago. For it to then pop up and go “Hey! Remember me? I’ve been released now!” Was a surprise but my interest wasn’t really there anymore. I decided to ask for it for Christmas since I knew it had dropped in price to around £24 at my local game shop and thought “Why not?”.

My enjoyment of the game started almost immediately. Seeing the graphics and artwork took me back to enjoying Team Ico’s previous works and revitalising my anticipation for this game. Meeting Trico for the first time and the interaction between the two characters seemed completely natural. Both trying to suss each other out, Trico barking at the boy and the boy (the player) trying to find an escape. Obviously Trico’s a big part of the game so it came down to ‘how to help the beast’ in his chained up and injured situation. I found the barrels to feed him, figured out how to remove the spears in him and let him stand up. Although this followed some footering around, it seemed like the natural progression. It felt like what I would do to help an injured animal in real life. Then both characters working together to scale a high-ish cliff to obtain the mirror shield that makes his tail shoot lightning in order to break his chains; this is when I began to progress to the more video gamey side of their relationship.

Of course you might think it’s all fictional anyway. I, however, never questioned what the dog/cat/monkey/bird looked like as it just felt like a normal animal to me; something you might find in the wild. Except it’s the size of a house. The beast never felt unnatural to me and I think that praise goes to everyone that helped piece him together from designers and artists to programmers and so on. Helped also by the fact that all the environments are so beautiful and well detailed that it was easy to feel immersed. There was also a sense of familiarity here -as previously mentioned- as it felt like I was in the same worlds that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus took place.

Watching Trico and his subtle nuances as he becomes more and more comfortable around the boy, let the relationship progress naturally. Trico will start to act like any animal who feels comfortable around you: sit on all fours; lift its back leg and scratch behind his ear; squat down and straighten his back before he jumps etc. I wonder if it’s different for other people but as a cat person he reminded me so much of a cat, more-so than anything else. If you’re a dog person would you see him as more of a dog?

One thing I haven’t mentioned is Trico’s eyes. The way they interact with darkness and light is stunning and how the colours change when it comes to his mood and the situation in front of him. You grow to understand when Trico is scared, happy, curious and hungry. Yup, hungry! The parts of the game when your progression is halted because Trico’s hungry are a bit of a momentum killer, however I remained invested and would treat it like any animal being hungry and stroppy. Although it did sometimes feel like little more than padding. Would the game lose marks if these segments were not included?

There was little to break immersion, however that bloody camera did its best to. There were points where the camera got stuck between two objects (usually Trico and a wall) and rather than the camera move out the way it would just black-screen. If Trico decided to stop right on the camera, it would black-screen up to even five or more seconds which can be annoying! Also, however much I love and adore that Trico has a mind of his own, the amount of times he persisted in ignoring me, looking the wrong way and accidentally pushing me off a cliff to my demise hindered things somewhat. Even in one situation I was on his head trying to ask him to jump. I did the jump animation and pointed where I wanted him to go and he inexplicably looked straight down at the same time and I fell right off his head and down a giant chasm. I did not find any of it too bad though, at times even quite charming, as I’ve had many past experiences of asking my old cat to do something, only for her to respond by tilting her head perplexed by my mouth noises. Animals are clumsy and will walk in front of a camera or step on you by accident. The only persistent issue that annoyed me was my inability to dismount things properly. Taking ages to get up and down Trico because the camera and/or controls were not letting me do what I wanted to. It has to be said though when I played this I had no internet in the new house, so if it was patched in an update I missed that so apologies if that’s the case!

As the story drives on with few cutscenes to mention and not a lot more spoken narrative, the boy and the beast grow together from comfortable around each other to lost without each other. It seems something bigger than them is buried within this land as blue-eyed ancient armours come to life to try and snatch the boy up. I was never taken through the door by the armours so I can’t say where they take him or what happens but they seem to only have two goals, capture the boy and kill the beast. Of course Trico is far too strong and will swipe them down and crush them with his beak. When the boy is in a room alone with the armours and Trico’s outside you can even hear him bark and scratch at the door to get in. The boy is not entirely hopeless though, wielding the ability to pull the heads off the armours to kill them and picking it up like a mighty warrior, meanwhile Trico has smashed ten enemies into dust in that time, which always merited a laugh.

One of my favourite parts during the journey was when it fooled me into thinking I’d made a mistake when I jumped in the hope that Trico would snatch me in his beak, only for him to lean down and bite at thin air, just missing me. “Ah feck...” I thought. Then suddenly his big furry tail swings around beneath me and as a last gasp attempt I punched the grab button and caught his tail at the last second. A moment when I genuinely sat back and went “phew!”. The game had swung from the boy rescuing the beast from his spears and chains to a hair raising last second save from a leap of faith. To be honest I loved just about every minute of the game, the hair raising moments, the breath taking moments and even the down-time moments when I can pat, rub and feed Trico. In the latter parts of the game, when they get in some serious trouble but come through in the end, Trico rubs his beak against the boy and it brings it home that these two are best of friends. Despite being taken over by the blue rays that force Trico to turn violent towards the boy a few times, they do have love for each other and a mutual understanding of each other.

In the end you discover the mysterious force controlling all the masked beasts and manipulating the world around it in order to survive; as well as discovering the truth of how this journey began. I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about it, other than angry with what it was using the other masked beasts for, and for the fact it had manipulated Trico. It was undoubtedly the ‘bad guy’ despite it being no more than a big pulsating ball surrounded by what looks like ferrofluid. Once again, cleverly made into a climbing puzzle much the same as you’ve faced throughout the game and in previous Team Ico games.

I haven’t really mentioned the gameplay itself because to be honest, it was the story and relationship between the two main characters that made this game as good as it is (for me). I’d argue that although a lot of the puzzles are forgettable and the sneaking past the armoured guards bits were too easy, TLG would be much less effective as a film. Playing the part of the boy, it’s you who takes care of the characters, wanders the scenery and takes in the spectacular moments the game has to offer.

I’ve also kept the intricate details of the story under covers for anyone reading this who hasn’t completed it but I need to write about this ending!
Spoiler: show
I spent most of the final cutscene chewing my nails and praying that both characters come out okay. I doubt I’ll be alone in saying this but; especially Trico. Having been mauled, beaten and de-tailed by the other ‘controlled’ beasts; Trico was on deaths door. The boy had been knocked out for the 5742578952nd time in the game and didn’t seem like waking up this time. I had a notion that the boy would probably make it but feared for Trico like he was my own pet! Attacked by the villagers after dropping off the boy he flies away, the boy wakes and the narrator finishes his tale. Credits roll and not a dry eye in sight.

I figured that I probably won’t play this again. Like some people with movies where an animal dies, they just can’t watch it again and I was the same with this. Watching some of the more scripted events in the game replay during the ending credits, I sat back gutted that I won’t know what happens with Trico.
I hoped beyond hope that there might be a scene after the credits, I gripped my fingers until they were white waiting for the end. Then it came. The boy, now a man, finds his mirror shield and holds it aloft just like he used to do for the beast. The camera zooms off into the sky and crosses seas and lands. Could he be alive? Seriously!? The camera zips through familiar ruins and down, way down into the dark cave where the whole journey began and you are left with a few seconds looking onto the pedestal where he was chained up at the start of the game and my theory at that moment was: here is where he came to die. How beautiful.
Until you hear a little growl and there... Right there! Peering through the darkness! Those eyes! You know they’re Trico’s! Followed by a quieter higher pitched growl and a tiny little pair of eyes beside them! It truely is a ‘happy ever after’ and I will play this game again! Absolutely stunning and one of my favourite games in this whole current generation of games.
The visuals, the music, the environments, the ability to grow such an attachment with a big animated computer game CatChicken; they all come together seamlessly and completing this game reminded me why I played games in the first place and still do to this day. In 30 years time I can pick up The Last Guardian HDDDDDD 12k superdooper graphics version; with a few technical and gameplay fixes and I will again be reminded why I still play games.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by KSubzero1000 »

It's been said that experiencing a good work of art is akin to having a profound conversation with the author. After playing The Last Guardian, I do feel like I've seen the world through Fumito Ueda's eyes, like I've shared his personal life philosophy for a little while, his... "Sense", as MGS4 would call it. And I feel like both of us have a very similar perspective on a lot of things.

The most astonishing thing about this game is that it commits to something that the overwhelming majority of games (including other narrative-driven puzzle games) would never even consider: It dares to not always make the protagonist the most important person in the room. It dares to portray a non-controllable deuteragonist with agency and a mind of his own. It dares to not pat the players on the back and tell them that the entire world revolves around them. It dares to not hide hollow rewards behind every corner. It dares to give a resounding "NO" to the ugly, selfish, narcissistic crowd.

It may come as a bit of a surprise to hear me say that I didn't have any major issue with the controls, considering how often I like to ramble on about mechanical systems and the technicalities of specific control schemes. And that's because the game never pretends to be an action game. It doesn't need responsive input methods because it wasn't made to be mastered. It doesn't view itself as a strict succession of challenges to be overcome. Its various rules aren't meant to be memorized and successfully applied in order to maximize efficiency and potential rewards. In fact, I consider the opaque nature of the majority of the game's systems to be almost a net positive. I approached each room with hesitation and apprehension, wondering where to go and if the upcoming events were going to play out in my favor. My grip was weak and my movements were imprecise because I was tired and scared from being lost in a hostile and unaccommodating world. In other words, my experience mirrored that of the Boy himself. Trico was this intimidating yet beautiful other person who I grew to love as my friend. He wasn't a tool to use, nor a pet to "own", nor a lifeless NPC to click on. And when I reached the epilogue, awkwardly shuffling around in my tear-soaked blanket, my first thought wasn't "What did I unlock?", or "I wonder what score I'll get?", or "When is the trophy gonna pop out?", or "Can't wait to try out some challenge run!". Because this game is not about mechanical mastery. It's not about being in control.

It's about Friendship. A friendship that starts off quite utilitarian at first, with both characters taking advantage of the skills that the other can provide. As time goes on and their journey progresses, you can see how genuine trust and affection starts to grow between the two, until it ultimately culminates in the highest, most precious and rarest form of friendship there is: the one that Aristotle calls "Friendship of the Good". The truly selfless stage when what is being cherished is not the materialistic gain (or biological imperative), nor the pleasure derived from proximity and interaction, but the core of the other person's being, to the point where either friend would gladly sacrifice their own life to save the other's. When you give without expecting anything in return. When the expectation of reciprocity and the balance of power fade away. When mutual respect reigns supreme. When you care about the other person not because of how it makes you feel, but because of who they are.

Needless to say, such friendship will only ever be experienced by a tiny fraction of any given population.

Humanity's interaction with sentient life forms deemed "Other" (both animals as well as other humans, of course) has always been deeply rooted in either Extermination, Exploitation or Subjugation. Two people standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to each other without either party trying to dominate or manipulate the other is a rare sight, let alone with a "lowly" non-human involved. As Professor X would put it: "Sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute". I think Ueda understood that when he made the choice of showing how the Boy's spiritual journey had only been made possible by leaving the pre-ordained confines of his native society, as well as coming to an abrupt end once he rejoined those very same. Not to mention how the other Tricos are seemingly being driven mad and violent as a direct result of the ominous subjugation they're under. This game cuts deep and addresses some incredibly powerful subject matter in a fascinating way. The puzzles and various challenges aren't the main course here, the main course is seeing Trico, stricken with anxiety and desperation after seeing the Boy being abducted before his eyes, courageously leap past the eye shields that terrify him in order to save his friend. When the game breaks its own rules not to unfairly cheat the player, but to underline its thematic weight. Ueda's signature "Design by Subtraction" has never been more fitting than it is here.

That isn't to say that the game wouldn't have benefited from some minor refinements in terms of visibility and collision detection, for example. I've had my fair share of frustrating moments while playing through it, but my solution was always to take a short break and come back to it once I had cleared my mind so as to not allow myself to be distracted from the core thematic. And it worked! I'll fully agree that this game is far from perfect, especially on the technical front, but the core concept is perfectly valid. The most important thing to nail was Trico's AI, and the developers absolutely succeeded at it, leaving behind all the other superfluous details. It wears its PS2-era inspirations on its sleeves and is all the better for it, in my opinion. I like my action games to be deep and responsive, but a contemplative and philosophical work like this one deserves to be judged according to different, more fitting criteria.

Hearing people criticize this game for not having an immediately responsive, subservient AI companion reminds me of people playing through MGS2 while shooting everybody in the face and cracking jokes about Raiden's feminine attributes, despite that game's obvious themes of pacifism and deconstruction of the player character. Perhaps the game was not made for you, but instead it was made because of you...?

I've long been a proponent of the idea that great games of every genre are usually defined by their strong sense of identity and commitment to their unique Voice. From 2D platformers and twin-stick shooters all the way to racing games, character-action games and narrative-driven RPGs, a unique Voice is always an asset, even if it may hurt a title's accessibility at first glance. The Last Guardian, for all its flaws, has a beautiful and powerful Voice. It is poetry in motion. It is more of a fable than Fable. And for that alone, I cherish it and will hold it close to my heart for years to come, framerate issues and system specs-fetishizing detractors be dammed.

We need more games like this. It completely baffles me to read respected professional critics claim that this game is somehow "outdated" because "we've had games like Limbo and Journey since then" that "filled the niche".

With that being said, I completely understand how this game's myriad of little issues might turn some people away. But it has its place. It absolutely has its place.



Three Words Review: Ode to Sentience
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Toon Scottoon
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Toon Scottoon »

In the universe of the Last Guardian I never knew a lot of things. I never knew if the reason the boy felt so ropy to control was to express his youthful awkwardness, or was merely meant to challenge the player. I never knew why the amorphous blob with a penchant for M.C. Escher architecture wanted to kidnap the children of nearby villages. (Did it turn them into its undead soldiers? I can’t be sure.) I never knew if Trico, the companion animal I first feared, then cursed, then loved, really understood what I was asking him to do. And I certainly never knew if in this universe Trico lived off of barrels of butterfly juice, or if all winged creatures simply love blue Powerade.

What I did know right away was this game looked like a dream, balancing color, texture, and light the way the best visual art does. I also knew from playing other Team ICO games I wasn’t going to get a whole lot of answers to the questions I raised, but that as long as I enjoyed the process of raising them I’d enjoy the game.

By the end I knew I wasn’t disappointed I’d spent my time playing and considering this game. Ueda and his team had made a very interesting statement about what it’s like to be an artist trying to guide, cajole, and bully it's sometimes skittish, not so secretly powerful collaborator (the audience) towards salvation by the tail, and just like the protagonist in the final post-credits cutscene I have a feeling that I’ll be casting out a signal towards this game for years to come, raising more questions, and fondly remembering the time we spent together.

Three word Review (are we okay to place these here or do you prefer twitter?)-

Ueda’s Trico Treat
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Simonsloth
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Simonsloth »

If I were to compare The last guardian to anything then it would be a theme park rollercoaster during peak season. You convince yourself it’s worth the wait whilst waiting longer than advertised. Once you climb aboard the short journey the soaring peaks are offset by the inevitable troughs and brevity of the experience. Often you are left with the question: was it really worth the wait?

The answer when it comes to the last guardian is a lot more complicated than it might seem.

The commonly cited criticisms of the game are its controls, camera and trico him/herself. Having grown up as 3D games have evolved I am much more tolerant of the first two issues and found the camera and controls perfectly acceptable. Trico on other hand, depending on his or her behaviour could either be fantastic or infuriating.

The game is built around the complex interaction and relationship between the player controlled protagonist and the free thinking AI companion. On paper this sounds fantastic. In practice it is much more divisive.

One design choice that I cannot comprehend is the lack of guidance in how to communicate with trico. It would make sense to be deliberately vague if your companion wasn’t so stubborn. The game kept reminding me how to pick up and grip objects every few minutes so why not give me a vague idea how to make simple commands. It’s not a minimalist HUD design choice as all other actions are prompted.

Occasionally I consulted walkthroughs as I was completely at a loss of how to progress. On reading these I would discover what I was trying to do was in fact the solution but trico did not want to play ball. It’s either incredible artificial intelligence or poor game design. I can only think that Ueda’s vision of a living breathing animal companion was the main reason why the game only just about escaped development hell.

Despite how many times I pointed in a direction and told trico let’s go that way he refused to listen even when I clapped and rewarded him on the occasions he complied. The majority of the time I had to resort to climbing off his back, jumping around and shouting until eventually he would lollop in the correct direction and the game would progress. I even left the game running whilst taking a break during certain sections hoping something would happen. Typically I would return to see trico exactly where I wanted him/her to be....only without me being with them.

It did seem as the game progressed trico was a bit more malleable but the first 3-4 hours of frustration sullied the experience for me. Now what is very interesting is I know lots of people who played this game without any of the issues I had. Does this suggest an even more complex level of artificial intelligence such that every trico and consequently game experience is unique? Could there be a possibility that the criticism I am levelling at the game could be of my own design. My initial impatience and continual shouting at trico was not constructive and befitting of a companion. It was a dictatorship not a partnership. Perhaps if I were to approach the game differently at the outset would I end up with a different experience. Or am I giving the game too much credit and an excuse for its myriad of flaws.

Putting all of this aside the game’s final third is a masterpiece and I cannot help but wish that the rest was of a similar standard. The ending was raw, tense and visceral with the final moments incredibly emotional. The music, visuals and themes are very Studio Ghibli-esque which is high praise indeed.

I tend to take notes throughout a game if I am likely to put something in writing about it. Frustrating, tiresome and boring were some of the words I wrote in the first two thirds. Fantastic, exhilarating and masterpiece were how I described the last portion. If this were Ueda’s debut I doubt as many players would have made it to a chapter I hold in the highest regard. The goodwill generated by Ico and shadow of the colossus grant him a little bit more patience. I’m glad I persevered as in retrospective I don’t think I’ve ever played a game like this and given the checkered development I doubt history will repeat itself. This is a unique once in lifetime type of game and we should cherish it.
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Re: 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Tbone254 »

I have mixed feelings on this game. It’s a gorgeous thing to see in motion, the music is a joy to hear, and the story is wonderful. Unfortunately, this was almost completely ruined for me by the poor controls and some other sloppy design choices. It’s frustrating because this game should have been magnificent. And I say “should” have been because it did so many things right in regard to storytelling and artistic design. While the story is simple and straight forward, it’s done in an intelligent way. With very few notable exceptions, the tale is told mostly through discovery as the boy and Trico use their mutually beneficial relationship to try to make their way out of this ancient city. The player learns Trico’s little intricacies and nuances through natural observation. This is supported so well, artistically. Both Trico and the boy seem to have an endless amount of animations. The boy’s movements appear natural and reactionary to his environment. But what I think is most impressive about his animations, isn’t just that they look natural, but that they look natural for a small boy. Things like how his arms swing in over-exaggerated arches as he climbs Trico, or how he stumbles around over piles of rubble and rocks. He doesn’t have the sturdiness of an adult, and this does a lot to show the boy’s vulnerability. Trico is almost the exact counter to this, he is sturdy and deliberate. When the environment isn’t falling out from under him, he has an almost cat like gracefulness.

Speaking of the environment, I really love the architecture. It has this appearance of being really ancient yet, somehow, more advanced. The towers and buildings are just enormous, they seem to stretch infinitely into the sky. There are points where you’re so high up that you can't see the ground beneath you, and the you look out at the horizon and you can see for an eternity. The lighting is incredible, and it really does a lot for the atmosphere. It really gives the impression that this boy is stuck in some sacred city. While that may be par for the course for Team Ico games, its still impressive. I really like its use of showing the progression of time. When the game first starts everything is really bright and vibrant, but towards the end of the game, as your making your way up the final tower, the sun has begun to set. The light has turned golden, shadows now stretch across the ground, and the creatures, depending of their location to the camera, appear more silhouetted. I remember seeing this and something about it resonated with me. Like Trico and the boy have had a really long, really rough day and there is something about it just feels final. It may sound kind of lame, but I think it was just one more thing for me to relate to.

I think the story is pretty wonderful as well. I really enjoy it when games don’t overly explain the world and leave the story open for interpretation. To me the masters of this are From Software with their Souls/Bloodborne series, but I think Team Ico did a really good job of this with The Last Guardian. Just browse the internet for a bit you can find all sorts of different theories about what or who the master of the Valley was; I’ve read that it was a deity that was worshipped by an ancient people, an alien that crashed onto the planet and began subjugating the people of the world, or even that it was a giant super computer created by an ancient civilization to mine the mysterious that eventually became too powerful for the people, kind of like an ancient SkyNet. I'm sure there's many others and I think that's a testament its great story telling.

While I really enjoyed the visuals, the music, and the story, I had a hard time finishing the game. The controls were just too awful. And I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here. The camera is atrocious, it feels like it has an endless dead zone with a moderately slow acceleration, so the camera always feels like it’s lagging behind my thumb movements, kind of like trying to control a puppet. And on top of that, the camera routinely repositions itself in the most inconvenient of places, usually resulting in my death. Then there are the controls for the boy. Traversal around the environment itself isn’t so bad, but the moment he gets on Trico, it all goes out the window. There were numerous times when all I wanted to do was to climb on to Trico’s back, but for whatever reason, the boy begins climbing circles around Trico’s legs, or climbs underneath his belly. And don’t get me started on the pit of no return that is Trico’s shoulders. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to walk up to Trico’s head from his back to have the boy automatically enter into a crawling position and then proceed to move up and down between Trico’s shoulders and neck. Of course, I then tell the boy to let go so he can just walk, and as soon as the boy stands up, he falls off of Trico and I have to start this whole process over again. I also had numerous issues getting the boy to dismount from Trico after he had latched onto him. This was usually the result of the boy just auto grabbing on to Trico as soon as I released the “let go” button, so it was a little easier to remedy this problem, but it was still annoying. And then, there is Trico himself. There were some many occasions where I tried to get Trico to move or jump in certain directions, only for him to be either remain completely unresponsive or to turn around and head back in the direction he originally came from. It’s all the more frustrating because there are parts of the game where Trico and the boy just blow through the environment, but inevitably Trico will hit a spot where his logic just seems to completely break down, even though the direction he needs to travel is obvious. This totally broke the flow of the game for me, and I almost quit the game all together. My girlfriend, who was watching me play, had to convince me to return to the game because she wanted to see it through. There are other design choices that bother me as well. Like how there is an option to invert the camera but not for the aiming mechanic of the shield. It baffles me that something so arbitrary as look inversion wasn’t applied universally to all forms of look and aiming. Then there are the controller prompts that never go away. Team Ico did such an amazing job creating this absolutely gorgeous game with all these little intricate animations so the player could gather all the information they need without a single piece of a heads-up display, and they completely ruin it by adding in tutorial prompts that can’t be turned off and continue to pop up for the entirety of the game.

I think this game frustrated me so much because it was so close greatness. Because by the end of the game I had grown to despise Trico. Dealing with him was far too unpleasant, and I was eager to finish the game and be done with it. But when the end finally came, and I watched as the wounded Trico flies off after the boy sends him away, spears hanging from his body, I found myself mournfully wondering how who was going to remove his spears. Then I felt a little bit of relief, because I know the game wasn’t completely ruined for me. When I look back at the game, I can't help but wonder how magnificent it could have been had it not had the problems that it has, because it is really good. But, unfortunately, I think it falls short of greatness. But, who knows, maybe in ten years’ time Bluepoint will make an updated version for the next generations of consoles, that fixes all the bad parts, and then we can have the masterpiece this is should be.
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Scrustle
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Re: Our next podcast recording (20.11.18) - 347: The Last Guardian

Post by Scrustle »

Being a fan of Fumito Ueda’s work, especially Shadow of the Colossus, I was waiting very eagerly for The Last Guardian over the years through its painfully protracted development. SotC was one of those games that really opened my mind to what games could do and shaped how I think of games as a whole. So it was a pretty big moment for me when The Last Guardian finally came out. When I eventually got my hands on it, it ended up being mostly worth the wait, but not without some big pitfalls too.

TLG came out in a rather strange point in time. Ueda’s previous work had been a huge inspiration for so many indie games that had come since, with that entire section of the medium being born and settling in to a well-established niche in that time. So the last time we got a game in this lineage there was nothing quite like it. But now experiences like that are not hard to find, with many of them being heavily inspired by its predecessors. Yet TLG feels like it ignores any of that ever happened, and the game is true to how it was originally intended to be if it was released early in the PS3 life cycle in many ways.

The design of it and the way it controls feels pretty dated, with it suffering from problems that the rest of the medium fixed long ago. But at the same time it retains that spark of originality and ambition that was much more prevalent in the PS2 days, and was a big part of Ueda’s previous work. Trying to create something different and unique, trying to push games in weird new directions. It even manages to maintain that in comparison to all the indie games Ueda’s work inspired.

The core of what makes TLG such a special experience is Trico. I imagine this is what took so long to develop, and in the end it was definitely worth it. Trico is such a well-realised creature, and it genuinely feels like a real animal with a mind of its own, making the experience of bonding between it and the boy you play as feel very authentic and moving. The way it acts and moves is uncanny. All the little ticks and quirks it has are all very convincing and natural, like the way it will behave when it’s curious or scared, or just bored. It does a great job of making it feel like it has its own intelligence and thoughts, and is way more than just a computerised co-op buddy to solve puzzles with. The visual and audio design of it is excellent too. When I first saw it many years ago, I thought it was awkward and goofy, and it took me a long time to warm up to it. But in the game it has a certain mix of cuteness, empathy, and mystery that works really well. It can be majestic, adorable, or even quite scary at times.

One common criticism you hear about the game is how Trico doesn’t respond to commands and is frustrating to play with because of how it disobeys you or takes forever to do things. I can’t say I found that to be the case at all. While it’s true that sometimes it does not do exactly what you want when you want it to, it never feels frustrating or broken in any way. It feels as it was intended to, like Trico is its own intelligence and isn’t just a tool for the player. It does things as it wants, and sometimes you’ll need to give it some encouragement first. It mulls things over as if it’s trying to work out what you’re asking of it before it does it. But it never felt like it was getting in the way of progress to me. On the very few occasions where I felt like it wasn’t doing what I wanted to, it was usually because I was asking it to do the wrong thing anyway. And the game is meant to be a slow, laid back experience anyway. It’s meant to be about taking things slow and bonding with the creature. Not charging through everything as fast as possible with no friction.

I have also sometimes wondered if the criticisms about Trico come down to people’s preferences in pets. Despite having some habits of both dogs and cats, Trico definitely seems much closer to a cat in its behaviour to me. Generally laid back, curious and friendly, but has its own desires and won’t just do things on command all the time. Being a cat person myself, I didn’t have a problem with this. If you just go with the flow with Trico things usually work out fine. But I wonder if perhaps people who are more used to dogs, them being more responsive to training and commands, are frustrated with Trico because they expect to be able to do the same thing there, when that’s just not how it thinks.

There is one major criticism of the game that I agree with though, and that’s the camera. It is shockingly bad. I can’t think of any other game I’ve played with a camera this bad. Definitely not one with even a moderate level of production values. I actually find myself to be more forgiving of cameras in games than most others. It’s very rare that I find a game that gets criticised for it where I have the same problem. But in TLG, it is really awful. So many times it gets stuck on geometry, trying so hard to point in a completely nonsensical direction, and just breaks so often. More than once I had the screen just go completely black with no response for up to half a minute as it got confused with me climbing on Trico. Followed by it having a short seizure before resetting. It’s a very strange problem, and one that neither of the previous Team Ico games had. I suspect this is because of how those games are designed, making a functioning camera a challenge the developers never had to face before this game. Ico had fixed camera positions, so they could always know where it was and what it was pointing at. SotC has such wide open environments there was nothing for the camera to get caught up in. But TLG has smaller, pokey environments like Ico, but with the free camera movement of SotC. But whatever the reasons were, the results were not good.

The finale of the game however is spectacular. While much of the game is a mixed bag of touching moments and inconsistent puzzles, the ending makes it all worth it. It’s a beautiful moment set against a gorgeous sunset, that is absolutely heart-wrenching. Even if a lot of it is pretty predictable to anyone familiar with the stories Ueda tends to tell, it still works wonders as an emotional gut-punch that is the culmination of the fantastic bonding experience the game crafts across its runtime. Everything the game does up to that moment is delivered on in such a fantastic way that it’s hard to hold anything against it in the end, warts and all. Despite all the problems this game had in development, and how other games have done similar things in a smoother and more user-friendly way, that moment proved that Ueda’s still got it, and can still use games to tug on your heartstrings like no-one else.
bixer

Re: The Last Guardian

Post by bixer »

The Last Guardian - a beautifully flawed masterpiece.

I don't usually feel compelled to write about a game once I've finished it, but The Last Guardian was an experience I won't forget for a long time.

I remember seeing the original trailer for it back in 2009 or whenever it was and being so excited. I frantically tried to find out as much as I could about it over the years, but...nothing. Naturally I was devastated, but I remained hopeful that one day it'd see the light of day. Fast forward a further 4 years and I was finally able to actually play it. I really didn't know what to expect, as I'd weirdly tried to do the opposite to what I'd done 4+ years ago and avoid reading about it as much as possible, so as to not ruin anything.

As for the pros - where do I start. The first thing I noticed was how absolutely beautiful everything looked. From the way things are lit, to the rustling of Trico's feathers, the game is absolutely gorgeous. I did vaguely remember reading a few reviews from people saying that it unfortunately did look like a last gen game. I whole-heartedly disagree however and I'd almost go as far as to say it's the most beautiful looking game I've ever played.

The genuine bond that grows between you and Trico is also unlike anything I've ever experienced before. Genuine guilt when leaving him behind to go and solve something in a closed off area. But in equal measure, massive glee when you're subsequently able to let him into said area and he's instantly got your back - stomping on any guards that are trying to imprison you. There were just so many moments that put a genuine smile on my face, something that very few games have managed to achieve before.

Of course, as most people are probably aware, it's also not without it's cons. First and foremost the camera does take some getting used to. In that regard though from what I'd heard I was expecting a lot worse admittedly. You can set both the camera speed and orientation to your liking, so once you've found a sweet spot it's quickly forgotten. Additionally the controls can feel a little...sloppy at the start, but again, you do quickly get used to them and only on very few occasions did I find them hindering me.

Largely though, it's occasionally Trico's AI which tends to cause the most problems. Fortunately, more often than not you can almost let Trico lead you, as opposed to the other way round. Once you get to a new area or platform, Trico will often just walk to where you need to without much prompting, which is great. Additionally when jumping to multiple platforms, you can often just use the jump command once, but Trico will continue to do so as often as is required. It's definitely a game which encourages patience, as most of the time, it's obvious what Trico can and can't do in any situation. Most of the time...

There are some sections where you think you've worked out the 'puzzle' for that room, but then Trico seems to disobey you adamantly, which prompts you to think perhaps that's not the right solution after all. Often after various experimenting with other possible solutions, it turns out the initial thing you tried was right all along, it was just Trico not responding properly. It unfortunately got to the stage whereby I'd play the game as 'blindly' as possible, but as soon as I become stuck in an area after trying something that didn't work, I'd double-check in a walkthrough to see if I really was wrong, or if it was just a case of the AI letting me down again. In that regard it was relatively 50/50, sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was the game's and I just needed to be a bit more forceful, but still, it's a shame that that doubt was planted. Fortunately there weren't many of these moments at all however and generally speaking, if you let Trico do most of the work, things run a lot more smoothly. In any case, the checkpoints are very lenient to counter this, and even if you do occasionally die but don't feel it was quite your fault, you'll typically only be put back about 10 seconds or so, so any frustrations are never long-lasting.

These flaws however very rarely detracted from my overall enjoyment and just sheer amazement at the game. As a 28 year old with a full-time job and a relatively busy life outside of this too, I'm not usually one to game in long sessions. Typically, even for games I really enjoy, I'm quite content playing in just 30-45 minute spells before putting them down again and doing something else. It's part of the reason I'm occasionally reluctant to play these epic 40+ hour adventures - I just know I won't find the time, when even just a 10-15 hour game usually takes me the best part of a month to complete. The Last Guardian was different though. I know it's not the longest of games anyway, but I remember completing it in the space of only 3 evenings, which for me is saying a lot. I'd sit down to play a quick session, only to look at the clock and realise 2-3 hours had gone by, which I think is a testament to just how engrossing the game is.

I won't spoil anything, but the end sequence is incredible. I cried, a lot. I've never, ever cried at a game before as I've never understood how anyone could feel that attached to some awkwardly moving sprites. I really do now though. I felt a genuine attachment to Trico and I was sad that our whole adventure had come to an end.

It's not perfect. Far from it in fact. But all the same, I think I'd go as far as to say The Last Guardian is one of the greatest games I've ever played. It's the first game I've ever felt a need to ramble on about like this before, but words really can't describe what an amazing experience the whole thing was. I hope a game can move me like that again, as I really think more developers could do with taking some of the risks The Last Guardian has.
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Stanshall
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Re: The Last Guardian

Post by Stanshall »

I didn't get round to adding my thoughts because I didn't have anything particularly insightful that wasn't already mentioned but I do appreciate Scrustle's point about the PS2-era flawed brilliance and imagination and I think it ties into a recent discussion about the value of 'auteur' work in gaming and the ability to appreciate failed ambition more than flawless homogeneity. That's absolutely how I felt after finishing this. It was an incredibly irritating game where I was constantly fighting with the basic movement and inertia and physics and misread inputs and hit boxes and so on and so on. It was frustrating as a bad dream where you're running through treacle and you feel like your nervous system is shutting down. It's like sitting on your wrists for an hour and then trying to play table tennis. And despite that, it was an incredibly moving and atmospheric experience, the likes of which I've never quite felt in any other game or work of art. It captures something unique. Very very few games can say that.
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