The Last Guardian

[Todinho]

The best thing about this is that Fumito Ueda has said the and a core team from team ICO are back to creating games and the Last Guardian is the first one and not the last as many people were expecting

[James]

It was really nice to see Fumito Ueda at the Sony conference. This game and the development team seem to have been through a lot of turmoil, so it was great to see Sony put so much stock in the game's importance and its creative lead.

The demo left me with a strong ICO feeling. The art style, environment and the child all reminded me of that game in the best possible way. That's not to diminish or dismiss the importance/influence of Shadow Of The Colossus on The Last Guardian, of course, but I did really love ICO.

[Flabyo]

From what I've been reading the builds we saw at previous shows were not actually ever running on target PS3 hardware, and the main reason it's taken so long to emerge is they just couldn't get it to fit so had to wait for the next generation.

Which, if you know your history of Ueda's previous games, is exactly what happened with ICO. Heh.

[ratsoalbion]

Well quite, as I'm sure we discussed on our Team ICO podcast many moons ago.

It wasn't such a different situation with SotC either really. I mean, sure, that game came out on PS2 as planned, but the hardware was visibly creaking, and arguably Bluepoint's smooth PS3 port showed the game in a far better light.

[LaikaMuttnik]

Just realised this thread was inactive for a while, so thought I would post the latest trailer from this year's E3
After all these years of wait with faith, I'm so happy it's finally coming in less than 3 months now!

[mikeleddy83]

As am I, cannot wait and I've let my fiancé know it's pretty much the only game I'm certainly getting for the rest of the year.

I think this might be the only game I've asked the folk at game to get the big dusty file out to check the release date. Last one I got was December 2010/11 if I remember right.

Super excited!

[seansthomas]

I always swore that I'd buy a PS3 when this came out. I guess the same goes for a PS4?

Best get saving...

[JaySevenZero]

I always swore that I'd buy a PS3 when this came out. I guess the same goes for a PS4?

Best get saving...

Well, you've got two and a half months!

[Suits]

These sort of platform exclusive titles are the reason I own a PS4.

[JaySevenZero]

Just bumping this thread as the game is out this week and I've been enviously reading the various posts from those lucky enough to have already played through and they are saying great things about the experience.

[Flabyo]

I actually stuck in a pre-order for this today. I don't care how well it reviews, there was no way I was going to pass on it.

[Combine Hunter]

Yeah, same. I have to see it for my self at this point.

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

F%$k me....they actually pulled it off.....

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... ian-review

EDIT: Lots of 7's elsewhere, but to be honest that's still better than I was expecting!

[Flabyo]

I really hope this doesn't do a Bioshock Infinite and have me trying to figure out how the companion AI works instead of playing the game...

I don't think it will, part of the reason that happened to me with Infinite was because the moment to moment gameplay was so unexceptional.

[Joshihatsumitsu]

While I have absolute faith in the people behind The Last Guardian, I've been avoiding reviews, and basically any press about this. I really hope to experience it on its own terms. Hype and expectations are a killer!

Kinda what draws me to C&R: enough time has past that games can be discussed without all the marketing hyperbole that goes with a brand new release.

[Sam_What]

I remember seeing the trailer when I was still in school. I've graduated from University now and it has finally arrived!
My hopes are high, as Ueda-san is one of my favourite designers and I really dig his style of games (to say that SotC is one of my most beloved games is an understatement) and as has been said above, I also trust the team behind the game. Unfortunately, University has left me broke and there's no way I'll get to play or even know anything about The Last Guardian for who knows how long... I'll do my best to avoid any press about the game - I want to discover it all for myself... I just hope the spoilers don't become too public...

I'm sure there are many in my situation. I hope that anyone from the Cane & Rinse community who is lucky enough to be able to play this game enjoys it!

[Combine Hunter]

I'm really up and down with this game. Moments I absolutely adore, moments I absolutely hate. It doesn't have the purity and focus of ICO or Shadow of the Colossus, but it does have those game's heart and soul. It will likely end up being my least favourite Ueda game, but I will still love it.

[Joshihatsumitsu]

I have not been played, or currently own, The Last Guardian, so keep that in mind when I say that it's great that it's finally released. If nothing else it will give everyone on that production a chance to move forward and start working on other projects.

[Stanshall]

I'm about an hour into this and I just woke up keen to play some more. The camera and the controls do feel quite anachronistic but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. Controls have largely become so homogenised that I'm happy to work with something a bit awkward, to get to the core of what the game is. Ironically, I never bothered much with Ico because I found the controls horrendous and just never got round to SotC so I have no particular investment one way or another.

I do think there's a strange cartoony inertia to the main character's movements but again, I don't dislike it. It has a charm and sense of life that even Nathan Drake can't touch. Trico is astonishing, it doesn't even feel like an animated creature or something in a game. I have cats and will often talk to them or demonstrate what I would like them to do, trying to get them to follow basic instructions like get down, jump up, stop scratching that, here's some food or a toy, please go outside for a shit the door is open, and they've somehow captured the essence of that interaction. Like, the creature understands you're communicating but doesn't necessarily get the details unless you're quite direct and specific, and even then it has its own will and personality and so might understand and still not do what you want! I really love that about animals and I've said to my wife many times how incredible I think it is to have a relationship with an animal which goes beyond language, or falls short of language if you like, and yet you communicate and share and express care on a completely different level. It's kind of strange how little we communicate that other stuff with most people, beyond verbal information. We're almost too reliant on language as signifier and miss out a lot of the unspoken stuff, at least consciously. See, even this explanation has withered.

Great game so far.

[Scrustle]

Personally I think the camera and controls in the game are significantly worse than in the previous Team Ico games. In TLG it seems like the camera always tries to find the worst possible perspective on things, gets stuck in absurd places, and is unnecessarily unwieldy when you try to manipulate it. It's so bad I don't think it can be excused for simply being like an old camera. I'm a long time fan of these games, and have never had a problem with the cameras in them. I generally don't have problems with cameras in any 3D games. While some can be a bit awkward, I almost never find them to actually be a hindrance to the experience. Same goes with Ico and SotC. For example the camera in either of those previous games never did anything quite as bad as this:

(Don't worry, no spoilers)


That's a clip I took from my own experience with the game. While that was one of the worst cases, it was not rare or unusual to have stuff on that level through the game.

I think something about the camera issues in the game might have something to do with how it's different to its predecessors though. Ico used a fixed angle for most of the game, and SotC took place in huge wide spaces where there was nothing for it to get snagged on. In TLG you're constantly going through tight areas which are only barely big enough for Trico to get through. That's probably causing some problems over simply just a poorly programmed camera.

I've got similar issues with the controls too. In the other games I always felt like even though the controls were floppy and fiddly, they were never really a problem. They had a generosity to them which kind of made up for their flaws. Like if you jumped at an awkward angle your character could stretch out their arms, and the game would fudge it so you grabbed the ledge anyway. Or similarly trying to interact with objects, your character with reach out and grab on even if they weren't in the exact right position. In TLG that generous fudging seems to be gone. It's very particular, which is not helpful with how loose the character control is. And in the case of SotC at least, there was also a more complicated control scheme where you could put Wander in to different states. You could hold down R1 and crouch or grip, and the rest of the controls altered what they did depending on those very distinct states. TLG doesn't have that. It's hard to tell exactly what state you're in, so what the controls want from you in order to do what you want. The game itself also seems to get confused about what state the character is in, grabbing on and climbing stuff when you don't want to, refusing to climb down ladders, etc.

You'll often here this theory going around that the wonky controls of Team Ico games are an intentional artistic decision, or at least an appropriate one. One that conveys clumsy characters that are out of their depth. I actually always agreed with that. It makes sense. And with the generosity the previous games had, and how there were clear states in SotC, I felt like that floppy, clumsy feeling could be overcome. It allowed the games to convey that feeling without actually making it a problem in gameplay. I don't think you can say the same for TLG. It's just needlessly frustrating, and something which could and has been worked around before by the same developers, while still retaining that artistic integrity. In a way, those older iterations probably had more artistic integrity to it, since they were able to communicate those characteristics without frustrating and alienating the player like TLG does.

But despite all that, I still think they did the main thing they were going for the game really well. They realised a real convincing living creature in Trico really well, that I definitely connected to throughout the experience. I really loved seeing how it behaved, and the subtle changes in behaviour through the game. It was so good it carried the whole experience throughout the game, pretty much all by itself. It's something that I think that was even far better done in this game compared to the previous ones. They've tried to cultivate a connection and relationship before in Ico and SotC, but personally, they never had much impact on me. Those were never the major draws of those games to me. But here, they totally nail it. I was very impressed. I have to wonder whether how much you like Trico depends on your pet preferences though. Although it's obviously an amalgamation of various different creatures, I found its behaviour and temperament very close to a cat's. I wouldn't be surprised if this game resonated a whole lot more with cat lovers than dog lovers, or people with other preferences.

I think overall my feelings are similar to Combine Hunter's. The game has some really high highs, especially in the last few hours of the game, but a lot of very low and infuriating lows. Out of all the Team Ico games, SotC is still by far my favourite. I probably slightly prefer TLG to Ico though, since that didn't really have a huge impact on me. Even though TLG was much more frustrating a lot more frequently, I feel like they managed to succeed with other things to a much higher degree too. I really loved Trico, but I never cared much for Yorda. It makes me think of some of the things I've heard people say about this game. I've seen a couple of people calling it "average" and the like, but I don't think you can call the game that at all. It's one of those games that defies the simple scoring system you see in reviews etc. It goes to extreme ends of quality so much that it can't even out as simply "okay" or anything like that. It may be a very flawed game, but one thing it is not is "average". It's very memorable, and could never be called bland or uninspired.