I finally played The Last Guardian. A demo of it, anyway. After a decade of waiting, it felt like coming home.
Ask any gaming nerd which sequel they've been dying for, and if they don't say Final Fantasy XV or Half-Life 3, it's this one. The Last Guardian follows Ico and Shadow of of the Colossus, two PlayStation games beloved for their minimalist design and powerful stories. Neither was a big hit for Sony, but they were hugely influential. "Ico was the starting point and proof that emotions can exist in games, kind of a wake-up call for designers," Josef Fares, who created Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, once told me.
Can I go on? Can I keep doing this? There were definitely times I wasn't sure.
Fumito Ueda
For me, the arrival of The Last Guardian on October 25, after 11 years in development, is like the arrival of a new Star Wars. You want it to be more Force Awakens and less Phantom Menace. The demo I played at E3 suggests it will be.
The demo is a snippet from the opening sequence: a young boy, trapped in a cave with a massive creature, a fearsome beast named Trico. He's chained up and snapping at me like a frightened, wounded dog.
Moving is awkward. The boy trips and stumbles, runs awkwardly, jumps with flailing limbs. I feel that awkwardness too, holding one button to hang on while pressing another to heave myself onto a ledge.
