The Last Guardian

[Retro_Link]

Trailer:

 

 

 

Simply Beautiful!!

Edited June 2, 2009 by Retro_Link

[STOOPIDDITTIES]

Best part of all three conferences for me. This is now my most wanted game.

[Oxigen_Waste]

Ah, so this and GOW3 is what I'll be looking forward to on the PS3.

[Mundi]

I might finally get a PS3 when this comes out.

Sadly I have not finished ICO yet and finding SOTC here has been harder then finding sailors in Shenmue.

[Pit-Jr]

Well im just getting home, and this is the first thread i clicked on. Is it safe to assume Sony nailed their conference?

[Daft]

Nailed would be an understatement imo.

[Strange Cookie]

Sony's conference was the best of a lot IMO. Showed great games, and didn't talk to their audience like they consist of 5-year olds like the Nintendo speakers did even when Sony showed some very 'casual stuff'. Good job!

 

The Last Gardian was a great announcement, but it's impact was't quite as big because I saw that leaked trailer a couple of weeks ago. Curses. That'll teach me.

 

Anyway, this looks like a promising conclusion of the trilogy.

[Retro_Link]

Having not owned a Playstation in the past and therefore never got round to playing ICO and SOTC, is it a story trilogy?... in the sense that the games are somehow connected to each other. Or is it that the developers just wanted to make three games based around an overall idea?

[Grazza]

Having not owned a Playstation in the past and therefore never got round to playing ICO and SOTC, is it a story trilogy?... in the sense that the games are somehow connected to each other. Or is it that the developers just wanted to make three games based around an overall idea?

 

Shadow of the Colossus is a very strong prequel to ICO, yup.

[Dan_Dare]

it's more of a thematic trilogy, although the world may be the same and the art has always been kind of similar. there's no 'plot' between the 3 at all though.

[Hero-of-Time]

Just nicked this from Gaf.

 

June 3, 2009 - Although it was surrounded by two hours worth of major announcements and unveilings, the trailer for Team Ico's first PS3 project, The Last Guardian was, for many, the highlight of Sony's E3 press conference yesterday. In fact, we're sure many have been watching the trailer over and over non-stop since the conference.

 

Well hit the pause button! We've got some actual details on the game thanks to a lengthy Famitsu interview with director Fumito Ueda.

 

First, some naming issues. The game that eventually came to be known as The Last Guardian has been referred to by fans for some time now as "Trico," as it's the third project from the team that gained world attention with ICO on the PS2. You might also start hearing about the game by another name: "Hito Kui no Oowashi Toriko." That's the official Japanese name, as listed in Famitsu. It literally translates to "The Giant Man-Eating Eagle Toriko." More on the word "Toriko" in just a bit.

 

The "Oowashi," or "Giant Eagle," part of the title is what the development team uses to refer to the bird-like giant, Ueda told the magazine. Since Sony's American offices haven't shared official terminology for the creature, and since referring to it as "creature" is not particularly ideal, we're going to call it "eagle" for the time being.

 

According to Ueda, having a giant living creature was the first idea to emerge when creating the game. Ueda hoped to make the relationship between the player and Agro, the horse from Shadow of the Colossus, a bit more central to the game design this time.

 

As you might have guessed, players take control of the little boy from the trailer. The basic game design has the boy being young and thus weak and lacking abilities. The giant eagle makes up for these areas. As a young boy, the main character cannot rely on his strength to get past obstacles. However, perhaps he can overcome some trials by bringing the eagle with him.

 

The eagle itself has been drawing quite a bit of attention for its unique design. As detailed by Ueda, the current design was arrived at by treading closely the line between things looking natural and things looking unnatural. A big issue is that when recreating elements of dogs and cats, for instance, the unnatural will easily stand out amongst those who actually care for dogs and cats as pets. In addition to this, the eagle's designers had to take into consideration areas relating to game design.

 

Did you think to yourself "wow, that looks odd" when looking at the eagle? You're not alone. Ueda himself admits that it looks odd to him. But that's the aim. "It's important that it be 'a strange creature,'" explained Ueda. "We made sure and not make it too balanced."

 

Famitsu noted that the movements of the creature are extremely natural. Ueda explained this by recalling how he took care of not just dogs and cats in his childhood, but a variety of other animals as well, including monkeys and ducks. This gave him a sense for the motions of a variety of animals.

 

His childhood experience with animals also appears to have influenced his games in another way. You might have noticed how verbally quiet ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are. Ueda feels that this particular type of setting comes from the fact that animals don't speak.

 

While Ueda wouldn't reveal how the boy comes to meet the eagle, he was a bit (just a bit) more forthcoming with details on what you'll do in the game.

 

Interacting with the eagle appears to be one of the central aspects to the game. You're free to touch the eagle whenever you like. Its reactions will differ depending on where you touch it.

 

There's a care aspect for the eagle as well. You can feed the eagle and remove spears and arrows that have pierced it. Ueda feels that the development staff will have to take care to strike a balance and make sure the care aspects do not becoming a chore.

 

Growth and stage puzzles are major elements to the game. There are platforming aspects as well -- you can climb, grab things and crawl.

 

The flow of the game is a bit of a mystery right now. Asked if your movement through the stages will be seamless, Uedo said that it's seamless as far as there being no load times as you move about. However, there is an order to the locations that you visit.

 

The magazine asked Ueda if it's difficult to design stages when having to deal with characters of such vastly differing sizes. His response was that stage design is always difficult.

 

With Last Guardian, however, one area of the stage design involves how you go about getting the eagle to do stuff for you. You can either order it around, or you can have it cooperate with you. For instance, you could make the eagle move by throwing around something that it likes.

 

Also something to keep in mind as you work through the levels is that eagle's level of intellect isn't all that high (this is what Uedo said -- don't send nasty e-mails to us). It may not move according to your expectations. As an example, you may be able to clear an area if the eagle would just sit still. However, the eagle ends up moving.

 

Ueda's comments were even more vague on the onlne possibilities for the game. He would only say there are things they'd like to do with online, but that he could not say if it will be possible to realize them.

 

For this third project, Team ICO is making use of some advanced technology. Different from their past titles, they're using real physics. As an example of this, Ueda made note of a scene where the creature eats a barrel. This is not done with motion capture, but with actual physical calculations involving the barrel and the creature's mouth.

 

Uedo also noted the game's pairing of the AI of ICO and the collision schemes of Shadow of the Colossus. This older technology has all been redone at PS3 levels.

 

The staff is paying great attention to one particular environmental effect: wind. The wind determines how the eagle's feathers sway. Each feather is processed individually.

 

Just a bit more about the name before we let you get back to the trailer. There's actually more meaning to the Japanese name than the literal "The Giant Man-Eating Eagle Toriko" translation that we provided above. As mentioned by Ueda in the interview, the word "Toriko" can be taken to mean prisoner, a baby bird, and a pairing of bird (tori) and cat (neko).

 

He did not mention that the word can also be transcribed as "Trico." Yes, it appears that we've known the name of Team ICO's newest project for some time now.

[Retro_Link]

Sounds great!

 

As mentioned by Ueda in the interview, the word "Toriko" can be taken to mean prisoner, a baby bird, and a pairing of bird (tori) and cat (neko).

I didn't see any cat in the animal, to me it seemed part Eagle, part Dog, was that just me?

 

Also, you can't play PS2 games on the PS3 can you? It's just if I end up getting a PS3, which is quite likely, I would pretty much like to try ICO and SOTC. If the answer is no, has there been any news/rumours of possible ports?

[flameboy]

Sounds great!

 

I didn't see any cat in the animal, to me it seemed part Eagle, part Dog, was that just me?

 

Also, you can't play PS2 games on the PS3 can you? It's just if I end up getting a PS3, which is quite likely, I would pretty much like to try ICO and SOTC. If the answer is no, has there been any news/rumours of possible ports?

 

If you can find an old PS3 you can get one with BC but they are hard to find...its bloody annoying trust me...The advertised a while back for software engineers for such a thing and I've been holding out ever since that they'd add it but no joy yet. I think its far more likely they will add PS2 titles to PSN and emulate them on a game by game basis.

[Retro_Link]

If you can find an old PS3 you can get one with BC but they are hard to find...its bloody annoying trust me...The advertised a while back for software engineers for such a thing and I've been holding out ever since that they'd add it but no joy yet. I think its far more likely they will add PS2 titles to PSN and emulate them on a game by game basis.

Ah ok thanks! I hope they do something like that.

[dwarf]

Yeah Sony really fucked that side of it up. They got the interface and online right but for some reason they didn't make total BC standard (probably because 60GB models have flaws - and don't even play all PS2 games) which was a Daft move seeing as they sold millions of PS2s. They could have thrived on their PS2 market but no.

[Retro_Link]

[Choze]

Yeah Sony really fucked that side of it up. They got the interface and online right but for some reason they didn't make total BC standard (probably because 60GB models have flaws - and don't even play all PS2 games) which was a Daft move seeing as they sold millions of PS2s. They could have thrived on their PS2 market but no.

 

Problem is cost. They were emulating PS2 via including the full console chipset. Which was simply too expensive. Heck exactly right now the more PS3 they sell just gives them a bigger loss. So if you want to hurt Sony buy a PS3 :p They need to sort that out.

 

On the other hand PS2 is quite cheap. I do see PS2 coming on PSN at some point but supposedly emulation is really tricky. But they could perhaps that way make them run natively in HD that way?

[Gizmo]

Kinda funny how they design a console on release to be hard to emulate to reduce piracy, and then as soon as the next console comes they are trying to do the very same thing :p

[Dante]

 

 

Egde Interview: Shuhei Yoshida

 

After Phil Harrison’s departure as head of SCE Worldwide Studios, veteran replacement Shuhei Yoshida faced an uphill struggle. The paucity of exciting new PSP content, delays to PlayStation Home, the doggedness of Microsoft in Japan, the dominance of Wii, the price of manufacture, underperforming thirdparty games: there were many chinks in the armour. A year later and, with strong games on the horizon, promising hardware, and the price of PSP development crashing, things are looking up. Defying the flu scare to visit this year’s E3, he gives Edge comrade in arms, Official PlayStation Magazine UK, the complete picture.

 

Was the motion controller evangelised to your developers prior to its announcement?

In the past, Sony Computer Entertainment was a little bit hardware-oriented. Technology was invented in Japan and given to developers like us when that was done. But with this controller, the R&D for the camera technology has continued since EyeToy on PS2. When we decided to continue it with a motion controller on PS3, we involved representatives from the game and software research teams. So it was really a collaborative effort. It’s not like we’re given some secret new technology from Tokyo and have to figure out what to do.

 

Which studios are using it now, and what kinds of experiences can we expect?

The first thing we thought about was how to make the interface seamless and easy for consumers. That’s what EyeToy achieved when we debuted on PS2, but it was a bit limited next to what you can do with this controller. We’re trying to make it so precise that what you do is exactly what you get in the game. You don’t have to learn any specific moves; how you move already is how you move in the game. But as we learn to use this tech, more and more ideas are coming from studios that would be great to use in an adventure-type experience, or a firstperson shooter. So we’re not limiting ourselves to certain types of audience or experience.

 

Might the controller be used alongside the DualShock in some games?

Technically, it’s totally doable. We’re working with the group in Tokyo to make such things simple and understandable.

 

How does this compare to what Microsoft is proposing with Natal?

I saw the [Natal] demonstration and it’s a very sweet video; it’s more futuristic and I felt like I was watching some Consumer Electronics Show event. What I think they’re trying to do is continue on the path we began with EyeToy and PlayStation Eye, removing the barrier between consumers and games. That’s very natural when it comes to what you have to learn. However, we know from working with camera technology for a long time that just using the camera without precisely detecting what the consumer wants to do, with buttons and triggers, is quite difficult, especially when bringing it into the game context. So while it’s very interesting, what we’re providing with our technology is very different.

 

Are you confident you’ll be first to market?

Well, they didn’t talk about the timing, did they? We’re looking to launch this technology in spring next year.

 

How much time do you spend comparing the PlayStation line-up with those of the competition?

There are so many things we can do on PS3 and PSP, and we have so many resources. So it’s wise for us to talk with our business side – our partners and marketing groups – about what we have in our line-up, and address any lacks of support in a particular area. This conversation is constant. We’ve got our portfolio of products and evaluate each opportunity.

 

Jack Tretton spoke of games that are “only possible on PlayStation”. How would you characterise these?

We always talked about great technology since launch, but this is the year where consumers are talking about that. Developers are more comfortable with the hardware, and they’re finding that the more they develop for PS3 in particular, the more they’re finding untapped power. I think this year you’ll see more and more on PS3 where you’ll have to think hard about whether it’s possible on other platforms.

 

Is there enough extra power for a ten-year lifecycle?

The platform is evolving. The firmware and software are evolving. So the teams in Tokyo and the US are adding features and making more memory available. It’s allowing the developer to incorporate more interesting network features, for example. And the more code they move from the PPU to the SPUs, the more they find the computing-intensive tasks like AI and particle effects to be very easy on PS3. You’ll see more and more interesting character behaviours and unique graphics. That’s only possible using the power of Cell.

 

So do you foresee a gap emerging between the firstparty titles and the multiplatform ones?

The way I understand it from talking to friends in the industry, the multiplatform providers still have specific engineering teams for each platform. And engineers working specifically on PS3 are finding the same thing as our internal teams. It’s more a business decision whether the publisher allows the versions of a game to be different.

 

Why was The Last Guardian not shown earlier, and were you disappointed at the leak?

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. Maybe there’s a reason the person who leaked it waited until just before E3. But the reason we didn’t show early footage was because the team wanted to feel comfortable that the vision they created could be delivered. So everything we showed here was from the game engine, and they’ve got to the point where they know they can make this game and can see how it’ll be completed.

 

Do they have a release date in mind?

When I teased them about being the Olympic Team [a reference to four-year gaps between Team Ico’s games], I thought that would suggest a limit of Christmas this year. But we’ll be able to show more now because the game is running and the team is creating more and more content, and you’ll be able to play it sooner rather than later.

The Rockstar North exclusive seemed a step away from the old policy of not doing platform-exclusive deals. How did it come about?

Well, I’m not getting involved in this thirdparty deal, but it’s a very exciting announcement coming from Rockstar North. So I think it’s a testament to how we’re increasing our base, and showing how games can be differentiated on PS3. The announcement of Final Fantasy XIV is phenomenal, and there must be lots of investment to make those games. So for Square-Enix to feel comfortable just going with PS3 is a great nod to our efforts [square Enix has confirmed that FFXIV will also appear on PC and suggested that it is open to other console formats]. They know there are a lot Final Fantasy fans who are also PlayStation fans; they see it’s a natural fit.

 

What impact will the arrival of PSP Go have on your internal development?

From the development standpoint, PSP Go is totally compatible with PlayStation Portable 3000, so all the games we create will work on both. And it’s our intent to continue to support both platforms. We have an opportunity to create smaller, causal games for PSP that can be downloaded directly to PSP Go or PSP 3000, so we are providing broader opportunities to development communities. I’ve seen renewed energy and excitement in our studios with this announcement.

 

How about PSN content? Will you oversee that?

I might be talking to some of the thirdparties about existing services like music. But some of the unique content that’s specifically created for PlayStation platform; I think it’s our job to support the firstparties. We’re looking to broaden our definition of games to include more interesting and entertaining experiences.

 

Is motion control the key battleground now?

It’s one area where we’ll see advancement in the future. What Nintendo has done is phenomenal; it’s great for attracting new people. But they’re just scratching the surface of what this can do. So we see a long road ahead, and we’re very proud of what we’re developing, but we know this is a constant development.

 

How about 3DTV?

We’ve been working with Sony TV group on these technologies and have shown small segments at shows like CES. The reaction is great: people just walking by stop and are glued to the TV. It’s like going into the game scene, especially with interesting vistas like those of Motor Storm: Pacific Rift. It’s like going on holiday or to a theme park. Again, we’re just scratching the surface. Hollywood’s using the technology in much subtler ways. When the industries come together a make an affordable standard, I have high hopes.

 

And OnLive? It’s interesting they’re not showing that at E3. Do you think it’s viable?

I tried their demo at GDC and was quite impressed by their setup. They had the box in San Francisco and the server in Santa Cruz, which was like 15 miles away. It’s playable and the picture is very clean. Expecting every household to have an 8mb connection is a bit unrealistic, but if they start with something less ambitious – like SD content and games that don’t require such a quick response time – it might work quite well.

 

Not God Of War III, then.

[smiles] That’s not possible.

 

What are the biggest challenges for the coming year?

There are many different areas: the use of online technology to create communities, the use of motion control, reinvigorating the PSP platform. Executing them all is the big challenge.

 

What was the last thing one of your developers brought to you that made you go, “wow”?

I’d seen an earlier demonstration of Uncharted 2, but what they showed today just blew me away. There are lots of great things happening in different studios.

[Choze]

thanks for the interview it was a good read in general as well.

[Ryan]

Yoshida does great interviews, he's broke the mold of shoving Sony PR down readers throats. Not like the old days, anyone who even slightly agreed with that crap they used to spout should of been shot!

[Daft]

It would be cool to see the griffin and the kid grow up through the game.

[flameboy]

It would be cool to see the griffin and the kid grow up through the game.

 

Yeah...imagine if the tear jerker (which is definitely going to come) was after you last adventure the griffin realising its time is up and it visibly looks old as you remember the good times together and he then snuggles up (Yoda style) and silently passes away... :cry::cry:

[dwarf]

He'll probably make a sacrifice for the boy in order to save the planet by burrowing his way down through the ground in order to use his heart to keep the earth's core warm enough to harness life on the planet. Probably.

[Daft]

You'll find out it's the boy's father. And then it'll die.