I’m currently enjoying my time with The Last Guardian — I’m playing it slowly, about an hour every day — and so let me point you to another great interview by James Mielke for Glixel (he’s been racking them up of late), this time with the game’s director, Fumito Ueda.
Well, it’s here, and as expected, it’s quite something. I’m especially a fan of Ico – I liked Shadow of the Colossus as well, but never finished it – and this so far (about 2-3 hours in) is bringing me back to that original game, feeling like I’m on this journey with a companion I’m starting to care a lot for. So far, what I love the most are the realistic animal movements and behaviors of Trico, as well as the cartoony and nicely animated boy. Sure, it can be a bit frustrating when you’re trying to solve a puzzle and it feels like Trico is just not cooperating, but I just take it as another part of the puzzle to solve (like when I need to handle my dog in real life). I really want to take my time playing this.
I remember a couple of years ago, at one of my last PauseTalk events, that I was asking my buddy James Kay — who runs the Tokyo-based Score Studios — what he was up to at the time, and that he hinted that the studio was working on something that I’d consider to be a pretty big deal, but that he couldn’t say more. Well, with the long-awaited release of The Last Guardian this past week, now we know. Score Studios created the engine and tools that were used for the game, which is indeed a pretty awesome bit of news for Score. I’m so happy and proud for what they’ve accomplished, and can’t wait to experience the game.
Polygon has a nice feature up on Rui Guerreiro, a dev who left the Last Guardian team and helped start up the Friend & Foe studio in Tokyo, later leaving to work on his own game Mare (and later joining up with Visiontrick Media, the studio behind Pavilion, which I mentioned last month).