The president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) has revealed that the format holder has been purposefully holding back footage on The Last Guardian as it’s a story-heavy game.
Speaking during a chat with GameSpot, Shuhei Yoshida assured fans that development is progressing smoothly, although it’s being cautious on revealing too much on the game as not to spoil anything for fans of Team ICO’s ambitious project.
"Development is going well, but because it’s about the story, we don’t want to show too much," Yoshida-san said. "We wanted to show that it exists, it works, it runs. It’s not like we won’t show anything before launch, but I think we will try to limit what we show about the game."
Yoshida-san added that he wished Sony could have brought its interactive Trico (the name of the benevolent creature from The Last Guardian) to Paris Games Week, although it didn’t work out.
The Last Guardian has suffered from a rather arduous development cycle, having originally been announced way back at E3 2009. Sony originally planned to release Team ICO’s epic adventure in holiday 2011, though the game was delayed and creator Fumito Ueda ended up working on the project in a freelance capacity. Things were pretty silent over the next few years, though Sony would occasionally pop up to deny rumors of the game’s cancelation and assure the title was still in the works.
Sony finally re-revealed The Last Guardian during its E3 2015 press conference, a triumphant occasion that even attracted praise from rival Microsoft. The firm said that the original PS3 version of the game suffered from numerous technical issues, and that it has to deliver given the weight of expectation placed upon the developer. Sony later admitted that the game would have likely ended up on the cutting room floor if it had not been for the voice of the fans keeping the project alive.
Read our E3 2015 impressions of The Last Guardian and check out the latest screenshots to see how the game is shaping up.