The Last Guardian creator Fumito Ueda has revealed that the ambitious action-adventure title was originally supposed to have a far shorter development time than what ultimately transpired.
Speaking with IGN, Ueda-san said that he was initially disappointed in the decision to move the long-delayed title to PlayStation 4, although now agrees it was the right choice to make.
“We thought that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus took a long time to develop, so one of the missions of The Last Guardian was that we wanted to create something good in a short period of time, so the fact that it took a long time to develop was completely unexpected for me.
“It would be nice to talk about all the struggles we’ve been through, but there’s a lot of things that we can’t say yet.
“Now that I look back at it, the PS3 market has become smaller at this point and now I think the PS4 market is the main market so I am happy to have this title as a PS4 exclusive title, but when the decision was first made I had some difficulty and I felt a little disappointed because I wanted to release this game earlier.”
The Last Guardian has suffered a tumultuous development cycle to say the least, and has been in development for nearly a decade. Originally announced at E3 2009, the game was eventually given a holiday 2011 window although it wasn’t too long before the title was delayed alongside the HD re-release of ICO & Shadow of the Colossus.
Around the same time, Ueda-san departed SCE Studio Japan and continued working on the project in a freelance capacity, although updates on the game continued to remain scarce. After a series of no-shows at E3 and other trade events, it was suggested the The Last Guardian had been put on hiatus; something which Sony emphatically denied on numerous occasions.
Finally, at E3 2015 during the format holder’s press conference, The Last Guardian was finally re-revealed for the PS4 and given a 2016 release window. Check out the latest details on the game here.