The creator behind The Last Guardian has revealed that the team is still in the process of balancing the actions of Trico as the game approaches its hotly anticipated launch this October on PlayStation 4.
Speaking with The Guardian, Fumito Ueda defended his decision not to make Trico fully playabe in the ambitious action-adventure title.
“To be honest, we’re still fine-tuning Trico’s behaviours, there are two extremes – if you can fully control a character, what’s the point? It becomes a pet. But at the opposite end if you can’t control it at all it becomes a nuisance, a barrier to progression. We’re still trying to find the balance.”
Elsewhere, Ueda-san was asked what he had learned from the development of The Last Guardian, to which he replied:
“There was a lot of learning, it’s hard to explain, to describe it in words at this moment, but maybe if there’s one thing…” (he stops, smiles and chats with the translator for a couple of minutes). “In life, there are always things that mesh well, and things that don’t. In various ways that applies to what we’ve done in the last few years.”
The Last Guardian skips an entire console generation after 9 years in development
The Last Guardian is scheduled for release exclusively on PlayStation 4 on October 25, 2016. The game has been a long time coming, having originally been announced at E3 2009 during Sony’s press conference.
Sony initially pinned a holiday 2011 release date on the Team ICO project, although the game was later delayed when it ran into technical difficulties. Over the next few years, updates continued to remain thin on the ground, and it was even suggested the title had been put on hiatus.
However, Sony would later assure fans this was not the case, insisting the game is still very much in development. The format holder finally re-revealed The Last Guardian for the PS4 during its E3 press conference last year.
Sony later admitted that the game would have likely been canceled if it had not been for the backing of fans.