The Last Guardian (Trico)

[Doombear]

The Last Guardian no-showed the Tokyo Game Show last week, much to the chagrin of fans desperate to see something new from Team ICO. Fortunately, the remastered HD versions of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus will be out in just a few days, on September 27. While there doesn't appear to be a great deal of new footage of The Last Guardian in the collection, there is a roundtable discussion with the developers that reveals what's keeping them busy right now.

"As much as possible, the level design shouldn't seem too functional or rational," explained director Fumito Ueda. "It has to seem like a natural part of the atmosphere and the world, like it's been like that forever.

"Obviously we need to do the level design, but we don't want our users to notice the intent of the designer... I think that's what we're spending most of our time on right now. I think being unpredictable, giving the game unpredictability, is key for The Last Guardian. Just by their presence alone, the AI characters tend to invite unpredictable situations. That was on purpose."

That better? =P At this point I would take anything LG related Team ICO, or at least a tentative release date...

[TacoTaru]

Hate to be the bummer with this game since there was enough this summer with it now showing up at any conventions

Confirmed: Team Ico's Fumito Ueda Leaves Sony

The rumors were true. Ico creator and Team Ico frontman Fumito Ueda has left Sony. Don't freak out about The Last Guardian, though. Not yet, at least. According to Gamasutra, Sony confirmed that while Ueda is no longer an employee, he is still set on finishing The Last Guardian as a contract worker, and is "committed to completing" the project.

No reasons were given for his departure.

Who leaves in the middle of a major project? I don't know what's going on over there, but The Last Guardian producer Yoshifusa Hayama has also jumped ship.

I can't help but feel like the game is going to suffer for all of this.

I tend to agree with the last line. Even though he's staying around, this surely can't be good for development.

[Kaisha]

The majority of the game's mechanics, storytelling, structure, etc, should be all completed at this point, I can't see his change of employment here affecting it this late into the process.


That or I'm really underestimating just how much of the project is actually done after this many years.

[Salodin]

I cant imagine after all this time that they have anything creative to do other then put the puzzle pieces together into a finished product. If they do, then damn, wth?

[Correction]

Hate to be the bummer with this game since there was enough this summer with it now showing up at any conventions

Confirmed: Team Ico's Fumito Ueda Leaves Sony

I tend to agree with the last line. Even though he's staying around, this surely can't be good for development.

It's even worse for development when you have an entire studio on your payroll that can't ship a single fucking title in seven years.

[TacoTaru]

Uggggh what?


The Last Guardian Canceled According to Gamestop.

[Update: Even more readers are contacting us to inform us of this message from Gamestop. Reader Darren Hupke has a recording of this call.]

Canceled? We feared the worst when we heard that Team Ico was breaking up and going other places, but we were assured that work would continue on their next PS3 title, The Last Guardian. Canceled? I hope not.

This is far from confirmation, and we've reached out to Sony for comment, but we're already hearing from Destructoid readers that are getting calls from GameStop saying that The Last Guardian has been cancelled. We've called a few GameStop stores and have heard the same. "Canceled by vendor" is what we're hearing.

No! Say it's not so!

Stay tuned. We'll pass along word as soon as we get it.

*EDIT*
Update from Sony, so you may not have to continue blowing a gasket:

[Update 2: Sony is saying that The Last Guardian is NOT canceled. Senior director of corporate communications, Patrick Seybold, shuts this down on Kotaku: "This is not true."

[Qalbert]

BULL FUCKING SHIT

[Correction]

Haha.

They won't cancel it but it won't be a Fumito Ueda game as we've come to know it.

'pre-order from Gamestop and get the Online Pass AND the Lil' Deviants skin for that Hippogryph-thing! A $39.99 value!'

[Doombear]

Quick Conversation with Shuhei Yoshida on the status of The Last Guardian.

1UP: Can you give us any update on The Last Guardian? Have you seen it recently?
SY: Oh yeah, yeah. I've been seeing it.

1UP: Is it still healthy and good?
SY: Well you know, there was a rumor that Fumito Ueda left the company or something like that.

1UP: That was confirmed, right?
SY: Well it's confirmed in terms of the status of his relation to the company -- he was an employee, and now he's working on a contract basis. You know, we discussed an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side. But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as "he left."

1UP: Does he still work in the office?
SY: Absolutely. Absolutely. He comes in every day, and he's probably one of the people who works the longest hours. The project has been making progress, but slow progress. So that's tough, but we haven't changed any focus. It's still a really important project and a vision we want to see realized, and Fumito's vision is really causing a very difficult challenge for the developers, so there's some scrapping and rebuilding -- iteration in the process. That's why [it's taking so long].

1UP: So back to your earlier comment, did he become a contractor so he could work on the creative side rather than the business side?
SY: It's a personal matter, so I can't really say.

1UP: Do you think he'll continue to work with Sony after The Last Guardian is finished?
SY: If this project goes well -- you know, fingers crossed -- we've worked with him for a long time so yeah I certainly hope we can maintain a relationship.

[miokomioko]

This game had just barely managed to slip from my mind... Damnit.

[Correction]

All of his answers to the questions could have been one word.

1) "Yes"
2) "No"
3) "Yes"
4) "Yes"
5) "Yes"
6) "No"

This game is fucked. Like, RAGE fucked. Maybe even Duke Nukem Forever fucked.

[6souls]

The Last Guardian was conspicuously absent from Sony's E3 press conference on Monday evening - early Tuesday morning UK time.

Why wasn't the long-awaited PS3 exclusive there? Because The Last Guardian is still having "technical difficulties", Sony Worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer today at E3.

"The team is back in Tokyo is working hard, and there are some technical difficulties that the team is focused on right now," he told us. "That's why we don't have an update."

Problems with The Last Guardian project became apparent when the game's designer, Fumito Ueda, left Sony in December last year.

Since then, we've heard that the game's making "slow progress", and that Sony UK and Sony US are helping Sony Japan build the game.

One theory for the game's prolonged absence is that The Last Guardian will no longer be a PS3 game, and instead be ported to PlayStation 4.

But Shuhei Yoshida seemed to reject this claim.

"What does that question mean [is it still a PS3 game]? It is a PS3 game," he stressed.

Is there a danger it will never see the light of day - will it still actually come out on PS3?

"When we have confidence in saying that, we will talk about it," he answered. "But today, we are working through some engineering effort."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ties-says-sony

[Insanecyclone]

Not the news you want, but rumor going around that Sony has abandoned "The Last Guardian"

[Odin'sLaw]

Not the news you want, but rumor going around that Sony has abandoned "The Last Guardian"

that the 3rd or 4th time now that rumor has gone around?

[TacoTaru]

More specifically they've abandoned the trademark. They still have two months to recover it, petition it, or whatever needs to be done if they plan on keeping it. That said Ubisoft abandoned its trademark for Brothers In Arms: Furious Four and it still intends on releasing that game.

Trying to be as optimistic as possible here.

[Odin'sLaw]

In June they said there was technically problems but still fully intend to bring this out (yeah Sony needs some cash return peeps)

[Insanecyclone]

Next to no info still feels doomsday in a sense for me

[6souls]

http://www.abload.de/img/xg8spa.jpg

[Doombear]

I don't know about you guys, but something about that statement combined with that face... I don't trust it. Still worried.

[6souls]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has filed a "Notice of Abandonment" to inform Sony its The Last Guardian trademark has passed its 3 year deadline.

Under US law, Sony had until January 2013 to "prove use in commerce" for the long-in-development Team Ico title, but since it's still not released since the trademark filing in 2009 its status has officialy switched to 'abandoned'.

But PS3 owners probably shouldn't be concerned; as Kotaku points out US law makes it difficult to "park" on a trademark without proof it's intended to be used, and Sony can request an appeal or file a new registration.

Last Guardian designer designer Fumito Ueda announced his surprising departure from Sony late last year, but committed to finishing his duties on a contractual basis.

Back in February, Worldwide studios boss Shuhei Yoshida confirmed Sony's drafted in a number of Western Sony developers to support SCE Japan Studio's Team Ico on the highly-anticipated title.

The platform holder put Last Guardian's E3 no-show down to "technical difficulties" and later said Last Guardian will release "when it's ready".

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...adline-passes/
http://kotaku.com/5933381/sony-aband...-means-nothing