STACK December 2016 Issue No. 146

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have Swine Flu and Black Saturday, James Cameron’s
Avatar is released, and we lose Patrick Swayze and the King of Pop.
At E3, a small game from the developers of Ico and Shadow of the
Colossus is officially announced – The Last Guardian. Words Alesha Kolbe
hat was seven years ago.
The Last Guardian was
originally pegged for a
PlayStation 3 release in 2011,
until all hell ensued. The game’s
director, Fumito Ueda, departed
Sony, as did other Team Ico
members, further delaying the
game.
Eventually reintroduced at E3
2015, and following one final delay
for old time's sake, we can finally
say what many thought may never
happen – The Last Guardian hits
consoles this month. Yeah, we
can’t believe it either.
The game revolves around a
young boy and his relationship
with a beast called Trico – the
easiest way to describe him is
the unholy offspring of Harry
Potter’s Buckbeak and The Last
Airbender’s Appa, with a little
personality of How to Train Your
Dragon’s Toothless thrown in. We
got to play about an hour of E3
code recently, and honestly, from
what little we saw, it’s infuriatingly
endearing.
Our protagonist is a young
boy, awakened in a cave with no
memory of how he got there and
a bunch of weird tribal-ish tattoos
all over his body. He finds he isn’t
alone, however, when he notices
old mate Trico chained to the floor
nearby, wounded and hungry.
The Last Guardian literally
throws you in the deep end. The
first level is a thinly-veiled tutorial,
teaching you game mechanics
by forcing you to act them out
yourself, like carrying barrels of
food to Trico and scaling walls.
Your relationship with your
newly found hound-bird hybrid is,
understandably, hesitant at first,
as he looks powerful enough to
relieve your body of its head at a
moment’s notice. Once you begin
to feed the beast and tend to the
spears in his body, he becomes
a little friendlier, and you earn the
ability to summon him when the
need arises.
As the little boy, you can climb
all over Trico, and his interaction
with the world is independent
of your actions, so he’ll go over
and investigate something and
more often than not point you in
the right direction if you’re
looking a bit lost.
If you caught any
of the E3 footage of
The Last Guardian,
Trico can actually
shoot lightning from
his tail. Maybe that's
what we've been
waiting all these
years for?
visit
66 DECEMBER 2016
GAMES
FEATURE
you would have mostly seen
grabs of Trico and his little avatar
following him around, directing
him to places and yelling
indiscernibly. What we learned
in our playthrough is that Trico
can actually shoot lightning from
his tail. Maybe that’s what we’ve
been waiting all these years for?
It comes in handy if you need to
disrupt large piles of barrels or
make a hole in a wall.
The further we went in the
demo the stronger the relationship
between Trico and boy became.
Eventually, our feathered
accomplice would leap over
large distances with us in tow to
investigate a ruin. While much of
this investigation is usually the
player running around climbing
structures and vines, there are
some points where you just need
to jump up on your companion
and get him to show you the way.
In the second part of the
playthrough, we learn that Trico
isn’t a fan of glass dreamcatchers,
so it’s up to the player to navigate
the ruins and remove as many
as he can in order for the pair to
advance, usually by solving some
sort of intricate puzzle. If you're
chasing a puzzle comparison,
think something Tomb Raider
or Uncharted-esque; it's a lot of
working out how far you can jump
and what heights you can fall from
without actually dying.
After our session, we left the
Sony offices that afternoon with
two thoughts clearly in our minds.
Firstly, shock at the fact that this
game is finally tangible, and not
just an E3 myth that we never
thought would see the light of day.
And secondly, love for what we
just played through. Honestly, the
relationship you forge with Trico
is adorable, which only leaves us
concerned as to how this story is
going to end.
The Last Guardian
undoubtedly has potential –
after all, it's had as many
years to prepare its case.
It's time to face the jury.
• The Last
Guardian
is out Dec 7