1up

One life, infinite chances; both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus utilise this method of replaying a lost attempt to beat the game. Lives are something which seems to have been lost over time and as games become more complex, it’s an agreeable loss.

On the other hand, lives do force the player to consider their actions to the point where mistakes can be very costly. It harks back to the golden age of videogames where lives were used to limit the value of game time, as most games were arcades and required money to play. In the age of home consoles this limitation has been lost but it doesn’t mean that lives can still play a role in modern gaming.

A different approach to lives would be to record deaths. This way the challenge is still there to complete a challenge using as little resources as possible. Grand Theft Auto IV does this as well as recording a multitude of other events such as helicopters destroyed or bullets used. After completing Shadow of the Colossus nine times I’d be interested to find out how many times I’ve died in the process, how far Agro and I have travelled or how many lizard tails I’ve eaten.

Beyond painstakingly recording these events manually there is no provision for such a feature but it’s something I find interesting, if perhaps not terribly useful. Perhaps The Last Guardian will provide this feature, but I’m not holding out.

Read more

The Ico Companion

If you're a fan of Team ICO then you are in the right place. If you read this blog you may notice that I have an unhealthy obsession with Team ICO's work. I don't stand alone though, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus both have massive following both critically and throughout the gaming masses and The Last Guardian; the next game from Team ICO is sure to follow.

As well as the more 'mature' of us gaming fellows there is one person whom has taken this obsession very seriously. His name is Redmond and his blog on Team ICO is one of the most comprehensive available on the Internet. As well as regularly posting articles regarding any scraps of news on Team ICO's activities, he has developed a website which is devoted entirely to the games of Team ICO. Due to go live sometime in February, the site will be a collection of his work and writings over the last four years.

In addition to this he has produced a lavishly detailed companion e-book and paperback containing all there is to know regarding Team ICO's games. Due to be released on the 4th February 2010, coinciding with the re-release of Shadow of the Colossus in Japan. A copy of the book can be obtained from either the blog or the website. I have already reserved my own copy and if you are a fan of Team ICO's work it is recommended that you do the same.

Related Links
The ICO Companion
Team ICO Gamers Blog

Read more

Flu

Once upon a time there was Ico; a game largely ignored by the gaming masses despite critical acclaim. Then there was Shadow of the Colossus; a game entertained by some of the gaming masses despite critical acclaim. With the advent of 2010 the next delight to emerge from Team ICO will be The Last Guardian, a game surely to be largely bought by the gaming masses as well as enjoy critical acclaim.

TLG is something of a disease. Ever since I was ‘infected’ with the knowledge of it’s development, my appetite for information, screenshots or videos of the game has increased over time. My ailments include saving for a PS3, writing this blog and playing Ico and SotC endlessly as well as trawling the internet for morsels of info. The prognosis is looking promising however. I simply need a dosage of TLG, but for this treatment to commence I will have to wait, and then wait some more until the game is finally released in the UK.

Although my disease is treatable the side effects of treatment can be substantial. A total loss of social life is expected as well as the inability to track time accurately. Thankfully I may just manage to consume food and drink to keep me alive but a total loss of sleep is almost certain.

So a great start to the year is expected, obviously you can tell that from my tone. I trust I will be fine so long as TLG is released before I eat my joypad.

Have a great new year…

Read more

The Last Guardian – The First Story

I have a feeling. It’s just an idea born from trying to understand how the latest game from Team ICO could possibly continue the legend of the boy with horns. While watching the announcement trailer I’m aware that Trico (the beast) has horns and while this is not unusual one has to assume that nothing is there without purpose or meaning (except the tortoise in SotC) and that these horns may provide an important clue as to the story behind all three games.

In Ico, the boy with horns is imprisoned within the castle for reasons of superstitious speculation. “For the good of the village” is the only reason garnered from the anonymous figures that guard Ico’s freedom. The boy without horns in The Last Guardian appears to befriend a beast with horns and it’s certain that the due embark on many wonderful adventures as they progress through the game.

The origins of Ico’s horns have been widely accepted as the direct result of Wanders fate in SotC. The horns on Trico are not at all similar and appear to be the horns of a juvenile creature as they are underdeveloped, one even appears to have been cut or blunted. But what if these horns were hiding a dark secret? What if the beast within was Dormin and that The Last Guardian tells the tale of his imprisonment unto the Forbidden Land found in SotC.

There are a lot of questions and, while The Last Guardian may provide some answers I’m sure that we will all be left a little bemused as the plot develops and more questions arise. To be perfectly honest I don’t care, not enough to spoil my enjoyment, because the act of playing Team ICO’s games is such a natural and wonderful experience that any pondering on the fate of the plot or the motivations of ‘the village’ are inconsequential.

Read more

Another Mans’ Poison

Ico and SotC are two of the most delightful videogames of our time. I find it difficult to understand players who fail to appreciate the lure of either. There are few games which are as deep, emotional, human or beautiful, but as sales figures show not everyone agrees with this position.

As a child of the Seventies I was brought up on a staple diet of incredibly poor graphics yet extremely enjoyable games. The constant yearning for better visuals meant that many of the simple games were blessed with my own imagination to fill in the blanks left by the limitations of the gaming hardware at the time. I figure that this period in my gaming life gave me a valuable insight into why a game is enjoyable. Games such as Atik Atak or Imagine were very playable but lacked visual substance and although I wanted the visuals to improve I was rarely dissatisfied with a game.

Later in my gaming journey as the hardware became more capable, graphics have been given a more pronounced position within the design process. This design ethic leaves games feeling quite cold and empty and the novelty of the pretty pictures quickly wears off. Playing a modern frag-fest such as Gears of War for instance is a very thrilling ride, the graphics are top drawer and the game is playable, but after a few hours of play, after the billionth bullet fired I am so bored of shooting the enemy that I wish for an early gruesome death and experiment with new ways of dying before switching the game off.

Both Ico and SotC have meaningful narratives and both are visually stunning without making the aesthetics a priority. This is rare in today’s’ high definition society and is something which is desperately missing from many modern games. There are some exceptions to this; Farenheit is one highlight of recent times where the visuals are functional but the game-play is designed to encourage the player to make decisions about the development of the plot. I really appreciate games which I can really get my teeth into or games which think ‘outside-of-the-box’ or challenge modern game design to become something more than a visual feast.

The Last Guardian will become a true classic if it retains the same design code that Ico or SotC possess. As the game is on a next generation console its visuals will surely be incredible, but the narrative and game-play should be equally accomplished elevating the game beyond the melee of bump mapped moronic titles which unfortunately occupy the vast majority of the game industries sales. At least I can be relatively sure that Team ICOs’ games will continue to be produced, due in no small part to their critical acclaim, even if the majority of gamers are too shallow to understand such delights of modern design.

Read more

It's a Tragedy...

Studying Greek Mythology as part of my English Degree has allowed me to conclude that the story behind SotC is a tragedy. I have discussed the transcript of the game with a good friend of mine, an English lecturer at Lincoln University here in the UK and we both agreed that the game can comfortably be classified as such and that this tone helps impact the game upon the moral consciousness of the player.

If the protagonist ‘Wander’ had survived the ordeal to resurrect the maiden the story would not have the same impact. Tragic events allow stories emotional weight and deliver messages or carry feelings the characters experienced during the tale to the player.

A similar conclusion can be drawn against Ico. Although in this tale the ‘hero’ did not meet death, his heroin’s fate was not clear and many speculate that she was not resurrected, but her soul became the Queens possession. Her soul therefore became a part of the crumbling castle, never to escape. The ending of Ico requires the player to draw their own conclusions about the fate of Yorda and I suppose it depends greatly on the attitude of the player, pessimist or optimist.

The Last Guardian may also have the same tone throughout, although early observations believe the story to have a warmer feel to it plainly because of the relationship between the beast and the boy. It’s safe to assume from previous experience that The Last Guardian may have some moments of bitter pain or loss equal to the fall of Agro in SotC.

Team ICO appear to portray tragedy consistently and with a purpose, to draw in the player into the game deeper than if it were devoid of tragedy. This is something I have come to expect and indeed revel in experiencing.

Read more

Fumito Ueda Talks to Eurogamer

Fumito Ueda discusses the trailer and the development of The Last Guardian with EuroGamers' Ellie Gibson. In the discussion he reveals some interesting ideas about the flow of development and the lengths that Team ICO go to convince the player that the characters are (almost) real. A very interesting read indeed. Follow this link for the full interview.

Related Links
EuroGamer

Read more

The Last Guardian Official Site Launched

Sony has finally launched the official (Japanese) site for The Last Guardian. In addition to this a flurry of screenshots have been released as well as an interview (see below) with Team ICO on their developement of their latest creation.



Watching the subbed interview it's clear that a great deal of thought is going into the game. The devil is definately in the details in The Last Guardian. There is also a short trailer at the end of the interview which is also worth the wait.

Related Links
The Last Guardian Official Site
The Last Guardian Screenshots (download)

Read more

The Long Wait

The Last Guardian will be one of the greatest games of this decade. Now I can say this with absolute confidence because of Team ICO’s track record. Although only two games old, those two games are quite simply amazing. ICO is regarded as one of the best games of the 20th century, SOTC is one of the most beautifully orchestrated games in history. The Last Guardian is sure to follow the same suit.

Although not much is known about the game, the interview with Famito Ueda gives some indication as to what to expect from the developer. Huge open vistas, an intelligent creature with oodles of personality, an avatar whose past is surrounded in mystery and game mechanics similar to their previous games, this is a recipe for greatness.

The Last Guardian has been in development for the last three years and although I am itching to play the game I am also happy to wait as long as it takes for Team ICO to make this game as richly detailed as their previous games. With the rest of the games development community happy to churn out sequel after predictable sequel it’s reassuring to see that Sony Computer Entertainment Japan happy to allow Team ICO to take as long as they need to completely finish the game properly.

Back in the 1990’s there was a game released for the N64. This game single headedly made the fledgling console a success. The game was called Goldeneye and it was so good that the N64 was saved from an early death because Goldeneye was an N64 exclusive and many people bought the console just for that game. Exactly the same happedened with the X-Box, had it not Halo from launch perhaps the modern games scene would be quite a different place. Although the Playstation3 is not in the same situation as the N64 or the X-Box I’m sure that The Last Guardian will be one of those exclusive titles that warrant some to buy a PS3 just for that game. I only hope that the pressure on Team ICO’s development cycle does not undermine the integrity of the team.

Related Links
Goldeneye, N64

Read more

Ico - The Sequel?

Ico was the first game released by Team ICO and SOTC the second. But this does not necessarily represent the order of things. ICO is possibly the sequel to SOTC, not directly but one can speculate that the boy with horns called Ico is a descendant of the tiny horned child discovered by the princess at the end of SOTC. This of course is only speculation but it is an idea that is widely accepted.

Whether the boy with horns from Ico or the child with horns from SOTC is related is not proven. But I enjoy entertaining the fact that they could be. It makes the stories from both games just a little more intriguing and, when playing either game; I am consciously looking for clues to that relationship. Team ICO’s next game in development; The Last Guardian has a creature which also has horns and while that in itself is not remarkable, it is intriguing to me as to why this creature has horns at all and whether the creature shares a relationship to either Ico or SotC. I suppose I will never know for sure, but that is the way I like it.

Read more

Relationships with a Pixel

Team ICO’s games are enjoyable because they capture a feeling for the player that is seldom explored in games. If you’ve ever played a modern videogame then chances are you will have had a relationship with your on-screen avatar whether it be to shout at them for not doing what you want, to feeling a little sad when they are killed to even feeling fear for them when threatened.

Team ICO tends to exploit this feeling by showing the player this relationship on screen between two characters. By doing this the player can’t help but feel in some way connected to the characters, like a surrogate parent nurturing the on-screen relationship and protecting it. In Ico for instance, the relationship between Ico and Yorda is so innocent and childlike that one can’t help feel for them both and every effort is made by the player to protect them both.

I have played other games where this doesn’t happen. Tomb raider for instance; my time with Lara Croft was quite a dominant relationship to the point where I would find interesting and gruesome ways for her to be killed. I think this happens because I don’t feel protective of the avatar and indeed she is there to obey me. In Ico, Yorda and Ico are relying on each other for protection and look to me for guidance therefore I immediately feel a different kind of connection other than to dominate.

It’s this dynamic which is at the centre of Team ICO’s games and one which I look forward to exploring with each new release. From what I know of The Last Guardian, this dynamic is again exploited in the relationship between the young boy and the creature, Trico.

There are examples of this in other games within the industry. Games of note are ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ for the PS2 and the Gamecube, the relationship between Jade and Pey'j. You may also want to look at the recent ‘Prince of Persia’ game and the relationship between the Prince and the Princess, although this is less successful due in part to the lack of substance the game presents. Team ICO seems to understand this dynamic more than any other game developer and this is one of the reasons their games tend to feel much more human than the crowd.

Read more

Fumito Ueda Discusses The Last Guardian

Published in Famitsu Magazine on 6th March 2009, an interview with director Fumito Ueda(Director/Lead Designer) that blows the door open on both the trailer and everything else that he and his team are aiming for with their first publicly-announced project in four years.

The trailer's focus is naturally on Trico, the "great man-eating eagle" of the game's Japanese-language title and a creature with a bit of bird, cat, dog, and everything else you can think of in him. Did the game's core concept begin with this guy's design? "We thought we could take the relationship you built with Agro as you went through Shadow of the Colossus and make that more of the main focus of the game design," Ueda said. "Also, both the PlayStation 3 and Japan-made video games in general haven't exhibited a lot of energy lately, so we chose a theme for our game that instead offered a very strong presence."

Discussing Trico's design, Ueda revealed that his team's primary focus was to create a virtual creature that was interesting to interact with while being as realistic as possible. "Replicating a real-life dog or cat is not impossible, but if you have a dog or cat in real life, you're always going to notice the unnatural idiosyncrasies of the virtual animal first," he said. "The current design is a product of thinking about what works with the game's design while looking as natural as possible. It's a mixture of features from many animals, and even I think it's a pretty strange combination. That's what we were aiming for, though. We kept it deliberately unbalanced because looking strange was important here.

"There are lots of games that have cute-looking characters, but that 'cute' is mostly a symbolic 'cute,' taking real life and deforming it. The traits of a real animal are much more complex, but I think video games, and in particular the power of the PS3, have the power to express them. The challenge for us is to show truly animal-like expressions -- the way the eyes move and open, or the way it moves or raises its hackles."

In The Last Guardian, the player controls the boy seen in the trailer, interacting with the eagle as he explores the game world. Exactly how the boy and eagle meet up is still a secret, but one scene in the trailer seems to show the boy giving the eagle some food. "You can feed the eagle, as well as take out any spears or harpoons stuck in his body," Ueda said. "You're free to interact with him at any time, but having to care for him constantly would be annoying, so we're striking a balance. Building your characters and solving puzzles are important parts of any game, but an animal strikes a presence in your life simply by looking at it. There is an air of mystery to them, since you can't be sure what thoughts could be crossing their mind, and that's another reason why animals are a main theme of the game."

Interacting with your griffin-ish friend is not going to be smooth going from start to finish, however. "The eagle does not simply follow all of your directions," Ueda said. "Throwing something that catches his interest will get him to move -- you aren't working with him and giving him orders, but you're more taking advantage of his natural behavior. Sometimes, you'll need him to sit still in order to finish a section, but he'll run off on you instead. He's not all that smart, and he won't necessarily do what the player wants all the time."

As Ueda put it to Famitsu, the classic Ico/Colossus gameplay -- climbing up, grabbing on to things, figuring out how to get from point A to point B -- will be the main thrust of The Last Guardian as well. "This game, unlike the previous ones, runs on a full physics engine, but it's not just for the purposes of technology," he noted. "I think it's important that any piece of technology you use contributes to the themes you're trying to express. We're very serious about this -- for example, in the scene [in the trailer] where the eagle grabs the barrel and swallows it, that's not simple animation; the barrel makes interactive contact with his mouth, and physical momentum drives it down his throat. We learned a great deal about AI processing in Ico and transformative collisions in Shadow of the Colossus; here, we've put the two together and brought them up to PlayStation 3 level, and that lets us make this world the kind of inviting, 'I wish I could go there' place that Ico and Colossus had."

Sony Computer Entertainment announced at E3 that The Last Guardian is a 2010 release, and Ueda declined to go into further specifics, other than to say "there is definitely a reason why we are announcing this when we are." Online compatibility is still up in the air -- "There are things I'd like to do with the online environment," Ueda said, but "I can't definitely say whether it will happen."

Article taken from 1up.com. Written by Kevin Gifford.

Related Links
www.1up.com

Read more

The Last Guardian

I am simply beside myself with joy at the prospect of playing the next game from Team ICO. The popularity of SOTC should ensure the developers new game gets a warm welcome.

The Last Guardian(TLG) was unveiled at this years E3 and seems to share many similarities with Team ICO’s previous games. The playable character has to care for a creature (or person) and the game is built on this relationship between an NPC (non-playable-character) and the avatar. I remember being devastated by the ‘death’ of Agro in SOTC or feeling afraid when the dark creatures were kidnapping Yorda in Ico.

During the video shown at E3, the boy(avatar) seems to be feeding the creature and in return the creature helps the boy in many different ways. This dynamic is at the core of Ico and SOTC and I’m sure will be an essential part of TLG. One can also speculate that the creature can communicate with the boy, perhaps not using a vocabulary but with gestures and calls. The creature itself appears to be based on both a cat and a bird and is reminiscent of a legendary creature called a Griffin.


The visuals in this game are sure to be breathtaking and I can only hope that they share the same dreamlike quality that their other games do. Team ICO’s work on the PS2 utilised the consoles architecture brilliantly making SOTC one of the best looking games on any console in recent times. The raw processing power of the PS3 cell engine is sure to make TLG look incredible.

There are hints that the landscape the game is situated is either the same as or inspired by SOTC. The architecture of the castle is also reminiscent of Ico and shares the same dark looming structure. Though they have never confirmed that either Ico and SOTC are related it is popularly believed that SOTC is the prequel to Ico. I am hoping that the saga continues with TLG being related either directly or indirectly to Team ICO’s previous games.

So here’s to baited breath while we await the coming of the third game from Team ICO and the knowledge that we can expect the same dynamics, the same clarity for a visual style and the re-assurance that TLG will be an incredible game.

Read more