After 10 Years, ’The Last Guardian’ is Finally Here—and Yes, It Was Worth the Wait
You've waited 10 years for this, so I'll get right to the point: Yes, The Last Guardian is a wonderful game.
The long-awaited follow-up to Sony's acclaimed PlayStation 2 masterpieces Ico and Shadow of the Colossus has been in the works ever since Shadow wrapped in 2005, and went through an agonizing period of development hell. Originally slated for PlayStation 3, the game ran into insurmountable technical issues on the console, and would have likely been cancelled outright if not for the fact that fans of the series kept up a continuous outcry for its release. The more powerful PlayStation 4 finally proved a suitable technological environment for the game's vision, although it necessitated another four years of development; as of tomorrow, December 6, the wait will finally be over.
And what is the technological beast that felled even the mighty PS3? Why, it's a simple puzzle-platformer in which a young boy slowly picks his way through abandoned ruins, mossy brick to splintered plank. The big twist, and the monster that devoured the Cell processor whole, is Trico, a colossal mythical beast with the feathers of a bird, the face of a cat, the personality of a dog and the body mass of a mid-sized ranch home. He's your constant AI companion, and the game is all about building and getting you to feel that emotional connection between the boy and his sort-of-dog. And puzzles!
As the game begins, you wake up at the bottom of a deep hole, with Trico chained up next to you. Like the lion and the mouse, you'll soon befriend the behemoth by ripping some spears from his body, feeding him his favorite food (a barrel full of glowing mystery chow), and finally releasing him from bondage in a moment that feels like one of those climactic boss fights against huge monsters in Shadow of the Colossus but ends with a friendly belly-rub instead of driving a sword into its guts. From that angle, the whole game feels almost like a little apology for Shadow, an extended friendly encounter with a colossus to make up for forcing you to kill so many of them the last go-round.
Trico is friend, protector, vehicle, and platform. He's imperfect at all four. You need Trico to do things: get into position near a goal so you can clamber up his back and jump off his snout to reach it, or simply jump over a gap with you as a passenger. The challenge of the game isn't so much doing these things with pixel-precision (although that is important, too), but in looking around its serene, natural, intricately detailed environments and figuring out how to get where you're going. Observing Trico can be a help, to see where he naturally goes to. Or not. And just because you ask him to do something, that doesn't mean he will. Maybe he'll take his time. Maybe he'll ignore you.
