The Last Guardian revolves around the relationship between a young boy and a giant, curious creature — and it is the third game crafted by Team ICO; the people behind ICO (2001) & Shadow of the Colossus (2005). The player takes on the role as a young, unarmed boy who tries to escape from dangerous ruins, but meets significant opposition which he cannot overcome on his own. The relationship with the big, feather-coated creature Trico is the only force that can help him — but this animal is livng by its instincts, so the player must show great understanding of its behaviour to make him comply.

Origin:

After the extremely successful Shadow of the Colossus — Fumito Ueda, the director at Team ICO, had the vision of taking the kind of relationship that the player builds with Aggro, the horse from Shadow of the Colossus, and making it the core of a game design. The game is based on the interaction between the player and a creature, which acts realistically according to its natural instincts. It will not always obey, and it won’t always sit still when you want it to, but it is the emotional attachment that you get to it that drives progress in the game.

Animals have a way of affecting us, even when we are only observing them. We hardly ever know what they are thinking, and some of them have a mysterious atmosphere about them. The character Trico is a result of trying to capture this. He has a strange combination of features from many animals, deliberately unbalanced to avoid presumptions about his behaviour. The team has focused on creating a character that would behave with the highest level of believability while also being interesting to interact with.

Design:

The experiences that the team gained while creating the Artificial Intelligence for their first game ICO, the transformative collisions they created for Shadow of the Colossus, and the physics-engine created for this game — all comes together to create an expressive and dynamic character that can fit and adjust to nearly any level-design.

Trico’s movements and behaviour are flexible, and the game’s pysics-engine enables Trico to realistically interact with the detailed environment, making the world even more believable. This is best shown by letting him explore on his own, as he may then open up new areas to discover. To maintain the illusion of life; Trico will follow his own interests and behave like a real animal, so the player will have to take advantage of his natural behaviour instead of giving him direct orders. For instance if he gets hungry, the player could influence his behaviour by using food as bait — but if he is not, then he might be more interested in play. But what’s really interesting is how these objectives open a channel for communication between the boy and Trico, and how that builds emotional attachment.

They will start out with an unfriendly relationship, but as the story progresses — they bond. The boy will take out any spears or harpoons stuck in Trico’s body and they will rest side by side like friends. While the player travels through the old ruins, the creature will help solve any puzzles that might arise and block the player’s path. And as with any Team ICO game; your actions will give rise to questions.