Last Guardian coming holiday 2011
"It's time for us to go into crunch mode."
The Last Guardian, the new PS3 exclusive from the team behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, is slated to launch during "holiday 2011".
At least, "That's our target," said a Sony spokesperson during a demo presentation at the Tokyo Game Show.
So how come it's taken so long? Bossman Fumito Ueda explained that for ICO and SOTC, game design and research and development were worked on in parallel, which sometimes led to delays. This time around they decided to do research and development first, to lock the core elements and then progress with the rest of the game.
But now, Ueda said, the concept has been polished. "It's the end of the trial and error phase of production and it's time for to go into full production - crunch mode."
The "holiday 2011" date appeared at the end of a new trailer for The Last Guardian, which you can see below. To the sound of chirpy orchestral music, the video showed the human protagonist tiptoeing along Trico's (that's the cateagle thing) back, jumping on his head, petting his muzzle and climbing up his spine.
We then saw Trico poking his head through a hole, grinding his feet, picking up the boy by the scruff of the neck, hissing and being sick.
To finish up there was some footage of the boy balancing on beams, throwing food for Trico to catch, shattering a stained glass window and booting enemies in the chest. All this took place in the kind of environments we've seen before - shadowy, ancient-looking temples.
A new trailer, and hot off the press screens, are below.
