The Last Guardian
Watch Ueda go.
Still. This is The Last Guardian, the new game from the man behind ICO, and the man himself is in this very room. The US producer explains he's going to conduct a Q&A session with Ueda, and begins by asking the question on everybody's lips: why has it been so long since we last saw The Last Guardian?
Well, says Ueda, times have changed. Back when ICO and Shadow of the Colossus were being developed, game design and research and development were worked on in parallel - which sometimes caused delays. For The Last Guardian the team decided to get the R&D out of the way first, and lock the core elements of the game down before moving on.
Now, however, the concept has been polished and he's ready to get cracking. "It's the end of the trial and error phase of production and it's time for to go into full production - crunch mode," Ueda confirms.
The reason he's presenting this trailer now, Ueda continues, is because he wanted to clear up a couple of rumours floating around the internet. "Those who saw the last trailer for The Last Guardian may have speculated there will be a sad ending," he says.
"Obviously, if you played ICO or Shadow of the Colossus, you may jump to assumptions that the next game may have a sad ending as well. So I kind of wanted to throw that out there, and make sure that it's an open ending for you guys to figure out."
The second aim of the trailer, Ueda says, is to show how much work the team has done giving Trico a range of different characteristics. "That creature has a lot more character to him now," he reckons. That'll explain all those facial expressions in that there montage.
What the trailer didn't tell us more about was the relationship between Trico and the boy, or exactly how this will work as far as gameplay goes. Ueda's remaining pretty quiet on this issue. "They initially have a very rigid, unfriendly relationship," he says. "We don't want to tell you too much, but as the story progresses, they will naturally find a bond. Let's leave it at that."
Perhaps we just need to watch the video again... "Although the clips in the trailer were very short, watch it over and over again and it will be quite self-explanatory," Ueda says. "Again, it goes back to the relationship between the boy and the Trico... Obviously, that emotional attachment is a key factor in game progression."
Disappointingly, the producer decides now a good time to move on and talk about the new ICO / Shadow of the Colossus special edition. (You can read all about it in our news story on the subject.) We then have to sit through a demo of a game we all played about five years ago, in slightly better definition.
But hooray, because now it's time for the Q&A session! But oh dear, because the first question is about the ICO / SOTC compilation - as are many of the questions that follow. It seems quite a few people are more interested in the new ICO aspect ratio and US box art than The Last Guardian.
Then, at last, someone gets in a question about how the environments in TLG are shaping up. "Looking back at ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, oftentimes level designs were dictated by one person or one artist. They were responsible for creating that whole level," says Ueda.
"This time they kind of restructured their workflow to allow for a more flexible level redesigning. These are elements which sound easy, but they do take some time."