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The Last Guardian |OT| In my memories, the monster always has kind eyes

vetrox

vetrox

Member
Steve.1981 said:
Having waited a while since finishing my playthrough, in order to let everything sink in properly, I'm now confident when I say that I adore this game. It's an absolute masterpiece of the medium.

Spoilers ahead.

At the time, I had an almost visceral negative reaction to the end set piece atop the tower, when Trico is attacked and has it's tail ripped off. I hated it. It hit me like a truck and I pretty much felt sick as I scrambled to figure out what I could do to help.

I've since realised that was the point. I was emotionally attached by then. The devs had me where they wanted me. I had spent hours watching the boy and Trico bond. They had been through so much together.

I made the boy hunt for every barrel to feed Trico, spent ages just scratching behind it's ears, petting it, pulling out every spear and cleaning all the blood from it's feathers after every battle. It had been such a journey, figuring out every little puzzle as they made their way through the vast, labyrinthine, hauntingly beautiful landscape of the ruins in the valley. Trico had saved the boy's life more than once. I thought they had hit their lowest point, and overcame it, with the honestly terrifying fight against the second beast, when the boy saved Trico's life. I thought finally reaching the top of the white tower would be an emotional climax, and it was... Just not the kind I anticipated or wanted.

I've came to terms with it and honestly, now I'm just impressed at how the game managed to draw me in and manipulate me so expertly. But moving on from that personal reaction, The Last Guardian is simply a wonderful piece of interactive entertainment in it's own unique way, from start to finish. It's another example where I feel like I could sit down with someone who doesn't understand gaming and properly show them what it can be, what heights the medium can reach.

Trico is honestly one of the most impressive achievements in artificial intelligence gameplay I have ever seen. It felt real. It genuinely felt like the boy was traveling with a living, breathing animal.

The bread and butter of quietly, slowly exploring and looking for a path that would lead up through the ruins contrasted perfectly with the bigger set piece moments that honestly did have my pulse racing at times. The whole thing was paced out in such a way that I always wanted to know what was round the next corner, through the next gate or over the next yawning chasm. It always felt like a new discovery was just ahead. The game drew me along, intuitively. I very quickly, naturally, got in the habit of constantly taking my bearings and sizing everything up before proceeding.

The mask slipped for me once.
The boy fell through the wooden floor into a small chamber filled with water, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get him back out of there.

I've since discovered that this is a section of the game where Trico can act up. It will lower it's tail down in the far corner of the water filled chamber, so the boy can climb up and out, but can take a while before doing so.
Luckily for me, I reached this point quite late at night. I gave up for the night after 5 minutes of trying different things. On returning a couple of days later, Trico responded after a couple more minutes.

Aside from this one hiccup, I had no problems when issuing commands or otherwise interacting with Trico. As I said, it felt like a living, breathing animal and so I treated it as one. I watched to see how it responded to the boy's commands and gave it time to manoeuvre itself into position to try and carry them out. I rewarded it with affection after every successful completion of an area. It was pretty much always clear and obvious, just by watching Trico's responses, when the boy was telling it to do something that simply wasn't possible.

All said, the only real downside for me is that I know for a fact I'll need to leave it for a long time before playing through again. It's definitely not a game I'll be able to jump in and out of every so often. It's a rich, rewarding experience that I'll want to savour with fresh eyes and the right mindset, when the time comes again.

God it was brilliant. Ueda and his team came through. In the end, against all odds, the long wait really was worth it.
Click to expand...

I had the same experience. Loved every minute of it, except for having the same problem in the area you mentioned.
 
E

emag

Member
Greatest Ever said:
Don't Google anything except a certain water filled room. Don't spoil anything. Enjoy.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the comments.

I'm not sure TLG's for me, though. Playing just half an hour gave me a pounding headache -- I'm not sure if it's the frame rate, the FoV, the fog, the colors, or some combination of the above, but I literally could not play any longer. I'll try again when I'm well rested and dial down the resolution to 720p to see if that helps. I do get motion sickness from some FPSes, but never before from a 3rd person adventure game. :(
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
Finally started playing this, but omg this is NOT how I hoped it would be. I loved ICO, thought SOTC was pretty great too but this is just... well, I don't know what to say really. What in the world happened during the development of this game?? This is seriously the slowest, most tedious, badly controlled game that I still can't put down. I'm currently at the area after the door puzzle with the rail road wagons. It's one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, but I'm NOT having fun. I would rather watch a movie about this strange relationship. I guess the ending will make me cry or something since people has placed this on their GOTY lists because as a game it's just awful from what I've seen so far. Worthless controls, extremely slow, baby sitting of the dumbest slowest AI character yet. I still can't put it down though because it's so beautiful and I want to know what happens, but next time, please devs, make a movie instead.
 
RedAssedApe

RedAssedApe

Banned
Just finished.

A few wonky AI moments (bad Trico no barrels for you...stop platforming in the wrong direction! lol) and some camera issues but really great game. Like previous games...very light on the exposition but still able to tell an engaging story just through the gameplay and interaction between the boy and Trico. Just some really damn good world building that doesn't require me to sit/read through a bunch of audio/text logs that so many games seem to favor these days.

I hope Team Ico's next game doesn't take this long though :p
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
henhowc said:
Just finished.

A few wonky AI moments (bad Trico no barrels for you...stop platforming in the wrong direction! lol) and some camera issues but really great game. Like previous games...very light on the exposition but still able to tell an engaging story just through the gameplay and interaction between the boy and Trico. Just some really damn good world building that doesn't require me to sit/read through a bunch of audio/text logs that so many games seem to favor these days.

I hope Team Ico's next game doesn't take this long though :p
Click to expand...
Everything is great except the gameplay in my opinion. The art and graphics in general is phenomenal, the way the vegetation and feather/fur move, how things crumble down and break apart, the animation, light, shadow, the sound, the physics, everything. I just don't like how it plays. Which is kind of fundemental for a game. The controls are just awful, the camera puts you in positions where you can't see anything, the AI command thing is extremely slow and barely works, the whole game is basically a corridor. It's really not a great game, I don't get how anyone can think so. If any other game would control this badly it would've got 3/10, it just barely gets the job down, nothing more. That's why I say that I want this as a movie, it would be awesome. As a game I just hope it will end soon, so I can forget that it was a game and pretend it was a movie instead. I don't know how much is left but I'm guessing that it'll end soon, Trico has
tried his wings
.
 
Ceadeus

Ceadeus

Gold Member
Hi, i'm only here to write how much I liked that game.

It's incredible et touching. As a fan of Ico and SotC, I could have not wanted something better.

Literally made me cry and it's perfect that way. I've hooked the first minute till the last.
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
Just finished it. Happy I stayed til the end.

As a movie it was Oscar worthy. So beautiful, emotional, unique. Could've been a Studio Ghibli movie. I'll never forget it.

But as a game it was just plain bad. Way too many game related issues.

I wish I liked it like many of you but even though I love some parts I just can't see past the bad and frustrating controls, camera and A.I.

I'm glad I experienced it but I won't touch it again though.
 
O

OrbitalBeard

Member
I've put about three hours into TLG so far and I'm really, really impressed. It's the perfect melding of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Trico is one of the most impressive characters I've ever seen in a game.
 
J

Jawbreaker

Member
06d28Lp.gif
 
N

NateDog

Member
Waldo Lydecker said:
Wow, have you guys seen that Last Guardian OST Vinyl edition??

http://www.gamefront.de/archiv05-2017-gamefront/The-Last-Guardian---Vinyl-Soundtrack.html

thelastschallplatte-3.png
Click to expand...
It's gorgeous but is done by iam8bit who have quite a bad rep after the mess of a release of the physical CE of No Man's Sky (there's a big thread about it here). I want it bad but even looking at the listing it's still saying "preorder" with an expected shipping date of Q1 2017 despite the fact that we're 6 weeks away from Q3.
 
P

Psykoboy2

Member
NateDog said:
It's gorgeous but is done by iam8bit who have quite a bad rep after the mess of a release of the physical CE of No Man's Sky (there's a big thread about it here). I want it bad but even looking at the listing it's still saying "preorder" with an expected shipping date of Q1 2017 despite the fact that we're 6 weeks away from Q3.
Click to expand...

Mine shipped just a few days ago.
 
K

Kastrioti

Persecution Complex
I beat Horizon recently, absolutely loved it, and was going to pick up a game between NiOh, Persona 5 or Yakuza. I was at GameStop and decided to get The Last Guardian. I was actually just standing awkwardly at GameStop deciding what game to get, I said "screw it, let me finally play it and decide for myself."

I was there for both ICO and SOTC, two of my all time favs, but a lot of the impressions had got me to the point where I kept delaying actually playing the game.

It's stunning so far, and not just graphically. I'm still early in the game but I got to the bridge section I think was demoed at E3.

I do wish they could've told you right from the getgo you can control Trico, and I also hope those dumb menu/button prompts go away. I'm like 3-4 hours in the game I already know what to press.

And the soundtrack....*phew*
 
P

PetriP-TNT

Member
Kastrioti said:
I do wish they could've told you right from the getgo you can control Trico, and I also hope those dumb menu/button prompts go away. I'm like 3-4 hours in the game I already know what to press.
Click to expand...

The prompts don't go away (and you cannot control Trico before the scene where they teach you the controls right?). Besides the glaring technical issues that was my top 1 grievance with the game.
 
T

takriel

Member
Can't really enjoy a game with such clunky gameplay. I'm enjoying the world building and relationship between Trico and the boy, but yeah. Shame it's gotta control that badly.

This would have been a great animated movie, but as a game it's bad.
 
U

unknownstranger

Member
I beat The Last Guardian the day it came out but rushed through it because of class (final the same day). I think next week I'm going to finally go back and replay it. Shadow of the Colossus is my favorite game of all time but I haven't tried to rank The Last Guardian yet because I couldn't fully enjoy it.
 
FantasticMrSnake

FantasticMrSnake

Member
Still there is no way to remove/hide the button prompts/UI right?

It's the only thing that keeps me for a second playtrough, but at this point I don't expect any more updates.., so maybe I'll grab it again when I finish with Persona5.
 
A

Arkeband

Banned
So I ordered this finally and it came in the mail today...

...and it's all in Czech or some shit.

so watch out who you're buying from on Amazon, some sellers have some suspicious stock. (I have to send this back and ordered a new one, hopefully not PAL)
 
S

Slaythe

Member
So I only just bought this, going blind, haven't read reviews and bla bla.

Only a few hours in but I'm already 200% on board.

Loving every second.

I heard people complain about controls on GAF, honestly I understand the complaints but it feels really irrelevant compared to what it brings to the table.

It's a living masterpiece so far. I enjoy just staring at things. Journey was a game that comes to mind, and Colossus of course, where I felt similar things.

Can't wait to see more, but I don't want to burn it all in one go so I'll take my time !
 
A

Arkeband

Banned
Minor update: the new one I ordered arrived and it's in Arabic.

So uh, don't use Amazon for TLG until they restock, unless you don't care - this one had a disclaimer that it's also technically playable in English.
 
M

Mcdohl

Member
Finally finished this game yesterday. I do recommend it, but it has its flaws.

Here's my take:
  • Controls are kinda bad, and not intuitive. I got stuck when I forgot D-Pad equips/unequips mirror (something you learn 10 hours before and get no reminder for it)
  • Camera often sucks
  • This can be good or bad, depends on the player, but be ready to have patience with Trico. I was ok with it 90% of the time
  • I feel that the game starts losing challenge (and my interest) as it dragged. It's no longer exciting to climb shit, break mirrors, etc. after doing it 10000 times.

I know it sounds like I didn't enjoy it but...
  • This game is beautiful. I often stopped to admire the landscape, foliage, Trico, etc. Wonderful art direction.
  • The bonding is real...dem feels...
  • Game is pretty unique btw
  • Even with all its flaws, you want to keep going, and the game is not that long. I finished it under 15 hours without rushing (got a trophy for that). That's great imo, it doesn't overstay its welcome

Do play it please, game might not be perfect, but it's worth your time, imo.
 
SirNinja

SirNinja

Member
lfCvL1T.png


The book is supposedly out the day after tomorrow but Amazon still has no clue about it. I hope they didn't delay it again :(
 
SirNinja

SirNinja

Member
GIANKRATOS said:
Is that an artbook?
Click to expand...

From what I gather, it's both a behind-the-scenes book, an art book, and a visual walkthrough all in one. Sort of what the Shadow of the Colossus art book was.

It was originally supposed to come out some time in February, but Future Press delayed it to June without any explanation. Nothing on their Twitter/Facebook about it at all. Their own site still even lists the book's release date as February (lol).

I want this book so bad, but the silence from Future on this is...not encouraging, to put it lightly.
 
A

Agram

Member
SirNinja said:
From what I gather, it's both a behind-the-scenes book, an art book, and a visual walkthrough all in one. Sort of what the Shadow of the Colossus art book was.

It was originally supposed to come out some time in February, but Future Press delayed it to June without any explanation. Nothing on their Twitter/Facebook about it at all. Their own site still even lists the book's release date as February (lol).

I want this book so bad, but the silence from Future on this is...not encouraging, to put it lightly.
Click to expand...
Last week they replied to my message saying
Maybe not exactly June 9th but a few days later. The books are shipping to retailers now!
Click to expand...
Still, it's very odd that they haven't shared a single bit of info or any preview scans from the book.
 
G

GIANKRATOS

Member
HStallion said:
Its just hopes and dreams til it actually comes out.
Click to expand...

Lol

SirNinja said:
From what I gather, it's both a behind-the-scenes book, an art book, and a visual walkthrough all in one. Sort of what the Shadow of the Colossus art book was.

It was originally supposed to come out some time in February, but Future Press delayed it to June without any explanation. Nothing on their Twitter/Facebook about it at all. Their own site still even lists the book's release date as February (lol).

I want this book so bad, but the silence from Future on this is...not encouraging, to put it lightly.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll consider buying it.
 
SirNinja

SirNinja

Member
The book has been officially delayed about one week, to June 16th, probably to give retailers time to receive shipments. The end is finally in sight, at least...

Karspankey said:
isrMS9W.gif
Click to expand...

The game's animation still blows my mind. SotC's animation was crazy good but this is just on a whole other level.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
SirNinja said:
The book has been officially delayed about one week, to June 16th, probably to give retailers time to receive shipments. The end is finally in sight, at least...



The game's animation still blows my mind. SotC's animation was crazy good but this is just on a whole other level.
Click to expand...

Till it disappears until its re-announced for the PS5.
 
O

Off-Kilter

Banned
This game is wonderful so far. I'm curious as to how far I am in the game though.

I just
fell off a tower with Trico after getting attacked by an evil Trico, and I'm now dangling off a tree branch with the world's strongest shirt
 
I

Incitemaybe

Member
FantasticMrSnake said:
Still there is no way to remove/hide the button prompts/UI right?

It's the only thing that keeps me for a second playtrough, but at this point I don't expect any more updates.., so maybe I'll grab it again when I finish with Persona5.
Click to expand...

Damn, I wonder why those prompts were put there for such an agonizingly long time to begin with.

I was hoping I would read this thread and find they were able to be removed for my second playthrough.
 
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