SolidSnakex
Member
Do most people agree that this was a good gameplay demo? It seems like a quiet portion of the game or just traversal from point a to point b. I dunno... I just didn't feel it was anything special. I still hold out hope and probably the most disappointing portion of the presentation was no release date. My guess is holiday of next year but yeah it was disappointing to see it again just to be left waiting when it will actually release.
I thought it was brilliant actually. The way that they managed to communicate the mechanics to you without ever putting in prompts on screen was really something we'd missed last gen. The boy runs to the edge where there's a huge gap and just starts to jump a few times, which signals to Trico that the boy wants it to jump across. It's something so simple, yet it makes sense if you've ever tried to teach an animal to do tricks of something. If you've tired to teach a dog to jump, then you'll jump as a visual aid to show them that's what you want them to do. Then you have the next part where Trico freaks out when it sees that thing on the cart. It's something that sends a signal to the player that they need to get rid of it because it's upsetting Trico.
Even the little end part where it's trying to keep a grip on that little platform, it's a small signal to the player that it needs something to grab onto, which is why the boy pushes that log forward so it can grab onto that. GameInformer described the sequence that starts before the E3 demo and the mentioned how it's Trico and the boy in a small room and the boy is feeding it barrels. Eventually the boy starts to lay the barrels out in a direction that he wants Trico to go in. Basically you're laying out treats for it. They even speculated that there's a sound Trico makes when its ready to catch you. So it's not just that it turns around, it gives you a sound queue that it's ready to catch you.
I just really liked it. It's obviously much more like ICO than SotC in terms of what direction they're going in. SotC was pure action, while it's clear that with TLG they're once again going with the angle that you're a kid and really don't have much power. You need Trico to really make it around. So it's going to be very puzzle oriented. Which i'm all for.
Trico probably has the most complex character model ever right? He's huge and he's got all these moving feathers and moves so naturally.
I'd say it easily is. I really can't think of another game where everything about it really hinges on whether or not that AI works properly. If Trico doesn't work, the game fails. It's that simple. How many developers are really willing to risk their entire game on a single AI character working properly? We barely even see many AI advancements from generation to generation, and yet here's a game where everything is riding on AI working properly.