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Full Edge Ueda Interview on The Last Guardian

One of the tags in the source code is "2010年度採用" which means "hiring for the 2010 fiscal year." Japanese companies typically only hire once a year, in April. Are we sure this isn't, um, four years old?

This hiring page has been online since 2008 and the job listings are the same as they have been since 2010, as you can see for yourself on the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20090122221257/http://www.scei.co.jp/saiyo/career/wanda.html

HOWEVER, Sony does list these on their 2015 intake page, so I don't know what to think. http://www.scei.co.jp/saiyo/career/
 
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I could care less the platform. I don't own a PS4 yet, but if it came out on PS3, great.

Either way its finally happening. There should be no doubt the game will be released, and released soon.
 
I remember the first time I read "The Compliance Branch" in Harper's magazine in 2008. My cappuccino (venti, extra-dry) was being prepared by the barista at Barnes & Noble's in-store Starbucks while I waited on my partner for an English lit class project to arrive (why some college professors insist on partnered projects still confounds me), so I insinuated my way through the magazine racks, spied that particular issue of the magazine - the February 2008 one, to be exact - and picked it up to thumb through. On the cover, at the bottom, hidden by the magazine rack itself when the magazine sat there for those who had no intention to purchase it or even engage in a bit of superficial café skimming, was the author's name: David Foster Wallace. It was squashed between the word "Also:" and the name of the bombastic, quasi-Marxist philosopher ", Slavoj Žižek." To be fair, it was a testament to the author's craft and consequent literary fame that he made the cover at all with this piece totaling only 3 pages (including more than half of one page dedicated to an accompanying painting done not by the author himself) in the "Readings" section.

I'd read Infinite Jest years before this and had been anticipating his subsequent novel ever since. That month, February 2008, was 12 years to the month after the release of Infinite Jest, which itself was released more than 9 years after Wallace's debut novel, The Broom of the System. "The Compliance Branch" was the first excerpt of the new novel that I would read. It was the first taste I would have of something I'd waited years for. I cared enough to savor it that I waited just a bit longer - until I now-impatiently nabbed my cappuccino from the pick-up counter, checked the time on my cellphone to ensure my partner wasn't due for another few minutes, secured a table with two chairs near a window (to be easily spotted by my soon-arriving partner), stretched my legs out under the table from my chair so the right heel rested on the chair across from mine while the left crossed over at the ankles, flapped open the magazine, found the correct page, read the prepositional phrases "from a work in progress" in the byline, took a deep breath, and, finally, slid through the passage spending more time contemplating my own anxiety from reading this and how it could or could not possibly meet the standard I expected than the content of the work itself. The experience seemed important enough at the time that I purchased the magazine - something I very rarely, if ever, did or do. Seven months later, David Foster Wallace hung himself at his home, leaving the sprawling, disjointed manuscript of his final novel to his now-widowed wife to be published posthumously as The Pale King. After reading the news online, I reread "Good Old Neon," a short story from the final collection he published, Oblivion, in an attempt to assuage my own inconsequential, anonymous grief.

Our expectations are selfish; our demands, unjustified; our disappointment, regret, and frustrated jokes, petty, unwarranted, and shallowly cruel. I'll play the game when it's here, if it's ever here, for what it is.

Beautiful.
 
I think the "no comment" mostly refers to the part of the question that implied TLG is now a PS4 title and I guess he did not want to/was not allowed to say anything that would confirm that implication so he chose not to comment at all.
 
Guys, come on, even Yoshida has been hinting for a while that it's not a PS3 title anymore.
 
I remember the first time I read "The Compliance Branch" in Harper's magazine in 2008. My cappuccino (venti, extra-dry) was being prepared by the barista at Barnes & Noble's in-store Starbucks while I waited on my partner for an English lit class project to arrive (why some college professors insist on partnered projects still confounds me), so I insinuated my way through the magazine racks, spied that particular issue of the magazine - the February 2008 one, to be exact - and picked it up to thumb through. On the cover, at the bottom, hidden by the magazine rack itself when the magazine sat there for those who had no intention to purchase it or even engage in a bit of superficial café skimming, was the author's name: David Foster Wallace. It was squashed between the word "Also:" and the name of the bombastic, quasi-Marxist philosopher ", Slavoj Žižek." To be fair, it was a testament to the author's craft and consequent literary fame that he made the cover at all with this piece totaling only 3 pages (including more than half of one page dedicated to an accompanying painting done not by the author himself) in the "Readings" section.

I'd read Infinite Jest years before this and had been anticipating his subsequent novel ever since. That month, February 2008, was 12 years to the month after the release of Infinite Jest, which itself was released more than 9 years after Wallace's debut novel, The Broom of the System. "The Compliance Branch" was the first excerpt of the new novel that I would read. It was the first taste I would have of something I'd waited years for. I cared enough to savor it that I waited just a bit longer - until I now-impatiently nabbed my cappuccino from the pick-up counter, checked the time on my cellphone to ensure my partner wasn't due for another few minutes, secured a table with two chairs near a window (to be easily spotted by my soon-arriving partner), stretched my legs out under the table from my chair so the right heel rested on the chair across from mine while the left crossed over at the ankles, flapped open the magazine, found the correct page, read the prepositional phrases "from a work in progress" in the byline, took a deep breath, and, finally, slid through the passage spending more time contemplating my own anxiety from reading this and how it could or could not possibly meet the standard I expected than the content of the work itself. The experience seemed important enough at the time that I purchased the magazine - something I very rarely, if ever, did or do. Seven months later, David Foster Wallace hung himself at his home, leaving the sprawling, disjointed manuscript of his final novel to his now-widowed wife to be published posthumously as The Pale King. After reading the news online, I reread "Good Old Neon," a short story from the final collection he published, Oblivion, in an attempt to assuage my own inconsequential, anonymous grief.

Our expectations are selfish; our demands, unjustified; our disappointment, regret, and frustrated jokes, petty, unwarranted, and shallowly cruel. I'll play the game when it's here, if it's ever here, for what it is.

Speechless. HighbrowGAF.
 
This game is beyond the point where it has a chance to live up to expectations.

Team Ico games are good but they're not worth anticipating this long.

Yep.

Can you imagine them releasing a game of ico or sotc length in today's market at full price?
 
If the project was dead, Ueda would've moved on, and certainly wouldn't be still contracted to Sony.
 
Please be PS4... by the time they actually release it the install base will be pretty big, I don't know what they are worried about. People are already dumping their PS3s at pawn shops and gamestop in droves (not me, i never sell anything :p). The people buying the used/refurbished PS3s aren't going to buy new $60 titles, that market is moving to PS4. Give us what we want!
 
Sorry to bump this old thread, but I didn't feel this post warranted a new one. I hope that doesn't irritate anyone too much. Anyway, I have a small amount of info that I've been going back and forth on posting for a while, as it's very slight and has nothing to be with a release date, but is interesting nonetheless. A friend of a friend works at a sony first party, and last time I saw them (the employee) we talked about various sony games. They brought up that sony studios are really big on letting people from different 1st parties play builds and give feedback.

I asked them about TLG, and they said that they had played it about two years ago (~2011). They said that your "partner" controlled the catbird, and you controlled the MC. They said that the game seemed fairly solid, and that they thought there was a real game there that would be released soonish. They have no idea what happened to it since, or why it was delayed seemingly indefinitely.

The "partner" part, at the time, I thought was just referring to the person sitting on the couch next to you, but upon further reflection I wonder if it wasn't a setup similar to Journey. Either way, it seems like a weird mechanic for the game, and a likely part in it's development troubles. The co-op could be the source of conflict between management and Ueda's vision for the game. I'll also note that a co-op mechanic isn't without precedent, as that was Udea's original plan for SotC, where you would work with a team of horned warriors to take down the massive colossi.
 
I thought the whole idea of the catbird was to showcase a combination of some pretty incredible AI and animation - it would behave like a living creature with a mind of its own, and you had to coax or prompt it into doing things to help you.

If it's controlled by another player, none of that would be apparent, and it would negate the need for some of the gameplay mechanics we've seen already (throwing barrels to entice/attract the creature).
 
I thought the whole idea of the catbird was to showcase a combination of some pretty incredible AI and animation - it would behave like a living creature with a mind of its own, and you had to coax or prompt it into doing things to help you.

If it's controlled by another player, none of that would be apparent, and it would negate the need for some of the gameplay mechanics we've seen already (throwing barrels to entice/attract the creature).

Yeah that makes absolutely no sense and flies in the face of what they've been talking about for years.

Yorda (from Ico) was controllable in New Game+ if memory serves, but I doubt they'd even do that. They've got so much more freedom to make Toriko work if Toriko can just disappear behind a wall and reappear somewhere else without having to physically traverse the area. If a player was in control, you'd have to make it so that Toriko was never doing that.

Edit: For example, lets say you're in a room and Toriko isn't there. You solve a puzzle or else traverse the environment, only to find Toriko in the next room. How did Toriko get there? It doesn't matter, as long as no one is in control of Toriko. If someone is in control, you've got to give that person a worthwhile experience, which means a real physical path for Toriko to traverse to get there, which sounds like a whole lot of work.
 
I thought the whole idea of the catbird was to showcase a combination of some pretty incredible AI and animation - it would behave like a living creature with a mind of its own, and you had to coax or prompt it into doing things to help you.

If it's controlled by another player, none of that would be apparent, and it would negate the need for some of the gameplay mechanics we've seen already (throwing barrels to entice/attract the creature).

Yeah that makes absolutely no sense and flies in the face of what they've been talking about for years.

Yorda (from Ico) was controllable in New Game+ if memory serves, but I doubt they'd even do that. They've got so much more freedom to make Toriko work if Toriko can just disappear behind a wall and reappear somewhere else without having to physically traverse the area. If a player was in control, you'd have to make it so that Toriko was never doing that.

Edit: For example, lets say you're in a room and Toriko isn't there. You solve a puzzle or else traverse the environment, only to find Toriko in the next room. How did Toriko get there? It doesn't matter, as long as no one is in control of Toriko. If someone is in control, you've got to give that person a worthwhile experience, which means a real physical path for Toriko to traverse to get there, which sounds like a whole lot of work.

You guys realize that this game has been in development for 6 to 9 years, and undergone at least 2 massive overhauls, right?
 
swnRdgI.gif
 
He should go work for Square after on FF16, he should get a whole generation to work on it.
Still super hyped for TLG!
 
Yup.

I'm not gonna say I don't want this game anymore, just my "hype" is gone till we get an actual release date (not window) again.

Yeah this. Never gonna say "I don't want this game anymore." It's not like I'm working on it myself so it's taking up my time. I'll just be excited when it gets a solid release date confirmed. =p
 
I don't see why we have to lose a decent studio like Liverpool but Yoshida lets this kind of shit fester over an entire generation.
 
Yeah that makes absolutely no sense and flies in the face of what they've been talking about for years.

Yorda (from Ico) was controllable in New Game+ if memory serves, but I doubt they'd even do that. They've got so much more freedom to make Toriko work if Toriko can just disappear behind a wall and reappear somewhere else without having to physically traverse the area. If a player was in control, you'd have to make it so that Toriko was never doing that.

Edit: For example, lets say you're in a room and Toriko isn't there. You solve a puzzle or else traverse the environment, only to find Toriko in the next room. How did Toriko get there? It doesn't matter, as long as no one is in control of Toriko. If someone is in control, you've got to give that person a worthwhile experience, which means a real physical path for Toriko to traverse to get there, which sounds like a whole lot of work.

Given how long this game has been in development, I imagine a scenario of devs investing a lot of work into ideas that aren't panning out for a fully-realized game has happened at least once or two already.
 
This kinda makes me feel that we won't be seeing anything on this game anytime soon.

Yeah, that's what I've taken away from the interview, and even before the interview. But I can tell when The Last Guardian does comes out, it's gonna be a real tear-jerker. That scene from it's trailer when it's calling out to that little boy, you can see it really loves him. Like a puppy to it's master.
 
Yeah, that's what I've taken away from the interview, and even before the interview. But I can tell when The Last Guardian does comes out, it's gonna be a real tear-jerker. That scene from it's trailer when it's calling out to that little boy, you can see it really loves him. Like a puppy to it's master.



you mean the scene in the end when the boy and the griffon are separated by some mean army guys and the mean army guys kill the griffon while the boy cries out for them to stop?


yeah, that's gonna suck.
 
Given how long this game has been in development, I imagine a scenario of devs investing a lot of work into ideas that aren't panning out for a fully-realized game has happened at least once or two already.

Sure, but this particular idea is very unlikely for the reasons I've laid out.
 
Sure, but this particular idea is very unlikely for the reasons I've laid out.

How about the existence of co-op in Ico, and the planned co-op in Shadow of the Colossus?

I also think you may be misreading my post. The specific build that this person played had co-op. That doesn't necessarily mean that the game has no single player.

Your reasons are not compelling. Have you never played a co-op game before?
 
How about the existence of co-op in Ico, and the planned co-op in Shadow of the Colossus?

I also think you may be misreading my post. The specific build that this person played had co-op. That doesn't necessarily mean that the game has no single player.

Your reasons are not compelling. Have you never played a co-op game before?

I have played co-op games, but nothing on that scale.

We'll have to agree to disagree about my reasons being compelling. Personally, I'd say the same of your friends claims. We'll find out if we ever get any more details about this game, which I've been waiting on for years now.
 
I don't see why we have to lose a decent studio like Liverpool but Yoshida lets this kind of shit fester over an entire generation.
Because the core ICO team is just a small group inside SCEJ, from my understanding, and probably a lot of the rest who've ever worked on TLG, if not all, have been working on other projects while the issues with TLG have been resolved.
 
Sorry to bump this old thread, but I didn't feel this post warranted a new one. I hope that doesn't irritate anyone too much. Anyway, I have a small amount of info that I've been going back and forth on posting for a while, as it's very slight and has nothing to be with a release date, but is interesting nonetheless. A friend of a friend works at a sony first party, and last time I saw them (the employee) we talked about various sony games. They brought up that sony studios are really big on letting people from different 1st parties play builds and give feedback.

I asked them about TLG, and they said that they had played it about two years ago (~2011). They said that your "partner" controlled the catbird, and you controlled the MC. They said that the game seemed fairly solid, and that they thought there was a real game there that would be released soonish. They have no idea what happened to it since, or why it was delayed seemingly indefinitely.

The "partner" part, at the time, I thought was just referring to the person sitting on the couch next to you, but upon further reflection I wonder if it wasn't a setup similar to Journey. Either way, it seems like a weird mechanic for the game, and a likely part in it's development troubles. The co-op could be the source of conflict between management and Ueda's vision for the game. I'll also note that a co-op mechanic isn't without precedent, as that was Udea's original plan for SotC, where you would work with a team of horned warriors to take down the massive colossi.

Thank you for your post, it sounds legitimate.

This would explain the delayed development. With any luck, they've since scrapped the co-op idea. From what little we've seen of the game, I don't think it would work well in that capacity (for reasons specified already in this thread).

Journey had something similar, but the co-op was entirely optional as it could be completed without any coordination. Instead, you'd have a case of something like Portal 2 where you'd actually need to do a lot of communication (and also create large environments for the player controlling the creature to move around in).
 
Don't like the sound of co-op. The Team Ico games were very personal, introspective experiences for me. Wouldn't want to share it with anyone, as morbid as that might sound.
 
Sometimes I wonder if Ueda and Kazunori Yamauchi had some kind of perverse bet to see who could delay their game the longest. And somewhere along the way Kaz got distracted on the Nürburgring and PD accidentally released the game behind his back.
 
Because the core ICO team is just a small group inside SCEJ, from my understanding, and probably a lot of the rest who've ever worked on TLG, if not all, have been working on other projects while the issues with TLG have been resolved.

That's my best guess. It doesn't seem like Sony has been all that serious on going all-out to complete this project.
 
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