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The Last Guardian E3 demo impressions

Acquiescence

Acquiescence

Member
The demo available to play at E3 consists of the very first 45 minutes of the game, so SPOILER warnings for those of you who want to go in completely blind.

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Easy Allies' Daniel Bloodworth talks about his playtime with the demo to Brandon Jones. Skip ahead to ~01:07:30 in the video to get there.

Kotaku - The Last Guardian is a real video game and we've played it

Given that it’s the early moments of the game, the puzzles are ridiculously simple, and likely not indicative of what you’ll get up to a few hours into the game. What I found myself focusing on was the interactions between the boy and Trico. Like Ico, their bond gives this adventure weight, and while it’s too early to say whether The Last Guardian succeeds in making you care about the two of them, I can say that it was a joy to watch them playfully interact.

There are two examples that stand out in particular.

One, when you’re trying to feed Trico for the first time, if you approach the beast with food in-hand, he unleashes a terrifying scream in protest. Instead, you need to drop the food near him, walk away, and give him space to calm.

Two, as you’re leaving the opening area, an underground lake appears. It seems Trico is afraid of water (possibly because of his electric tail?), and won’t follow you any further. Fortunately for the boy, there’s a stash of food hidden away, and if you toss one of them in the water, Trico will spend a hilariously uncomfortable amount of time wondering if they should jump in the water. Trico will put one of their feet forward, feel some rocks fall into the water, then back off. Then, they’ll notice the food bobbing up and down and reconsider their decision. Eventually, hunger trumps all, and Trico dives down, gets soaked, and lumbers over to the food barrel. One hopes the game is full of such moments.
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Engaget - Udea: "Yes, I worry. All I can do at this moment really is pray."

That said, I have some concerns about The Last Guardian being ready by October. The game should be in the "refine for release" phase, but I noticed plenty of graphical glitches, awkward camera angles and even one instance where a jump that should've barely lifted me into the air propelled me 10 feet high.

To be clear, none of the issues detracted enough from the experience to make this anything other than the most memorable 30 minutes of my gaming year, but it's still a worrying sign when we are this close to the release of a title that is so anticipated. Although Ueda and his team at genDESIGN remain the creative force behind the project, since the switch to PlayStation 4, Sony's Japan Studio has been handling the technical side of the game. Perhaps the full force of that 400-strong team working to the deadline will be enough to give The Last Guardian the polish that fans are expecting.
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Eurogamer - It's real, it has a release date, and we've played it.

40 minutes of play time isn't enough to judge The Last Guardian, of course. Yes, I'm worried about the controls and camera and framerate, but the more I think about my time with the game, the more confident I am of its soul. Still, The Last Guardian faces the perhaps insurmountable task of meeting expectations set by Sony almost a decade ago. Perhaps that's okay. Perhaps it isn't.

Trico, though. I can still hear his heavy breathing, the rumble of his movement somewhere off camera, the fear in his anguish. There's something haunting about Trico's design, his fur dancing in the dark, his eyes burning bright with strange colours one second, menacing pitch black the next - and that black seems to pour down onto his cheeks, as if he's crying.

I suspect if The Last Guardian realises Fumito Ueda's vision, the game will leave some players crying, too.
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The Verge - I played The Last Guardian, and now I'm in love with a big friendly cat-dog-bird

What really surprised me was how, in this sampling of an origin story, I made an instant connection. If I was running ahead, I moved the camera in an awkward way to watch Trico try to catch up. I dreaded leaving Trico’s side — not because I sensed danger that only a giant bird-cat could face, but because I just felt lonely. At one point, I missed Trico making a big splash into water because I was off foraging to find it food.
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Gamespot - The Last Guardian has the makings of a bittersweet masterpiece

The Last Guardian is going to make me cry. I can already tell. I've only played the first 45 minutes of Fumito Ueda's latest adventure, but that was long enough to glimpse the emotional undercurrent softly smoldering beneath the surface. Like Ueda's earlier games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Last Guardian delivers whimsy and wonder through its stirring soundtrack, fantastical world, and simple yet sympathetic characters. In this case, it's an unnamed boy and a creature called Trico, a feathered pastiche of mythical beasts that still manages to be emotive and adorable.
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While the platforming and puzzle solving made intelligent use of the minimal mechanics, certain aspects of the game still need some work. I noticed several objects clipping through each other--like Trico's collar clipping through his feathers--and occasionally had to fight to get the camera to cooperate. I also found the climbing controls to be somewhat awkward, though the aforementioned camera may have been partially responsible. And while it's not necessarily a problem, it's odd that the boy automatically crouches when facing small openings yet doesn't contextually grab ledges unless you press the grasp button. Why remove a fairly standard option like crouching only to complicate another relatively common mechanic like climbing?

These issues are minor, though, especially compared to the heartwarming innocence and empathy of the characters. The somber, almost mystical tone The Last Guardian established in less than an hour of play has me hopeful the final product will be well worth the more than seven year wait when it launches later this year.
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USGamer - With The Last Guardian, Fumito Ueda's Worldview Remains Unique After All This Time

I don't know if The Last Guardian's ideas and mechanics will hold up for the length of an entire adventure. I certainly don't know if it will prove to have been worth the long wait. But Ueda's games are always about trust — trust between a boy and a girl, a man and his horse, and now a child and a crippled, mournful, carnivorous dragon-beast — and it seems only fair to trust in return that the game will deliver on its potential and its legacy when it finally launches this October.
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I'll add more previews if people post them.
 
D

Dangansona

Member
This game is in the same situation as FFXV. I think the design decisions and content are going to be solid, they just need to crunch to get their performance fixed in time for release.

Looking forward to TLG very much. Just have realistic expectations, it's not that hard.
 
K

Kyonashi

Member
Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?

What a surprise.
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How did you get that impression? Sure it doesn't sound technically impressive, but almost unanimously people are saying it has soul and emotion, which is worth 100x framerate.
 
S

SgtCobra

Member
Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?

What a surprise.
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What? Were did you get that impression? These impressions are all very positive aside from some performance/graphical faults/glitches.

Am I taking the bait? Perhaps.
 
S

SolidChamp

Banned
Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?

What a surprise.
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The fuck???

I read that journalists came away with supremely memorable and emotional impressions of a game that, if polished in time, could prove to be a masterpiece.
 
A

Alienous

Member
A 40 minute demo bodes well for the overall length of the game.

I've heard 20 hours? I just don't want to finish it easily within a day.
 
W

wild wild rice

Member
Mato said:
There was a demo at E3? Why are they hiding it?
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Perhaps the dodgy framerate, controls, camera angles has something to do with it. Then again, Ico and SotC has dodgy framerate, controls and camera angles sooo...

Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?
Click to expand...

As someone who loves the first two Team Ico masterpieces, this is essentially the attitude I'm taking and hoping to be pleasantly surprised!

Now that I think of it, the other recent game that festered in development hell, DOOM, turned out to be the best damn game on the system so there's hope. Development hell doesn't always have shit outcomes.
 
A

andymcc

Banned
SotC wasn't exactly known for it's polish or great performance upon release and was thrown many a bones when reviewed.

Don't see this being that much different.
 
B

Bunta

Fujiwara Tofu Shop
Hmmm, wonder if I should play Ico and Sotc before TLG. I remember playing the Ico demo a good amount years ago. I think Sotc had a demo, too.
 
D

Donos

Member
andymcc said:
SotC wasn't exactly known for it's polish or great performance upon release and was thrown many a bones when reviewed.

Don't see this being that much different.
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SotC wasn't anticipated for 7 years and also really maxed the PS2 (along with GoWII).
 
F

FonkyByNature

Member
Please Ueda and team, don't screw it up. I really want this game to be great. I'm a huge fan of Ico and Shadow of Colossus and this looks exactly up my alley ! Hopefully, they fix the little bugs before release.
 
Q

Qassim

Member
I can't help but worry about this game. When a game goes through as many development problems as this one has, it's usually not a good sign.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Now, on PS4, The Last Guardian feels like a remaster of an old PS3 game. The visuals, while retaining that trademark washed-out palette of predecessors Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, fail to impress as they did on PS3, despite the odd animation flourish from the unnamed boy you play as and Trico, the giant cat-eagle you spend the game's opening 40 minutes helping out of a cave.

And yet, despite The Last Guardian looking like Sony has papered over the cracks of a last-gen game, it struggles. The controls are fiddly and unresponsive, and the camera is a constant thorn in your side. After you find a mysterious shield, you can use it to project a beam of light that triggers and directs a lightning bolt that shoots from Trico's tail. This is used for puzzle solving in the game's opening, but it feels cumbersome in such an enclosed environment with a camera that refuses to play ball.

And those controls. Creator Fumito Ueda has a penchant for dropping players into a mysterious environment and asking them to work things out. That's fine. It's experiential. And that approach here feels fresh in the face of so many modern day games and their often overbearing handholding. But in a post-Uncharted world, in a world where there is an expectation that climbing and moving about in third-person should feel fluid and responsive, The Last Guardian's controls just annoy.
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oh boy! Another fiddly cumbersome game to push through for "the feels"
 
R

Rozart

Member
Bunta said:
Hmmm, wonder if I should play Ico and Sotc before TLG. I remember playing the Ico demo a good amount years ago. I think Sotc had a demo, too.
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The story seems to be set in the same (or at very least in a very similar) world. So, there might be some lore connections there. I say go for it.

I did play SoTC before I played Ico and never felt like I was missing something, so I'm sure that TLG would still remain a fantastic standalone experience even w/o prior knowledge of Ueda's previous two games.
 
O

OnionPowder

Member
Bunta said:
Hmmm, wonder if I should play Ico and Sotc before TLG. I remember playing the Ico demo a good amount years ago. I think Sotc had a demo, too.
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Yes. Even if it has nothing to do with TLG, Ico and Sotc have aged very very well. The PS3 collection is super cheap nowadays.
 
B

Badoink

Banned
Kyonashi said:
How did you get that impression? Sure it doesn't sound technically impressive, but almost unanimously people are saying it has soul and emotion, which is worth 100x framerate.
Click to expand...

Is it? Maybe I am jumping to conclusions too soon, but PS3-era graphics, bad controls and annoying camera can kill any traces of soul and emotion.

But I do hope it will be awesome! They still have 4 months.
 
O

OneUh8

Member
I can deal with technical issues if a game has soul, feels inspired. It sure seems to me things game has that passion behind it.
 
M

MrHoot

Member
Sounds a lot like the experiences I loved with Ico and particularily SotC, jank included.

I expect some rought patches here and there as it's not really a big AAA production but like that reviewer said, I trust that the soul and ultimately the drive of the game will be beautiful. And also seeing the offscreen footage made me very confident in that.

Seeing the intense cynicism of some posters who are reducing the game based entirely on looks tho is disheartening, but thankfully the overall take from the reviewers seems that it will remain a very memorable game
 
B

BiggNife

Member
I really have no idea how this game is going to turn out. I know people have been excited for almost a decade at this point but nothing I've seen so far has been particularly impressive to me. Clearly Ueda excels at delivering emotional moments in his games but the actual gameplay looks pretty simplistic and dull.

But also it does not sound like a game that demos very well, so maybe it's amazing after the first couple hours.

Definitely curious about it but I'm not going to make a final decision to buy it or not until reviews are out.
 
T

Trojan

Member
Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?

What a surprise.
Click to expand...

You are developing a reputation for derailing threads by dropping uninformed shitposts like this one. What you posted isn't even close to recapping the comments from the OP, and on top of that its dripping with snark. Don't even comment if this is the quality of your posts.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Badoink said:
So it's going to be a 6-7/10 with cool moments, but one that ultimately disappoints?

What a surprise.
Click to expand...

The previews are overwhelmingly gushing about the game except for some technical hitches. What are you talking about?
 
P

Phediuk

Member
This game should have come out 7 years ago. Just feels outdated now imo, and the impressions seem to confirm a lot of my fears.
 
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