Incoming 2011 – The Last Guardian

What we know

The Last Guardian is the next action adventure video games from Team Ico, the development team behind the well-received title Shadow of the Colossus, featuring a boy and a fantastic creature that need to be guided by the player out of a gigantic ancient structure.

The game will be played from a third-person perspective and the bulk of the gameplay will be centered around the ways the two main characters can collaborate and combine their abilities in order to navigate levels and solve a variety of puzzles.

The creature in the game shares some similarities to a griffin and will initially be aggressive towards the main character, with a deeper bond formed as the game progresses.

It seems that the story will be open ended and the final chapter will depend on previous actions performed by the boy and his creature and that other fantastic creatures might crop up during the course of the game.

It's not clear whether The Last Guardian is actually linked in terms of story to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the two previous efforts from the same developer, but initial showings of the game suggest that it will definitely share some of the themes and the gameplay mechanics.

The Last Guardian will only be released on the PlayStation 3 from Sony and is currently slated for the fourth quarter of the year, although delays are always a possibility for titles that are this far out.

Why it matters

Team Ico has a well-established reputation of creating complex emotional experiences in their games, where the feelings of hope and loss are linked, with the main aim being to elicit an emotional response from the player.

The Last Guardian seeks to encourage players to have an actual relationship with the griffin, caring for its well-being for reasons that are not linked to actual immediate gameplay reasons.