Incoming 2012: The Last Guardian

What we know:

The Last Guardian is a third-person title that combines action sequences with puzzles and is developed by the same team that has worked on Shadow of the Colossus and Ico.

The game will allow players to control a young boy, which seems to be the central archetype for Team Ico, and will watch him as he develops a relationship with a fantastical creature called Trico, which is represented as a mix between a cat and a bird and is really close to the Western representation of a griffin.

The gameplay will evolve around exploration, which is mainly done by the boy, and combat sequences where the griffin needs to be tricked into attacking enemies.

The puzzles are set to be more complex than in any previous Team Ico and will require a teaching process to develop between the two main characters.

The developer will also try to play up the emotional elements of the game, subjecting both boy and creature to a number of trials that reveal their character.

The development schedule for The Last Guardian has been riddled with delays and the game might arrive in late 2012 or early 2013.

Why it matters:

The Last Guardian seems to be one of those projects that has been so long in development that it will either launch and deliver an impressive experience or it will flop on a level comparable to something like Duke Nukem Forever.

The situation was further complicated towards the end of 2011 by the fact that the main developer on The Last Guardian, Fumito Ueda, has announced that he was leaving Sony, although he would complete the game regardless of new projects.

If The Last Guardian is successful, then it will prove that Japanese teams still have an advantage over Western ones when it comes to video games that rely on emotion and feeling rather than on fast-paced action to engage the player.

The full Incoming 2012 series of articles can be read on Softpedia right here.