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The Last Guardian – the PlayStation-exclusive title from Team ICO which has now been in development for some eight years – is still “absolutely in the mix” at Sony, according to Scott Rohde, one of the men in charge of Sony’s roster of fully-owned studios.
In a conversation with IGN, the topic of The Last Guardian came up. “You’re going to be very frustrated by this answer,” Rohde said, “but it is 100 percent the God’s honest truth, and that is that we want to make great games. And when we see that the public is so interested in a specific game, of course that drives us to want to complete that game. But it also drives us to want to make it great. We would not want to ship that game if we don’t think it’s great.”
When asked whether it was still a PlayStation 3 game or if it’s migrated to PlayStation 4, Rohde said that he’s “not going to announce what platform it’s coming on, who’s working on it, who’s involved. But that is still a title that’s absolutely in the mix at Worldwide Studios. That’s the most you’re gonna get.”
Later in the conversation, Rohde noted that he “actually like[s] talking about The Last Guardian. I love that people are still interested in it. That’s an honor to us. That’s not just me spinning… It’s really cool that people are still interested in it, and we’re trying to make the best thing we can out of The Last Guardian.”
The PlayStation 3-exclusive game from Team ICO was revealed at E3 2009. But at E3 the following year, it was a no-show, and was later confirmed for release in 2011. But 2011 came and went, and there was no The Last Guardian.
In March of 2011, we saw the game running for the first time, but a month later, The Last Guardian saw its first of many delays. Team ICO founder Fumito Ueda confirmed the game was still in production just at the time that the game’s executive producer, Yoshifusa Hayama, quit Sony to work elsewhere. Then, Ueda himself also quit, though still promised to work on the game in a contractor capacity.
That brings us to 2012, when Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida noted that The Last Guardian is “making progress”. At Gamescom later that year, he again confirmed the title was still in development, right around the time Team ICO’s long-time producer left Sony.
By early 2012, Fumito Ueda said the game is still being developed, but then, come June, the game was said to be in hiatus. Meanwhile, Sony’s Japan Studio prioritized Knack and Puppeteer over The Last Guardian, while Sony said in September that it was waiting to “reintroduce” the game. Last we heard, Ueda himself said he was ”terribly sorry” for The Last Guardian’s epic development cycle. Team ICO last put out a game in 2005, when Shadow of the Colossus came to PlayStation 2, and didn't put out a product for the duration of the PlayStation 3's prime lifecycle.
Will the game finally reemerge at E3, which is only a few months away? Time will tell.
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Okay, I'm a huge SotC and ICO fan, but **** these guys. I bolded the part that pisses me off. Sorry, but when you lead us along like mice with a piece of cheese attached to a string for this long, you owe us every single ounce of information you have available. Anything less is just insulting our intelligence and proving that you think we're as intelligent as a mouse. These guys are so out of touch with reality it is seriously ridiculous. There are so many other good games out there, I'm good with just writing this one off.
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