The long, hard road to The Last Guardian

The Last Guardian has turning into one of those mythical games that people have both lusted over and mourned, often at the same time. The last couple of years people had begun to dismiss it as dead in the water after suffering large set backs in development that stretched all the way back to 2007. So it became a happy surprise to see the death knells for the Team Ico project were premature when it made a major appearance at Sony’s 2015 E3 showcase.

So, what caused all the delays over a game that seemed like a solid win and money maker for everyone involved? Why would a game with as much positive buzz as this one find itself in development hell?

GameInformer recently sat down with the game’s creator, Fumito Ueda to find out the answers to those very questions and it appears the obstacles facing The Last Guardian’s realization were multifold and ranged from technical to bureaucratic. Ueda revealed, “There were multiple reasons. There are always delays in production, as you know. Technical being one of them, but there were many others that were out of my control as well. The good news is that we turned things around – we are in full production now for PS4.” When posed the question of who made the decision to push the game back he offered a brief “It was pretty much a corporate decision by Sony. And that’s where we’ll leave it.”

Ueda continues both enthusiastic about the capabilities of the game’s new home on PS4 and the massive fan response over the last several years to see this projection through to completion, “This probably applies to a lot of developers, but the rendering and frame rate issues – a lot of people had struggles with that. Furthermore, the period of time that we spend on optimization has shortened significantly since the switch to PS4. And things like rendering, frame rate, that doesn't necessarily just apply to The Last Guardian, it applies to everybody…It's been a rollercoaster ride, plenty of ups and downs, and to be brutally honest there were moments where I thought, "Maybe this won't get out there." However, to my point earlier, it was the fans, it was the people who remembered, it was the people who kept reminding me they were still looking forward to playing The Last Guardian. And that's, again, been a continuous motivation factor. At this point, maybe the hardware's changed, but I'm very excited to deliver this experience, The Last Guardian, to fans.”