The Last Guardian has been in the works at Gen Design and Sony’s Japan Studio for a decade. It finally hits retail Tuesday on the PlayStation 4, and we’ve had a peek at the beginning. I recorded the first 20 minutes of the introduction and the game, and it doesn’t give you any real explanation for what is happening in the game.
You start out as a young boy, and you find a giant creature, called Trico, which is a cross between a bird and a dog. Trico is wounded, and it’s quite terrifying. But the boy finds a way to ease its pain and befriend it. You learn how to climb up and around the beautiful environmen and how to climb up and down from Trico itself. A couple of times, Trico sends the boy flying, a reminder of how dangerous the giant creature can be. But you can see the seeds of the relationship developing between the boy and the creature.
It’s interesting that this game has been in development for more than a decade, and it is debuting within the same week as Final Fantasy XV, a Square Enix game that also took a decade to make. Hopefully, this won’t be the new normal for making games. But the long wait is over for fans who have been itching for a new kind of experience.
Here’s a video of the opening 20 minutes of the game.
And here’s another 20 minutes of my own hands-on gameplay from September, when the company showed off the title at the Tokyo Game Show.