This is pretty interesting.
The tropes in Shadow of the Colossus are what got me out of the game (that and the framerate), and I laughed during the ending.
I know this will be seen as a trollish comment, but it's my sincere experience. The game is a good game, it deserves to be a reference for a lot of things, but it's not exactly narratively subtle, and Team ICO is rather one-note and hammering when it comes to emotions or narration. Hey, even the demo of TLG is pretty much usual, expected stuff, even the way they play it is overdone (artificially waiting to run when the bridge collapses to build tension)... it's all very effective, but expected.
No, team ico really is not narratively subtle, the story is a bit mysterious, and minimalistic, relying mostly on actual played events, and little on extrinsic development.. But the plot has always been pretty heavily troped. Ironically, especially when you look back at all the waxing about the game.... Team ico games are all about being played.... Rather than 'the story' being 'told'
So maybe they scratched it all because it just didn't work, and they went back to scripted gameplay? Frankly, the paragraph where you imagine what it might do reads like something from Peter Molyneux.
????
It was always scripted. Just like ico, and just like sotc. Its how the AI reacts, and what the player has to do after triggering the script thats... Well, not scripted.
If really there was something complex going on, why not show it? Why not openly say it on stage and describe it? Why do fans have to "piece together from tidbits"? Instead, what they chose to show were very ordinary mechanics, but filmed in a cinematic way to cause emotions - just like they usually do. Yorda or the colossi weren't exactly AI masterpieces.
The entire point of team ico games is 'show, dont tell' and more importantly 'do, dont show'.
Very simply, if people couldnt figure out the underlying factors going on without it being spelled out barney style, and more importantly, if they simply dont have the drive to satisfy their curiosity or questions with their own critical thinking rather than demanding others explain it to them, this game is not for them. Used to be video games in their entirety were not for them.
Yorda was actually incredibly impressive AI at the time.
Agro and the colossi also had very good AI, but that really wasnt what made them great, what made them great was how they were used in the context of the games design. The behaviors had to be responsive the the player, while at the same time dependable, they couldnt be some autonomous intelligence oft mistakenly thought of as being good game ai.
The same is true, albeit on a higher level for the companion in TLG.
Its a mixture of VERY sophisticated AI, such as the companions idle behavior, awareness of surroundings, awareness of player character, and traversal capabilities; And good old fashioned finite state machines, such as the event with the eye structure activating the scared state.
This simple display of design and reliable AI, for what is very clearly a basic controls tutorial, is already very sophisticated. To the point that there is STILL nothing out there comparable to it, this many years later, because as simple as you think it is...
In other games these would all be cutscenes, qte's and other extrinsically handled events, because other devs just cant make an actual intrinsic system to do it.
Whats going to get more complicated is not the AI, but the situations its going to respond to, thats going to be the game, just like it was in ico and sotc.
This companion, is going to be the next Agro, but on a level above Agro.
This game can be an excellent, very moving ICO sequel, but some of you are setting yourselves for disappointment. No element points to anything complex going on, and for all we know, this could be true:
(I think the graphics look fine.)
Everything is already in place and functioning perfectly.
Literally, the only thing you could be bringing up based on the basic control tutorial, is that team ico would suddenly be incapable, of their trademark fantastic world design to traverse, and that nothing they could do would get much better than the basic control tutorial shown here.
