My second set of impressions is below. You can link these up with the first set if you want to get a sense of how I felt about the whole game. I thought about the game all night and really want to write this for the catharsis.
If ICO was about friendship and Shadow of the Colossus was about hope in the face of total hopelessness, The Last Guardian is about the satisfaction we get in seeing others succeed. What distinguishes Trico from Yorda is how Trico develops over the course of the game both physically and as a companion. While Yorda is clearly special from your first encounter and the game makes a note of her significance through cutscenes and dialogue, Trico becomes special because of how you help him and how that makes you feel. I completely reject the notion that the game could ever feel dated; Trico feels so far ahead of everything else in the field. His very being just seems groundbreaking to me. His animation and design are his character and they make it believable for you to believe in him.
The game makes Tricos development (rather than Boys escape) the major progression markers in the story. While I always wanted the Boy to escape, I really wanted to see how Trico, the failed little man-eating monster who starts the game on deaths door, made out, and those scenes are the real heartrending pieces of the story. Players of Panzer Dragoon Zwei are really going to appreciate a dramatic scene where Trico finally regains his full physical abilities. Youll pump your fist and feel a lump in your throat. The games filled with moments like these
not where you feel powerful because of something you did but powerful because of something Trico did that you made possible. Late in the game, as he becomes your protector, that connection feels palpably strong and human.
The plot of the game is not what you expect. After finishing it, there are a ton of unexplained elements I cant wait to explore and discuss with other people online. Suffice it to say it has been well hidden over the past 7 years and you do not know what you think you do. I wont comment on how it all wraps up expect to say the story is uplifting. After I finished it, I hugged my two dogs and they licked my face. One has really stinky breath so I can only imagine what Tricos breath smells like.
Mechanically, the game really turns into a platformer late. I was surprised by this. There are a lot of sweaty-palms jumps youll make towards the end, and the scale of the game is simply huge. I have no idea how this was intended to run on a PS3 (it barely runs on a PS4). Youll feel so, so high up! It makes every jump feel perilous. In this sense, late in the game, the game shifts from feeling a lot like ICO to feeling a lot like Shadow of the Colossus, where you start climbing massive structures and you just keep going higher and higher. Previously I mentioned how the game has a Dark Souls feel in that you can see places youll be going later as you play. The game also has a Dark Souls feel in that the environments end up looping around on themselves! It is a pleasant surprise because it further enhances the sense of place throughout the game. If this was one of your favorite elements of Shadow of the Colossus, you will really love this in the game.
Artistically, the games beauty is just incapable to describe. Expertly lit scenes and breathtaking views comprise the entire second half of the game. I know the performance is at best uneven but I thought it was so worth it (and 1900p is higher than I thought
this is almost 4K native!). I would have preferred if performance were perfect but it never impacted by ability to play (though it was definitely noticeable). I also noted the camera really struggled in some later-game scenes where you go into some mine-type environments and the ceiling gets very shallow. The game absolutely didnt know what to do with itself here, and this was somewhat surprising they didnt think to switch to a fixed camera or something similar. Still, didnt care. Pimple on the nose of this games beautiful complexion.
The puzzles are really quite clever. There are a few that use physics (be they of mechanical objects or water) and will leave you impressed. The solutions are always simple, so usually it is a matter of finding what they are and not overthinking things. I feel for players that bump into bugs. I didnt experience any, but they should definitely be fixed. The game can be oblique sometimes about where and what you should do or what you can climb on, and like I said before, there are some red herrings. There are no colored ledges or obvious cliffs to grab. Some of the things youll do youll be like, I cant believe this isnt some sequence breaking glitch! because of how adventurous and dangerous it feels. Something else the game has that Ueda games have not had historically are setpieces. One of them is so exhilarating that I called it my moment of the gen. The way the setpiece blends platforming puzzles with traversal and action and then ends the sequence with a straight up physics puzzle is truly genius and so Ueda. Youll love it.
I didnt take notes this time like I did last time so there may be more I remember later. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and cant even imagine this game never making it out. At Chris Kohlers suggestion, I watched the initial reveal trailer from 2009 after finishing the game. Things look a little differentHDR makes everything brighter and the graphics are obviously betterbut the game is all there. There was no rewriting or reworking of the game. It is all there. It just didnt work on the hardware. I think thats the reason why this game is good. It doesnt feel cobbled together or salvaged; it feels unique, like the singular vision of one guy and his team that they have slaved over for 5+ years. It doesnt feel like it has been influenced by outside trends in gaming or whateverI was blown away that there are no stupid collectables to collect or bars to fill just so you can feel better about yourself. Theres a secret garden thing you can find and its just this beautiful little garden where you can sit there and do nothing. You dont get +50xp and the game doesnt even tell you you did it.
At the end of the game, youll feel a tremendous sense of adventure. Youll be sad it is over and youll be crushed that you wont get to spend more time with your feathery friend. But youll feel good inside.
