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The Last Guardian |OT| In my memories, the monster always has kind eyes
- Thread starter Agram
- Start date
Dangansona
Member
Wow the section in the middle climbing to knock down the eye. The game really has a great sense of height. I can't help but think of Uncharted during this sequence.
Hazelhurst
Member
Alex_Mexico
Member
Oh my fucking god I'm stuck in what I assume is one of the very last puzzles. This game can be so frustrating at times.
What's the solution? Please no spoilers beyond this point. So much for beating the game tonight...
So I'm at the so called "master of the valley". I successfully climbed on top of it. Stopped the blades from spinning enough so Trico can jump over them and now he's higher than me looking from the outside. And I don't know what to do now. The blades start spinning again when I want to move since that results in the mirror being removed from the pedestal. I tried having Trico shoot his tail blasts to the blue column in the center, he hits the target but nothing happens. I've been half an hour in this room and I'm done.
Just jump onto the wall while on the blades. The boy can actually climb up to Trico.
Alex_Mexico
Member
What? Really? I must've missed the tells that the wall is claimable. I'll have to try tomorrow after work though. Thanks a bunch!
For the most part I love this game but boy does it has problems. I though FFXV had some issues with its camera but only when in close quarters but playing TLG right after has been eye opening. FFXV had it good. TLG's camera sucks in varying degrees 90% of the time, Jesus. Not just in enclosed spaces.
ranmafan
Member
Well, I just finished the game ten minutes ago as I write this. My emotions from the game, especially of the last few hours of it are still impacting me. Its been a long time since Ive played a game where Ive felt such emotions from a story and characters.
Since Im probably saying whats been said already Ill just keep my thoughts as short as possible. Only negatives are the technical hiccups in the game. But they never really bothered me much, and they are things Ive come to expect from Ueda's games. Aside from that, nothing but glowing praise. A fantastic adventure, wonderful exploration, some of the most wonderful music Ive heard in a game ever, fantastic story, the list goes on and on and on. But most of all, Trico, what a character, companion and friend in this game. Fantastic in every way, and Trico always pulled at my heart and emotions throughout the game.
I heard so many people for years, especially this year, talk about, gleefully at times, how the game could never live up to the hype. Honestly though, and I can't speak for everyone, but for me, those people were wrong. It surpassed my hype! So much so I will say its my favorite between it, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus.
I haven't yet posted my top ten of the year list yet, but its going to be hard to convince myself this is not number one. A true classic in every way, and one Ill be playing again and again for years to come. What a game! What an adventure!
Since Im probably saying whats been said already Ill just keep my thoughts as short as possible. Only negatives are the technical hiccups in the game. But they never really bothered me much, and they are things Ive come to expect from Ueda's games. Aside from that, nothing but glowing praise. A fantastic adventure, wonderful exploration, some of the most wonderful music Ive heard in a game ever, fantastic story, the list goes on and on and on. But most of all, Trico, what a character, companion and friend in this game. Fantastic in every way, and Trico always pulled at my heart and emotions throughout the game.
I heard so many people for years, especially this year, talk about, gleefully at times, how the game could never live up to the hype. Honestly though, and I can't speak for everyone, but for me, those people were wrong. It surpassed my hype! So much so I will say its my favorite between it, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus.
I haven't yet posted my top ten of the year list yet, but its going to be hard to convince myself this is not number one. A true classic in every way, and one Ill be playing again and again for years to come. What a game! What an adventure!
DieNgamers
Member
It is a powerful experience, right? It stays with you for a few days, too! I couldn't put it anywhere below the number 1 spot on my list. Last Guardian is a special piece of work the transcends my usual standards I have as a gamer. It's so very rough around the edges (still feels finished) – sturdy and full of character. Makes me see the game-yness of other games because it is so organic in design.
gingerbeardman
Member
Thanks so much for that! Bargain.
WhateverItTakes
Banned
Analogue step is for directions, face buttons are for specific commands. They're mapped as how the boy commands: triangle jump, square roll/attack, circle pick up/interact, x drop. Never had many problems during my playthrough, except for a few times Trico was a real adorable dumbass.
I really enjoyed the game. Haven't played such a focussed linear experience in a while and I really started caring for the two protagonists. Performance aside, which really didn't bother me so thank God I'm not a stickler for these things, I'm really glad they were able to finish this game.
Have people worked out any links to Ueda's other two games? Probably won't do a second playthrough, but the fact it says continue on the main menu has me wondering if there's any extra benefits from one.
EDIT: Man the trophy list says there's
paint? Costumes for the boy? Clearly I've missed some stuff.
gingerbeardman
Member
All unlocked through barrel collecting. You probably have some costumes already, but to unlock everything you'll need to do one or two more runs. See items menu in the in-game options.
Too bad this isnt playable on ps4.
WhateverItTakes
Banned
Just took a look. Nice to see unlockables in there, not worth any more runs though.
Guess I'll wait for the next Ueda game now then. If there ever is one of course.
gingerbeardman
Member
I'm still holding out hope for some kind of special trilogy edition on the PS4 that has TLG and Ico and SotC.
anexanhume
Member
Would this be a good game to play with a child? My daughter is almost 5 and I thought she might playing with dad in small spurts.
DieNgamers
Member
After the middle or so this game becomes very stressful and emotionally draining. There's some very brutal imagery, too, especially towards the end.
I wouldn't do it but I don't know what your daughter usually plays with you, haha. I'm playing Mario Galaxy with my daughter at the moment.
There are only 48 barrels. Collecting 96 is required through multiple playthroughs to unlock the ability to
paint Trico.
anexanhume
Member
After the middle or so this game becomes very stressful and emotionally draining. There's some very brutal imagery, too, especially towards the end.
I wouldn't do it but I don't know what your daughter usually plays with you, haha. I'm playing Mario Galaxy with my daughter at the moment.
Thanks for the response! Sounds a bit too grown up.
DieNgamers
Member
There are certainly scenes that would be awesome for kids but for every cute moment there's some scary surprise around the corner.
Red Liquorice
Member
My copy arrived today and just put an hour and a half in to it. I was already welling up after 5 minutes!
I can immediately see why there has been so much criticism of the controls and camera, but I went in expecting exactly what I got, from what little I played I remember Ico having a similar 'mushy' camera. It's a constant battle witht the camera, but it is what it is. It hasn't hampered my enthusiasm and I was already attached to the big thing a few minutes in. I wish I'd picked this up at Xmas instead of FFXV, it would've been a great game to play Xmas evening
I can immediately see why there has been so much criticism of the controls and camera, but I went in expecting exactly what I got, from what little I played I remember Ico having a similar 'mushy' camera. It's a constant battle witht the camera, but it is what it is. It hasn't hampered my enthusiasm and I was already attached to the big thing a few minutes in. I wish I'd picked this up at Xmas instead of FFXV, it would've been a great game to play Xmas evening
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Sure, she'll love Trico. My nephew (turning 3 in a few months) saw me playing TLG and he couldnt take his eyes off Trico. I taught him the name and he did these little pawing movements with his hands to imitate Trico.
I saw him a week or two later and he still remembers. When hes in a playful mood he says teeco teeco while doing pawing motions with his hands.
gingerbeardman
Member
Yes
Acquiescence
Member
Think how easily this game could've gone the way of Scalebound.
*hugs Trico*
*hugs Trico*
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
I got to the part (early spoilers)
and I'm finding the game a little monotonous.
I loved ICO and SotC, but jeez, something about this one is boring me.
right after the blue cage thing where you first fight those autonomous soldiers
I loved ICO and SotC, but jeez, something about this one is boring me.
That's still early on in the game. It doesn't throw a ton of mechanics at you but it tends to take the ones it gives to great and often interesting lengths. A lot of puzzles have seemingly simple solutions but are great "aha!" moments once you do see what you have to do.
Cave Johnson
Member
A lot of people point out this out and I believe it is greatly misunderstood. The game is meant to be as organic as possible, the fact that you're finding "solution" to every "puzzle" is equivalent to finding a light switch to turning on the light. The game is not an abstract castle where they put "out of reach" switches for the video game player like the original Tomb Raider or Prince ofor Persia.
If anything, it's world building at its finest, you're finding solutions to a structure that is logic based. The only resistance here is the dilapidated structures encourage you to use detours to get to it (mostly with Tico due to its enhanced abilities be it scaling or destroying).
The real puzzle here is Trico and ONLY Trico. The game makes no attempts to inform you that in anything else. The fact that you'received actually having trouble with it highlights the games main purpose: To create a bond between you. It not responding to you could have a lot of determining factors: are you feeding him constantly? Do you try to pet it at times? Do you give it space to let it wander it's curiosities? Because I have almost no issue trying to convey my commands like so many posters which would indicate there is an invisible meter tracking your interaction with the Trico.
victreeb3l
Member
TLG puzzles tripped me up because a lot of solutions were stuff you weren't accustomed to doing in video games. I spent so much time in one puzzle just to realize that I can just
. Stuff like that was a revelation to me. I also wouldn't have gotten the
puzzle if it wasn't for GAF either. That one was extremely clever and I kinda wish I didnt accidentally read that solution. One of the most memorable puzzles of recent time.
Yup I feel similarly. I was frustrated often and I can pick the game apart for days if I want to but because of how incredibly well done everything else is, its so easy to forgive and forget.
jump through the space in the gates
water
Yup I feel similarly. I was frustrated often and I can pick the game apart for days if I want to but because of how incredibly well done everything else is, its so easy to forgive and forget.
I mean, in terms of pure gameplay design, unless I'm misunderstanding your retort, trying to argue that the game isn't interested in challenging you with puzzles is blatantly untrue. Each room or close enough presents some kind of challenge to the player. Get to that lever, open that door, move to that position. It doesn't matter what the room's justification is, there are puzzles that are meant to challenge in some way for you to do the thing you need to do because otherwise this would just be a walking simulator. You can argue that there isn't a particular need for hte puzzles to be strongly challenging for this type of game, and I would actually agree with that, but that is undoubtedly what they are there for and they lean a bit on the easy side.
I also think the idea of defending this as worldbuilding is kind of misguided. The building structures in the Nest make NO sense whatsoever. I have no idea what could have possibly been the purpose of atleast half the rooms in the game, and not just because the story skimps on details, but because the layout is just bizarre and nonsensical. I like the Nest. I think it looks fantastic, is atmospheric, and so on. But it can only have been designed by a mad man whose irrational thought process cannot be known by any sane mind. No other in-universe justification makes sense.
All I mean by that comment is that the puzzles could have been more challenging than they were. When you walk into a room, look around, and IMMEDIATELY think "oh, I know what to do", it just makes the act of doing it a bit of busy work. Like you said, you can make interesting decisions in regards to Trico in that space, but I would have liked a few moments where, after several minutes of trying unsuccessfully to work out what I'm supposed to do, I just had lay back against Trico, and sit and think. I'd have liked that moment, and the puzzles being too easy didn't allow for that.
If anything I overthought how to solve puzzles. I was often trying crazy convoluted things thanks to all my years playing point and click games in the 90's. Many of the times the puzzle was often so straight forward I didn't realize it was right in front of my face.
Now that you mentioned it, I remember one guy who posted in two different threads about how Scalebound is a better TLG than TLG itself or something like that back in 2015.
Well, about that....
I guess I should just be happy that TLG didn't end up like it.
"hugs Trico's tail"
I wish we could have had both. These games felt like they were both fantastic iterations of a similar concept that had radically different executions.
I mean, you have Trico as your lifelike, genuine feelings, heartstring tugging companion whose gentle and loving and precious.
But then you could also have his cousin Thuban whose a rocking badass who doesn't take shit from anyone and kills 200 enemies before breakfast because those 200 enemies become his breakfast.
I wanted both.
Me too my friend and Scalebound was in my top 10 most anticipated games of this year in the voting thread.
Sad times.
Cave Johnson
Member
There are obstacles, most of which has a lot to do with the destruction of the environment. There are switches and levers, but none are placed on such and way that you have to navigate in a metroidvania like requirements to reach it which would indicate that it is deliberate in the design.
Then you are not being observant enough. This is a fantastical game in a fantasy world where Tricos exist. You can see that there are gates and pressure plates designed for Tricos. Switches and levers are placed behind metallic bars and scarecrows (eye mirrors) are stategically placed to prevent Tricos from moving to fragile bridges under construction. (And you can see them fall when traversed Naturally the nest would accommodate this framework in mind.
I understand what you are saying. But the game is designed under "subtraction" for a reason. Ueda made it specifically clear he is not going for games like Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider. This philosophy breaks down to the most minimal of mechanics that is suffice to traverse from one obstacle to another. This the complete opposite of metroidvania and other bloated RPG design that is prevalent to so many other games. Ueda clearlyclearly wants you to focus on the bond between you (a theme noted for his other titles) and removing any distraction from that framework.
However, I don't think the puzzles are "puzzles" if anybody can guess the "solution" right off the bat. None of the "puzzles" I encountered were head scratches of any kind. The only challenge here is to try and convince an AI to do what you intended to do. The fact that so many people emphases the AI above all others is a testament to this. Placing even more challenging puzzles would be too much.
Maybe one day another developer can build upon this framework as long as they don't follow the design by subtraction philosophy.
I still don't think you're getting what I'm saying here. You're trying to justify the lack of challenge to the puzzle mechanics themselves with a narrative justification.
If someone were to make a game about going into the strangers house where the answer to is to go to the kitchen, that game designer still has to make getting to the kitchen the right amount of challenge. The context of the narrative doesn't matter because I'm not criticizing the narrative, but the difficulty of the challenge presented.
You can view Trico as being the real puzzle element, but it doesn't address the criticism I am making. If anything, telling Trico to do something is even easier than figuring out the puzzles themselves, and the only frustration that comes is Trico either being too slow or his AI fucking up and not doing what you want him to for no real reason.
I'm not going to replay the game just to prove this point, but I could probably pull a room at random and you wouldn't be able to tell me what it's for. Like, you can make educated guesses about some elements, but not much.
To take your example, okay, you have scarecrows being placed at fragile bridges under construction. Okay, what were the bridges used to transport? Why did they need to suspend it high above there when simply making an elevator in the buildings and moving things at ground level would have been safer? Why do they make levers to doors in inconvenient places to reach? How the hell did they even make buildings this tall? And who made them? And that doesn't even consider the rooms that just seem to be there for no reason.
There's some clever stuff going on, but no, the Nest makes very little sense when you apply any meaningful degree of scrutiny to it's architecture.
No, they were puzzles, they just weren't strong ones, arguably because Ueda wanted the focus to be on trico and the boy. You can use that justification if you want, but when you start trying to bend over backwards and redefine a word to excuse a relatively small complaint about the game the conversation just becomes nonsensical. A spade is a spade, a puzzle is a puzzle. Lack of emphasis on puzzles in favor of something else doesn't stop them from being puzzles, any more than the game disc stops being a game disc if you decide to start using it as a frisbee.
Beyond that, intentions mean little to me. The maker of art doesn't own the art once it's out of it's hands. Even if you're interpretation of Ueda's will is entirely accurate, it doesn't change that my experience was such that the lack of challenge to the puzzle rooms was a detriment to my experience, nor do I agree with your implication that a challenging puzzle would have been detrimental to further developing the bond with Trico.
disillusion386
Member
Finished this game over the weekend. The controls were sluggish and frustrating at first, then I got used to it. But my god, the ending. The feels. It's like playing How to Train Your Dragon or the Iron Giant.
The only thing I didn't get about the plot:
The only thing I didn't get about the plot:
if Trico was one of the beasts bringing the nest "food," why did the armor suits imprison him when he fell out of the sky? I was under the impression that the armor suits were meant to be guards of the place.
This is kind of spoiler-y so I'll tag it. Includes some spoilers concerning the ending. But on the architecture of the Nest:
It seemed to me the Nest was a place some ancient race lived together in harmony with the Tricos. So the architecture was built to accommodate both. It was built so tall with the assistance of the Tricos. Then the master came in, took the place over, and set up mind control to take over the Tricos, kill the peaceful race, and get the Tricos to do his bidding taking the kids and such. That's why the shield is harmful to the enemies and to the Master- it's something that's a remnant of the original peaceful race that built the place. Likewise the place is crumbling as a result of the battle between the original peaceful inhabitants and the mind-controlled Tricos.
It's possible, but it raises a bunch of questions for me. Particularly why the 'peaceful' race would have a targeting laser that makes dogbirds fire lightning blasts out of their tales. Or, if they had weaponry that inherently hurt this invading race and they were the ones with the trico's, how did they lose?
My personal theory is that the Master of the Valley has no will at all and is perhaps just a corrupt program that got out of control. I base this on the fact that it doesn't seem that the Master actually responded to the boy's and Trico's presence. The signal he made called merely the Trico's back to the nest, where they seemed to go about depositing the human sacs they caught like usual. The controlled trico's noticed the boy on their own, forcing your own trico to defend him, and it's at this point that the other trico's became hostile toward him. You'd think the Master, if he had awareness, would have sent out a signal to attack in seeing clear and dangerous intruders. And if you accept the idea that the Master isn't reacting to you to be true, then if it wasn't for the boy naming him "the master of the valley" I'd have assumed I was just looking at some kind of machine.
Furthermore, I replayed a little of the beginning. The room where you got the mirror...I feel it's quite obviously a tomb. It's designed in an oddly spacious way, and the place were you take the shield has an sarcophagus like design to it. The design is very distinct to most of the outside ruins, so perhaps you're right about there being two different races in this place, but why would, if they were invaders, bury them with the weapon that destroyed them, cutting out a specific place for it in their coffin?
I also don't believe the Trico's to be natural beings. There is in game implications about them being an amalgram of various animals.. bodies of dogs, movements of cats, wings of birds, minds of bee's. But more than that, these do things that no animal does. The lightning tail being the most obvious, but also the fact that it seems everything about them grows back. They're also much smarter than any animal available. Like, they're still an animal and will take a long time to get to do what you want, but it's much faster than a dog. Also, problem solving and inference abilities that go beyond anything animals are capable of. They don't seem to have sex organs either. Normally I would just chalk that up to developers not wanting to model dicks/vagina's, but they already modeled an anus and even put so much thought into it's metabolism that it's poop is unusual and clearly indicative of it's ability to produce an amniotic sac around people that gives them some kind of tattoo's that are also given by the weird armor monsters and the master of the valley casting spells (another a trait I can't see occuring via evolution)....I just find it hard to believe they'd put this much careful thought into Trico's poop, but not it's sex organ. So I don't think they were taken over, I think they were made.
I don't have an explanation for the clearly different architecture that occupies the Master's room and the rooms in the main white tower, but it doesn't feel like an invading race to me. It feels like, somehow...civilzation just broke down in the nest for some reason.
My personal theory is that the Master of the Valley has no will at all and is perhaps just a corrupt program that got out of control. I base this on the fact that it doesn't seem that the Master actually responded to the boy's and Trico's presence. The signal he made called merely the Trico's back to the nest, where they seemed to go about depositing the human sacs they caught like usual. The controlled trico's noticed the boy on their own, forcing your own trico to defend him, and it's at this point that the other trico's became hostile toward him. You'd think the Master, if he had awareness, would have sent out a signal to attack in seeing clear and dangerous intruders. And if you accept the idea that the Master isn't reacting to you to be true, then if it wasn't for the boy naming him "the master of the valley" I'd have assumed I was just looking at some kind of machine.
Furthermore, I replayed a little of the beginning. The room where you got the mirror...I feel it's quite obviously a tomb. It's designed in an oddly spacious way, and the place were you take the shield has an sarcophagus like design to it. The design is very distinct to most of the outside ruins, so perhaps you're right about there being two different races in this place, but why would, if they were invaders, bury them with the weapon that destroyed them, cutting out a specific place for it in their coffin?
I also don't believe the Trico's to be natural beings. There is in game implications about them being an amalgram of various animals.. bodies of dogs, movements of cats, wings of birds, minds of bee's. But more than that, these do things that no animal does. The lightning tail being the most obvious, but also the fact that it seems everything about them grows back. They're also much smarter than any animal available. Like, they're still an animal and will take a long time to get to do what you want, but it's much faster than a dog. Also, problem solving and inference abilities that go beyond anything animals are capable of. They don't seem to have sex organs either. Normally I would just chalk that up to developers not wanting to model dicks/vagina's, but they already modeled an anus and even put so much thought into it's metabolism that it's poop is unusual and clearly indicative of it's ability to produce an amniotic sac around people that gives them some kind of tattoo's that are also given by the weird armor monsters and the master of the valley casting spells (another a trait I can't see occuring via evolution)....I just find it hard to believe they'd put this much careful thought into Trico's poop, but not it's sex organ. So I don't think they were taken over, I think they were made.
I don't have an explanation for the clearly different architecture that occupies the Master's room and the rooms in the main white tower, but it doesn't feel like an invading race to me. It feels like, somehow...civilzation just broke down in the nest for some reason.
Cave Johnson
Member
Misunderstood your point here. I quoted too many posters by mistake and typing through the phone is troublesome.
I haven't encountered an issue with Trico's AI yet and so far has been most responsive. The only setback I'be experienced was the water section but that mitigated upon commanding via his neck.
I'm no architect but tall building u
sually means to compact space with dense population. Plus it is in a mountainous region inside some sort of crater. Most levers are actually easy to reach. The destruction of the environment (or rather the lack of completion) may not provide all the context it needs. But what it does tell us that Trico's can turn on the golem soldiers and it is treated as a dangerous animal. (That explains why some switches are far from gates)
You don't need to passive-agressively shit sling just because I offer a different ppint of view. Also can you provide examples? If it was an intended puzzle game I can easily determine in Portal that the game is designed right off the bat due to its abstract progression requirements. Here is simply a matter of using Trico to navigate to places you can't reach or assistance that you have no strength of. The tools around you is more motivational to Trico save for the mirror which clears out obstacles for most of its usage. If you can call that a puzzle, sure. But the source here is usually around Trico.
That wasn'the my interpretation. Design by subtraction waa a term that directly came from Ueda frim ICO. If you had read his Glixel interview you can read that literally stated he wanted to "remove as many game mechanics as possible". If there would be more "challenging" puzzles. It would most likely be like
the final boas encounter
Dangansona
Member
The further I get the more curious I am about connections to the other games. That's the mystery that is the most intriguing to me, even more than who I am as the character or where the hell are we.
That is decidedly NOT my experience.
Those are very broad speculations that would have little in game indication. Again, to truly settle this, I'd basically have to start up the game, and pull a random room, maybe several, from the game and you'd have to tell me what it was used for. I don't feel like doing that. Using the excuse of destruction or in completion is just an excuse if you can't even get a somewhat supported guess for what it was supposed to be. I do agree that many rooms are made to feel like they could have had a purpose, but that's where it ends, because the primary role of the environments is in puzzle making, not narrative world building.
Honestly, I can concede this much. It's perfectly possible that I'll have a better understanding my second playthrough, since I have more information about the story of the nest now than I did on my first journey through it. But still, I don't see anyone coming up with even half of the rooms here.
Like, honestly, what can you possibly tell me this room was supposed to be? Okay, there is a rail that leads outside. But the room is also incomplete, so maybe the rail was only supposed to be temporary? Or was it completed and it just broke down? Were the armor guards always there, or were they added after whatever caused the place to break down. Wait, walk way seems to be broken right where the rail was leading. Was it even supposed to be there or was it broken down? And of course there is a chain and slide thing. Was it part of the railing construction? Was it meant to be a permanent fixture to move things up to the platform there? It has those small holes in the walls. Air ducts? Doesn't seem likely. Sewer drains? No, at that elevation? I think that's every notable feature in the room, so with that in mind, what could this room possibly be?
My best guess is that maybe it was a station where you loaded the rails carts. But honestly, it could be anything. It could have been a food storage room, rail repair station, it could be an auditorium....there are a few things it's unlikely to be, I guess, like a bathroom, but trying to figure out the specific purpose of this room is a shot in the dark at best. And I feel most rooms are like this. That's not very strong worldbuilding.
I apologize, I thought that my telling you that redefining terms for the sake of dismissing a criticism is nonsensical was an direct and forthcoming form of shit slinging. (that was me being passive aggressive. But really, I wasn't shit slinging at all, I'm just saying upfront that redefining terms to make an argument is nonsensical because...well, it is. I'm not saying htat to sling shit, I just think it's genuinely a ridiculous position to take.)
As for example, I'm not sure what you mean. An example of a puzzle definition? Er...I feel this is starting to reach really pedantic territory if we are going to start arguing semantic definitions. I feel it's pretty obvious that the things in TLG are puzzles. For me, without looking up the technical definition, a puzzle in games is where you have an instance where you are unable to proceed until you perform some activity that isn't typical of the way you usually perform that activity. To use portal as an example, one of the first puzzles is that you have to open a door to get to the next level. Usually, doors open by themselves, or else have knobs. However, this door is opened by a big red button on the other side of the room. Since the button has to be pressed to keep the door open, opening the door the conventional way is impossible, so you have to perform an unconventional action, aka using the cube to weigh down the button to keep the door open. That is a puzzle.
And you have plenty and plenty of examples of puzzles in TLG. For example, the first area itself is a puzzle. You need to feed Trico. The first barrel is just laying on top of a platform. That's not too unusual, but the usual way to getting to that barrel would be a ladder somewhere, rather than pulling yourself up the way you do, but I can accept that arguably that's a more or less conventional way to get it. Really, designwise, it's there to establish that Trico likes to eat the barrels, so you have one available to you immediately. But the other two are less conventional. One is on another platform, but you can only get through it by crouching down and going through a small underpass, while the other one is locked by a door you open to use the big giant switch to next to it to open, both of these being far less typical ways to get something. Like, even locked cabinets have a key, not a giant switch you flip. After that, when you free Trico, you have more barrels on the wall that you can only get to if you jump off his head, and using a giant dogbird as a ladder is the most unusual way of getting to the barrel of all. All these puzzles being progressively more unconventional.
Anyway, looking up the definition, for the noun, both Meriam Webster and google define it as something that tests (or is designed to test) ingenuity, which TLG's situations definitively are. Even if you want to argue that the narrative makes it a natural occurance rather than something that's designed to test you, I'd like to remind you that this is a game made by people, which means it IS designed to test you even if the context of the narrative makes it natural.
So....yeah. Puzzle, puzzle. Spade, Spade.
I don't think you really understand my post. I mean, first off, the designs by subtraction doesn't even address anything I'm saying in the first place because how many game mechanics there are in the game doesn't have anything to do with how challenging they are.
But even so, what Ueda's design intentions, desires, wants, vision, whatever you want to call it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what his game philosophy is because his game design philosophy only applies in the making of the game, not in the playing of it. Nothing about who Ueda is or how he thinks matters to the fact that when playing his game, there was a small souring of the experience due to how little it challenged me with it's puzzles.
Haha, my dad bought it for me as a Christmas present, I told him it was amazing and that it made me cry. His baffled expression was incredible. He just doesn't get it!
It's odd that it is so flawed, yet I don't have the heart to criticise it, i'm filled with pure love for this game and Trico of course. I'm not sure if I will ever replay it, maybe in a year or so, when it isn't so fresh in my mind.
SmiteOfHand
Member
Edit: I somehow overlooked the "further I get" part of your post, which clearly means you have not finished, sorry. Absolutely do not go into the spoiler thread, but maybe the below is of interest to others.
You might be interested in my posts in the Spoiler Thread.
Spoilers post in the Spoilers Thread contains unmarked Spoilers. Don't click this if you have not finished the game.
Maybe it's just me or maybe it is because I did Pitioss in FFXV right befor starting this game, but I absolutely hate the controls. I can't get used to them it seems. They feel slow and sluggish and often pressing something will result in something else than I had planned. I really wanna like the game, but I'm not having fun with it, only frustration. I love the graphics and Trico is the cutest thing ever. I want to know the story and lore, I don't mind the puzzles and exploring, figuring out what to do etc, but when letting go of a rope to hang onto to a ledge seems impossible it's just not fun.
Also, there are some weird things going on. Suddenly Trico will be in a room with me and I haven't seem him enter, and there is also no obvious way for him to get in, but suddenly he is there. Other times I have to open doors for him.
I'm currently at a place where
Any useful tips for a frustrated player?
Also, there are some weird things going on. Suddenly Trico will be in a room with me and I haven't seem him enter, and there is also no obvious way for him to get in, but suddenly he is there. Other times I have to open doors for him.
I'm currently at a place where
I have to push this rope with a metal bit at the bottom of it, then hang onto to and let go so I can get up to where one of those painted glass eyes are. I just can't do it. I must be stupid but I have no idea how to get it to work. I let go of the rope and the boy just falls to the ground. There is no way to jump from the rope that I can figure out.