Fumito Ueda Talks Trico
The director discusses creature design and gameplay.
by John Tanaka

US, June 3, 2009 - Although it was surrounded by two hours worth of major announcements and unveilings, the trailer for Team Ico's first PS3 project, The Last Guardian was, for many, the highlight of Sony's E3 press conference yesterday. In fact, we're sure many have been watching the trailer over and over non-stop since the conference.

Well hit the pause button! We've got some actual details on the game thanks to a lengthy Famitsu interview with director Fumito Ueda.

First, some naming issues. The game that eventually came to be known as The Last Guardian has been referred to by fans for some time now as "Trico," as it's the third project from the team that gained world attention with ICO on the PS2. You might also start hearing about the game by another name: "Hito Kui no Oowashi Toriko." That's the official Japanese name, as listed in Famitsu. It literally translates to "The Giant Man-Eating Eagle Toriko." More on the word "Toriko" in just a bit.

The "Oowashi," or "Giant Eagle," part of the title is what the development team uses to refer to the bird-like giant, Ueda told the magazine. Since Sony's American offices haven't shared official terminology for the creature, and since referring to it as "creature" is not particularly ideal, we're going to call it "eagle" for the time being.

According to Ueda, having a giant living creature was the first idea to emerge when creating the game. Ueda hoped to make the relationship between the player and Agro, the horse from Shadow of the Colossus, a bit more central to the game design this time.

As you might have guessed, players take control of the little boy from the trailer. The basic game design has the boy being young and thus weak and lacking abilities. The giant eagle makes up for these areas. As a young boy, the main character cannot rely on his strength to get past obstacles. However, perhaps he can overcome some trials by bringing the eagle with him.

The eagle itself has been drawing quite a bit of attention for its unique design. As detailed by Ueda, the current design was arrived at by treading closely the line between things looking natural and things looking unnatural. A big issue is that when recreating elements of dogs and cats, for instance, the unnatural will easily stand out amongst those who actually care for dogs and cats as pets. In addition to this, the eagle's designers had to take into consideration areas relating to game design.

Did you think to yourself "wow, that looks odd" when looking at the eagle? You're not alone. Ueda himself admits that it looks odd to him. But that's the aim. "It's important that it be 'a strange creature,'" explained Ueda. "We made sure and not make it too balanced."

Famitsu noted that the movements of the creature are extremely natural. Ueda explained this by recalling how he took care of not just dogs and cats in his childhood, but a variety of other animals as well, including monkeys and ducks. This gave him a sense for the motions of a variety of animals.

His childhood experience with animals also appears to have influenced his games in another way. You might have noticed how verbally quiet ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are. Ueda feels that this particular type of setting comes from the fact that animals don't speak.

While Ueda wouldn't reveal how the boy comes to meet the eagle, he was a bit (just a bit) more forthcoming with details on what you'll do in the game.

Interacting with the eagle appears to be one of the central aspects to the game. You're free to touch the eagle whenever you like. Its reactions will differ depending on where you touch it.

There's a care aspect for the eagle as well. You can feed the eagle and remove spears and arrows that have pierced it. Ueda feels that the development staff will have to take care to strike a balance and make sure the care aspects do not becoming a chore.

Growth and stage puzzles are major elements to the game. There are platforming aspects as well -- you can climb, grab things and crawl.

The flow of the game is a bit of a mystery right now. Asked if your movement through the stages will be seamless, Uedo said that it's seamless as far as there being no load times as you move about. However, there is an order to the locations that you visit.

The magazine asked Ueda if it's difficult to design stages when having to deal with characters of such vastly differing sizes. His response was that stage design is always difficult.

With Last Guardian, however, one area of the stage design involves how you go about getting the eagle to do stuff for you. You can either order it around, or you can have it cooperate with you. For instance, you could make the eagle move by throwing around something that it likes.

Also something to keep in mind as you work through the levels is that eagle's level of intellect isn't all that high (this is what Uedo said -- don't send nasty e-mails to us). It may not move according to your expectations. As an example, you may be able to clear an area if the eagle would just sit still. However, the eagle ends up moving.

Ueda's comments were even more vague on the onlne possibilities for the game. He would only say there are things they'd like to do with online, but that he could not say if it will be possible to realize them.

For this third project, Team ICO is making use of some advanced technology. Different from their past titles, they're using real physics. As an example of this, Ueda made note of a scene where the creature eats a barrel. This is not done with motion capture, but with actual physical calculations involving the barrel and the creature's mouth.

Uedo also noted the game's pairing of the AI of ICO and the collision schemes of Shadow of the Colossus. This older technology has all been redone at PS3 levels.

The staff is paying great attention to one particular environmental effect: wind. The wind determines how the eagle's feathers sway. Each feather is processed individually.

Just a bit more about the name before we let you get back to the trailer. There's actually more meaning to the Japanese name than the literal "The Giant Man-Eating Eagle Toriko" translation that we provided above. As mentioned by Ueda in the interview, the word "Toriko" can be taken to mean prisoner, a baby bird, and a pairing of bird (tori) and cat (neko).

He did not mention that the word can also be transcribed as "Trico." Yes, it appears that we've known the name of Team ICO's newest project for some time now.