TGS 2009: Interview: The Last Guardian's Fumito Ueda

by Andrew Yoon on Sep 25th 2009 9:00AM

We had a few minutes to chat with Fumito Ueda, director of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the upcoming The Last Guardian. He explained the game's unusual Japanese title to us, and talked about the possibilities of PSN support. Read on for more:

The Japanese title of The Last Guardian is much longer than the English one. Can you explain what the Japanese title means?

Initially, the project started as "Project Torico." In the past, we haven't used the project name in the actual title of the game. For example, Shadow of the Colossus (Wanda to Kyozo) had a different project name, "Nico." I wanted the project name to be in the title this time, but it wasn't so well received by the international crew. They said a more simple, more direct title would be better. My hope, or my intention is that the Japanese title is the original title of the game.

[A literal translation of the title, as suggested by Sony in the presence of Ueda, was "Man Eating Giant Eagle: Torico."]
What relationship does Torico have with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus? Even the name is very similar.

It's true that the original project names do have some kind of connection. It's actually a pun, with the first one being "Ico" (one), the second one being "Nico" (two), and the third one being "Torico" (three).

There is some meaning behind the project names. "Nico" was initially thought of using the Network in some way. "Torico" is the third one; "Tori" is the Japanese word for bird and the beast has some bird-like features.

"Nico" didn't eventually end up having Network connectivity. However, do you see The Last Guardian taking advantage of the PlayStation Network in any way?

There are some plans, but it's really a big question mark whether it will be realistically achievable. So, I can't really explain the content of it.

Many gamers may have missed Ico or Shadow of the Colossus on PS2. Do you, or Sony, have any plans to reintroduce those games on the PS3?

There isn't any concrete activity on that, but I do have a great interest in it.

SCE's Shuhei Yoshida once called you Sony's "Olympic Team" for releasing a high-quality game every four years. Obviously, The Last Guardian isn't going to make that four year benchmark. Why?

We initially had difficulty in understanding the PS3.

Unfortunately, Ueda couldn't elaborate much further on the details of The Last Guardian and its development process. For now, it seems like the "man eating giant eagle" will be shrouded in mystery.

Tags: fumito-ueda, interview, sony, the-last-guardian, torico, trico

Reader Comments (68)

"There isn't any concrete activity on that, but I do have a great interest in it."

Even though I have Ico and SotC already, this makes me very happy and I hope a God of War-esque HD collection comes out.

That would be sweet. I'd be all over an HD version of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Ueda is the most creative genius in the gaming industry.

I never had a PS2, but my roommate (and nearly all of my friends) did. So while I did get to play some great PS2 games, my choices were somewhat limited, and I never played Ico or SotC. I'd be all over it if they released them on PSN. Hell, they don't even have to update the graphics; I beat Max Payne 1 and 2 on XBox on Demand over the last 2 weeks and am working on Psychonauts now.

I already own both also, but I would so buy a new copy in HD and with trophies.

I have SotC, but would gladly buy it again to get it and Ico remastered (hell, even if they aren't remastered, just working with a PS3).

I would honestly count down the days until it came out if it was re-released in HD on PS3. One of my favorite games on PS2 even though I usually don't like games from overseas. Not because I have some stupid prejudice or something, but I usually just don't end up liking them. Anyways, I loved this game and even though I have a backwards compatible 60 GB, I would buy it as soon as it came out if it came out in HD for PS3. Also what would make it even more awesome is if they packaged it with Ico in HD. Oh man, that would be amazing. I rented it a few years ago but never got to finish it. Please make it happen, Sony.

"Man Eating Giant Eagle"....is that a man-eating giant eagle? or a man eating a giant eagle?

Sounds like a yoga pose to me.

haha I was thinking the same thing when I read that bimmy

That reminds me of the Little Rascals Movie, and the three foot man eating chicken. Good stuff.

Actually, Giant Eagle is where I do my grocery shopping. So maybe they're actually talking about me and every other adult male shopping for store brand food in the Pittsburgh region. I've secretly been in on this all along.

Man I hope they Release Ico and SotC on PS3...I VAGUELY remember Ico cause it was SOOO long ago, and never played SotC...Adam Sandler played it in "Reign Over Me" on like 100" screen....looked good....

and I wonder how they could work PSN into it? I mean would they turn it into something like an MMO? or would they try to go the CO-OP route??

either way I can't wait for the game....

and I'm glad they got a handle on how to code for the PS3....hell glad everyone pretty much has

Chris.... I suggest you go out right now and obtain a copy of Sotc and prepare to have your world rocked.

I may end up doing that if they don't say anything about re-releasing the Collection a few months before the Release of tLG

SoTC is a better game than Ico. Not to say Ico is bad, it's excellent. SoTC is just tighter experience.

goddamn never played SotC? whew that's my favorite game ever

You should just get it anyway. It's less than 18 dollars new at multiple places (walmart, amazon, etc).

For anyone out there looking for a copy of Ico, you can find one locally (in the US anyway) if you keep searching Gamestop's database. You'll have to google for the Ico product page (you can't get there from Gamestop's search box any more), but once there, you input your zip code and it will tell you which (if any) stores in your region have a copy of the game. I bought a copy for a friend a couple months ago, and it only cost me 20 bucks (it had a manual and a box, but those aren't guaranteed)

I'm sure you can find the thing used for real cheap. When it first came out I rented it, but just recently I bought it used from EB Games for like $10. Best $10 I've ever spent.

I have the 80GB PS3 that I bought in January '09. I am fairly certain that it doesn't support PS2 games / discs. If someone *knows* that this isn't the case, can you please let me know? Links would be appreciated but, of course, not necessary. Thanks!

January '09?? Most likely if you got it from a store it doesn't....

as the only 80GB PS3s that play PS2 game were the in the Motorstorm Bundle and MGS4 Bundle....both of which have pretty much been gone since August '08

Wow, Chris. You certainly seem to know your PS3 facts. Thanks!

Even though I believe you, I suppose I could always borrow God of War II from a friend and stick it in the PS3 to see if it works.

yea you can try it if you want....

but the 80GB models that play PS2 games have 4 USB Ports and the Media card slots on it....the ones with that aren't gonna play any PS2 games but will play PS1 games

Torico.

...

"torico" is a terrible transliteration.
It should be "trico". "torico" is just a version of the katakana used to represent the faux English (waseigo) original term.

It's a pun.

Ico. (From Japanese iko - "let's go")
Nico (Portmanteau of "ni" - "two" and the name of the first game. I.e., ico 2)
Trico (Portmanteau of "tri" - greek three instead of Japanese three, and the name of the first game.)

Trico then gets represented in katakana as "toriko" and because of the name of the game in the US gets converted to "torico" because there's no "c" in roomaji and they do that sometimes. (Sometimes they do it with "sh", too, hence Katamari Damashii becomes Katamari Damacy)

So, it should be Trico. Please, don't call it "torico".

Similar situation to "aeiris" from FFVII. The name was always Aeirith, but there's no "th" in Japanese so they used a 'su' for the katakana, and some people mistook that as the 'real' name.

As a fan of anime, I've come to realize over the past decade that you can Romanize a Japanese word/name/whatever in just about any way you'd like, and it is still correct. Trico is no more correct than Torico (or Toriko). In fact, I'd say that Toriko is better because that particular spelling tells western audiences that it is pronounced Tori-Ko, instead of Tri Co, which is how most westerners would pronounces "Trico". I'd rather see it spelled Toriko than go through another generation like the last where people said Eye-co, instead of E-co.

Then again, it really doesn't matter, because the game is obviously going to be "The Last Guardian" in every English speaking region, meaning that people won't have to bother learning how to say Trico anyway.

Ico is really hard to find. Go look on Ebay or Amazon market place, it goes for big bucks. I recently found a copy at GameStop after I kept checking their inventory every morning for months . When they have one in stock, you have to call them as soon as they open the store and tell them that the website shows it in stock and ask them to hold it for you. If you call any later they'll say it's already sold. I think the employees buy it themselves to sell it on fleabay,

That's what I'd do if I worked at a Gamestop. The price may have gone up since I bought the copy for my friend, but if you got it for 20 at Gamestop, you could turn it around and sell it for 40+ on ebay and turn a quick profit.

Since there weren't very many copies of Ico sold in the US, it is fairly difficult to find a copy at a local used game store. It's absolutely worth it though due to how much you save over buying it on Ebay. I've purchased two extra NTSC copies from Gamestop over the years, so I have copies to lend to people (other than my old copy, which remains scratch free) and neither cost more than 20 dollars.

(I also have a copy of the PAL version, because it's superior, and I'm a nerd)

xaiax, did you even read the article? It's "torico" because it's a play on words. If there wasn't a bird-thing in the game, they would have probably called it something else with "ico" in the title, perhaps even your trico suggestion. So yes, call it Torico because that's the pun they intended.

I paid $30 for Ico at GameStop, so I guess they've figured out that they can get away with charging more for this 8 years old game.

" It's "torico" because it's a play on words."

D'oh, I didn't pick up on "tori" because I'd seen it referred to so many times as "trico", and the original test render that leaked a while back specifically had it written as "Project Trico".

"As a fan of anime, I've come to realize over the past decade that you can Romanize a Japanese word/name/whatever in just about any way you'd like, and it is still correct. "

As someone who speaks conversational Japanese and is a linguist, not really. Choice of romanization affects how people will pronounce the word as the see it. This is why pretty much no one pronounces the "cy" in Katamari Damacy as the "shii" that it should be. Native English speakers see "cy" and think of "democracy" or "fancy" or any other word ending in "cy", and think "see".

Given English speakers' default penultimate stress pattern (unless otherwise specified, put primary stress on the second to lass syllable of a word) having it written out as "torico" will likely lead people to pronounce it as "tuh REE ko", instead of the reduced o that a native Japanese speaker would put there, with no primary stress.

Now that I see they were making a pun with tori, it would make sense to keep it there, but people seeing that that don't already have a grasp of Japanese phonology are going to pronounce it pretty weird.

It just doesn't make any sense to put in a literal transliteration of a word that was converted from latin text to katakana, though. It's like running something through multi-babel.

Fourico 2012

foolish child....

are you one of the ones that likes JUST Shooting, explosions, and violence?? if so...then I can see why you say that....but to other gamers, a games STORY as well as its gameplay get us hype....and it doesn't hurt when the game looks damn good too

because his last 2 games were nothing short of amazing. Both critically acclaimed by gamers and gaming media... but i bet you never played both, or even one.

you know what, just stick to FPS, you'd be doing everyone a favor

Wow really man? You are making an opinion on the game without even seeing any gameplay? The reason this game is getting hype is because the previous games these guys released were top quality. You cant look at some cutscenes and declare the game boring.

"We initially had difficulty in understanding the PS3."

I remember hearing similar comments with the PS2, and it all eventually got sorted out.

Having said that, I believe Sony will have some self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot this go 'round, since they have (arguably) the better hardware platform (not talking about reliability issues - other than main RAM, the PS3 hardware is more advanced/capable, flame on) but if the architecture is so inscrutable then it doesn't matter. Add to the fact that the current environment makes multi-platform games a financial necessity for most devs, and this leads to ports of PC/Xbox code that don't utilize the PS3 unique strength's anyway.

So for every exceptional PS3 exclusive that really uses the hardware (Uncharted 2, MGS4, Killzone 2, etc.) you get a multi-platform title that manages to look worse on the PS3 (Batman: AA, RE5, Ghostbusters, etc.). Unless Devs really get on board with programming for the platform and we see a lot more killer titles that are clearly superior to the 360 versions I don't believe the benefits of the superior but more difficult to develop for platform will support this strategy going forward.

I played batman on 360 at a few friends houses and it looks like shit...because they're TVs are too bright and sharp. So I'm willing to bet that your average person completely negates that marginal bump in graphics by leaving their TV's at their default settings. My "inferior" PS3 version looked much better just because I know how to adjust the settings on my tv.

Point is...the difference really is nothing.

There are no flames to be brought here. It's a simple misconception this generation that the PS3 has more "power" (however you'd quantify that) than the Xbox 360. The truth of the matter is that both consoles are evenly matched, with strengths and weaknesses on both sides.

At the end of the day, it is the games that matter. I'm glad that Team Ico seems to have waited until they could get a firm grasp on the PS3's architecture before trying to put out a game on the platform. If anyone ever needed confirmation that yes, the console is difficult to create games on, I think this is as solid of a confirmation as we will ever see this generation (Team Ico is a first party studio after all...).

Hopefully these four years have been used well. This is easily my most anticipated game of this generation.

I don't have any first-hand experience on which to judge, and I suspect you're right, unless you somehow had both versions playing at the same time right next to each other. What I've heard is that the PS3 version doesn't have anti-aliasing, which I can imagine might be a big deal on a hi-def TV (or might not; at higher resolutions you might not need to anti-alias so much to reduce the "jaggies").

I played the demo on my PS3 and thought it looked just great, so I suspect you're right.

Team ICO is an in-house Sony dev team(unlike all the other games you listed), so any discussions of underutilizing the PS3's capabilities are moot. Team ICO's games will always be on PS2 or PS3 or PSP or whatever the current Sony console is. Team ICO fully utilizes the hardware of the system they develop for, that's why they had difficulties understanding the PS3, because they're trying to use the hardware as best they can. They managed to do things with the PS2 that didn't seem possible, with Shadow of the Colossus being one of the best-looking PS2 games, period.

Having a bad day? Such cynicism...

"All we've seen is a boy, a bird, some temple, some colors (ohh purdy), and some water. THAT'S IT.

Again why is this game getting all this hype?"

Because we Team ICO fans know exactly what they can do with just a few simple concepts. Shadow of the Colossus was just "a horse, a boy, a temple, and some big monsters", and it ended up being one of the best games of 2005. Likewise ICO is just "a boy, a girl, a big castle, and some shadow monsters", and it was one of the best games of 2001.

We know that Team ICO can do a lot with very little. They have a design philosophy called "design by subtraction". Being minimal is part of what Team ICO does, they do it splendidly, and it's why we love their games.

They subtracted a little too much from the framerate in SotC. I really hope it gets an improved re-release

Ghaleon, keep in mind that SotC's framerate was simply because Team ICO made a game so good looking that even the PS2 couldn't handle it. The framerate problems are the PS2's limitations, not SotC's. SotC pushed the console to its limits, using every graphical shortcut it could. Here's something to read on it:
http://www.bruno-urbain.com/resources/making_of_sotc.pdf

It's because of the amazing games created by the same man before. i.e. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

case. closed.

just stick to final fantasy 27 or whatever...

"We initially had difficulty in understanding the PS3."

That made me laugh.

You guys, I think that going forward, Sony will be the strongest company that revitalized itself and it tried so hard with many elements to change the market to its favor.

What I mean is, they are on the bleeding edge of technology, & that's why they're suffering atm, but when the PS4 comes out, it will be (commercially speaking) much more successful than the PS3, because Sony learned their lessons this gen.

You said, almost precisely, what I said before I edited my original post - I was going to conclude with the point that the PS4 will reflect the lessons learned this gen; what tempered that statement was the experience with the PS2. There was a lot of squawking about the PS2's l ack of anti-aliasing at the beginning, but you can't argue that the PS2 was a success. And yes, that's an understatement.

I think the verdict's out on the overall success of the PS3. We could still find ourselves in a situation where the PS4 continues to push the tech edge with the 720 is built on standard (but more advanced) PC tech.

I'm guessing the execs at Sony didn't really have a plan for online gaming (from what I read about in regards to the ps2's paltry online offerings), so true, they got their asses handed to them this time around.

We're long past this stage now.

Ghostbusters aside, there's no recent multiplat PS3 release that is demonstrably worse than its 360 counterpart. 360 versions are "slightly better" no doubt...but not enough to impact anyones opinion...certainly not like it did in 07/08.

I think most people accept that it's only going to be Sony who truly show what the PS3 can do, but then as a platform holder, and having 14 studios, that's their job....which they're certainly doing well with Uncharted 2.

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TGS 2009: Interview: The Last Guardian's Fumito Ueda

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