See, everyone. I told you to believe!
I know typical development-hell-stuck games usually turn out awful (Duke Forever) but they don't always (TF2!)
As much as I love Ico and Shadow, I don't have crazy high and unchecked expectations for The Last Guardian. More than anything I think I'm quietly confident that it will be a high quality product reminiscent of those two previous games. My guess is that it surprises the majority of press who wrote it off years ago.
At least these forums will serve as proof that I was The One True Believer!
But really, if it's crap garbage I'll be okay. I really don't expect one company to make three of the best video games ever. Two is fine.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
I watched the trailer once out of disbelief then a second time when showing it to Hailey. Man, the music is just so damned beautiful. That made my heart swell up alone so... here's hoping the game can pull off the rest -- they've had long enough to get at least some of it right, right?
Anyway, I don't have a PS4 so, if it's good, I'm boned. Perhaps my friends will be charitable for a few days?
The videos they show always make it seem just... magical. It spurs hope that there's still something brilliant coming. After all, just because a product is long in production doesn't mean it's going to be bad; Susannah Clarke took twenty years to write Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and despite that long gestation it's widely considered among the greatest works of modern fantasy.
If the delays are truly focused on making the game that matches Ueda's vision, and the resulting product succeeds in that, all is well. If they're due to external pressures and personnel changes and what have you, that's a riskier proposition.
Like xtal says, though, it's not the end of the word if this game isn't ball-awesome. Team Ico has done a lot for the medium already!
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
You're probably right. There's only so much credibility to be squandered. I suppose at this point a month or so is in the noise.
And come to think of it, I was going to preorder this one for the Amazon Prime 20% discount, but realized I'm not really confident enough that it will be good. All this time and they still need another month? Sounds sketchy. They're going to have to do more to earn my money.
Rule #2: Double-tap
I'm going to wait 2-3 days before the game is out before I order it on Amazon. I'd get it even if it was unanimously declared to be awful (that seems unlikely) but just on principal I won't pre-order stuff far ahead of time. If I'm unsure then I'll just wait a day or two, and if I know I'll get it for certain, I'll "pre-order" a digital version a few hours before it comes out.
I was really looking forward to the October 25 release - that's two days after I get back from a trip to Iceland, it would have been perfect. Sigh!
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
Ooooh, Iceland. I'd love to go to Iceland. Enjoy!
This is a sad but good point about credibility and the squandering thereof -- the two of you were among the most squee Last Guardianites in the world. After all this you're not disillusioned, but you sure are cautious. And honestly that's probably wise.
I think Team Ico has always viewed itself as somewhat different from "other" game developers; I'm not even sure its staff considers themselves game developers at all. They have always taken their art seriously with no particular deference to the realities of the industry... the difference being that their other games existed well within the realities of the industry. Neither Shadow of the Colossus nor Ico did as well as Sony hoped, but neither was expected to do over-well and neither was seen as a failure. Also critically, neither was ten years late.
Certainly I have high hopes for the game. No matter what it won't justify this kind of development timeline, no game would, but it may still be a fine game in its own right. If we're lucky, the biggest criticism of The Last Guardian will be "it's great, but why did it take fifteen years?"
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
"I bought a PS3 for The Last Guardian."
I'll take that on my tombstone, thanks.
I bought a PS3 for this game. I thought maybe it would be 14-18 months. I would find a few other games to fill the gap in between.
I didn't think it would be hundreds of games. And still no Last Guardian.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
@Pokey -- for some reason the forum software has been holding for moderation comments from long-time posters like you. I'm still trying to find the cause of the problem, but in the meantime, I'm sorry for the delay and will do my best to get you approved asap whenever you post!
I bought a PS3 for Demon's Souls and Valkyria Chronicles, but I'd be lying if I said The Last Guardian wasn't somewhere on my reasons-for-buying list. Fortunately the PS3 turned out to be a haven for great work, and even without The Last Guardian we can all (I think) say it was a good purchase.
There are so many questions, now, about TLG... we know the fundamentals haven't changed substantively from the original design; we know the technology has been updated several times to benefit from newer hardware. So much time has passed since the beginning, TLG has become something I'm excited to play. yet (now) sufficiently removed from it that I won't go in with any preconceived expectations. Hopefully, if one good thing comes from the long development, it's that all the fans will approach it with greater impartiality than they might have otherwise.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
It certainly seemed the day would never come sometimes, didn't it?
I just read Polygon's review, which sadly is not really glowing. Hopefully our own experiences with it are better, though anything left in the oven this long is likely to come out with problems. The real question is "what kind of problems?"
Max Payne and STALKER both went waaaaaaaay past their development schedules, and both had problems, but they were also phenomenal games in their own right. At least, they were to those who weren't turned off by the issues. That's a mileage-varies situation there, everyone's bugged by different things. And Polygon's final score -- 7.5 -- isn't too harsh on its own. I've always found Polygon to use a sort of 5-10 scale, rather than the IGN 8-10, so 7.5 isn't a mark of death.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
The Eurogamer review while acknowledging faults, claims that the experience transcends its technical limitations.
Rule #2: Double-tap
That Prime discount for the first two weeks of a game's release window has me buying physical copies of games again. It's especially worth it in Canada, where with taxes on a normal physical game or Xbox game bring games to $90 here now (no tax on PSN for some reason, so those are $79.99), whereas the Prime discount brings it to $72 after taxes. Huge savings.
Anyway, I would have played this game even if it had a Metacritic score of 0. But it doesn't, which is nice. I read a handful of reviews yesterday morning and it seems to be what I expected: weird float-y controls, bad camera, powerfully emotional game overall. A few critics are talking about the camera and control stuff in a way that makes me think they have no idea what Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are; and that's fine, of course nothing is a mandatory prerequisite, but it still surprises me.
I'm obviously a huge homer for this game, what with the meaning the first two Team Ico games hold for me. I try not to care what other people think too much, but I will admit I get "internet angry" when non-game breaking technical flaws make some people disregard a game. Of course they don't have to like it because I like it, that's insane and childish; I just see it that there are so many legitimately shitty games to tear apart. Yet frustrations will be taken out on this game, because most people won't play it anyway due to its niche appeal.
I fought the 8th Colossus in SotC last night, wanting to remind myself of Team Ico's aesthetic. The camera controls for that particular battle are horrendous; they actively impede progress and get in the way of success regularly. It's just so obvious to me that the game transcends that flaw. I'll grant, ever so slightly, that the concept of the game is better than the execution, but the execution is still fucking marvelous. I think there are many things people have been waiting a long time for games to do. Photorealism? We got there several years ago. Massive, open worlds? We've been there for a while now too. But there are other types of games..just sitting there, lingering in the past, waiting to be rediscovered to remind us that not all great ideas are in front of us, some are very clearly in our past. But the camera is bad, and the controls are slippery, so fuck it, Shadow of the Colossus is relegated to curiosity.
I won't criticize "people" in general; no, people are wonderful. People need to be given a chance. I blame the review and criticism industry, once again. I exclude myself from that statement because I have almost zero influence. I'm not IGN or Eurogamer. For too long they've been hung up on numbers and "gameplay" and this quantifiable mechanic and that.
Think about all the games of the past; think of all the games of the present. There are so many derivative games, and that's fine for the most part. But when we have the opposite of that I believe it should be celebrated, flaws and all. How many Assassin's Creed games are there, ten; eleven? With perhaps two exceptions, celebrated to no end. The same thing over and over, but that's fine. There's one Shadow of the Colossus. ONE. It seems like a forgotten relic. Of all the smart critics/journalists/personalities/whatever I follow today, there isn't one that loves this game (or Ico) and talks about how important it could be to someone out there. They disregard it. Again, I can't force someone to find X as interesting as I do, but god damn, is there no one?
I will always be a homer for the flawed and the forgotten. Somebody bloody has to. That's why I'm so grateful for a place like Tap/FFC, small as it is. And people doing motherfucking God's work, like Steerpike, and Scout, and Yapette, and Toger back in the day. Thank God for all these people. Thank God for Steerpike's review of Shadow of the Colossus, which I think is a disservice to even call a review; let's call it a "think piece," an important missive. (Sorry if that former term is used pejoratively; I can't keep up the words used to denigrate smart people.)
Rant over!
I should have the game in a day or two. It's a peculiar way to cap off a peculiar year.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
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