Everybody asks about it, and we’ve gotten the same response every time for around three years. “When is the Last Guardian coming out?” “We’re working on it.”
Well, in an interview with Wired, Sony’s Game Design Chief, Shuhei Yoshida, just rehashed what he’s been saying for the past few months: “The project has been making progress, but slow progress.” He did, however, confirm that they have brought people from other international Sony offices to work on the game in Japan along with Team Ico (Shadow of the Colossus, Ico).
In response to the question about whether or not people from Sony Santa Monica were going to Japan to collaborate with the team there for the Last Guardian, Yoshida replied (after some question about where the interviewer got that information):
Well, you know, it’s not just Santa Monica. We have great tech people in Worldwide Studios. We have a central tech group in the U.S. and the U.K. so we are giving them whatever help they need. Technically, we have the best engineers in the U.S. and Europe, so these teams are helping them, giving advice.
He also finally gave us some insight into what stage of development the game is in, stating:
At one point the progress was great, so we talked about the timing of the launch in the past. But now it’s making progress, but still not to the level — it’s playable, but not to the point that we can talk about the timing of launch.
Other than, he basically reiterated exactly what he said to 1UP earlier this month: Fumito Ueda is still working on the project, he’s very involved even though he’s a collaborator and not an employee; progress is slow; realizing the final vision is making things very difficult.
I genuinely hope that we have a better idea of what’s going on with the project as the year goes on. It was supposed to be released late last year, so if they push the release a year or more past that, it’s going to be very disappointing.
