Watched the trailer for
The Last Guardian a few times today.
Now, you people know, or should know anyway, that I am a
huge fan of Team ICO's work. The moments in ICO when you grab Yorda's hand and pull her along, or when you first understand that she'll catch you if you fall -- those are among the finest in gaming, and I will
cut anyone who says otherwise.
But that's not what I'm writing about today. Today's about
The Last Guardian, and I think every bit of speculation I've read so far, which centers on the death of the main characters, is missing the point.
Here's my prediction. It's probably wrong, but if there is a hint of truth to it, I will take it as vindication: You will play as the boy, and over the course of the game, you will force the gryphon to do terrible things, because that will be the only way you can advance. You will watch him take arrows for you, eat poison, suffer mutilation -- crawl into the darkest and most horrible places that we can imagine. You will preside over the destruction of the noble beast that we see in the trailer, and at the end, when you contemplate its broken corpse, you will wonder why you have done this horrible thing.
They will be seductive about it to begin with, tell you he can be repaired, that it's different for him. Perhaps even that he doesn't feel pain. And of course it is a lie.
At the end, yes, the gryphon will die, and you probably will too. But you will have killed him, and that's the important part.
words from chris, 2009-06-09 02:08:51, los angeles
