Development on Team ICO’s The Last Guardian hasn’t exactly stopped, but it’s not moving very quickly either.
President on Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida says the meandering pace is due to the difficulties faced by developers in fully realizing Fumito Ueda’s vision.
“The project has been making progress, but slow progress. So that’s tough, but we haven’t changed any focus. It’s still a really important project and a vision we want to see realised, and Fumito’s vision is really causing a very difficult challenge for the developers, so there’s some scrapping and rebuilding – iteration in the process. That’s why [it’s taking so long],” he said.
Ueda caused a near-panic amongst some gamers late last year when he left Sony, causing some US retailers to mistakenly cancel preorders. However, Sony promised that the director was going to finish work on the project first. From Yoshida’s comments it’s clear that he is indeed fully committed to the project, but Yoshida goes on to assure the development wasn’t affected by Ueda leaving the company.
“You know, we discussed an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side. But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as ‘he left’, Yoshida said.
“He comes in every day, and he’s probably one of the people who work the longest hours.”
Despite the bad news, this definitely points to a passion and attention to detail that could mean it’ll all be worth the wait.
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