What ‘The Last Guardian’ creator learned from ‘No Man’s Sky’

The video game world is vastly different now than it was in 2007, when Fumito Ueda and his team began working on The Last Guardian. Nintendo dominated the hardware market with the 3DS and Wii, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 trailed by millions in console sales. Assassin’s Creed, BioShock and Mass Effect debuted, kicking off a fresh round of long-running AAA franchises.

Today, we have the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro, and Nintendo is attempting to rebound from slow sales of the Wii U. Day-one patches are normal, pre-order DLC bundles are standard practice, we’re on the ninth Assassin’s Creed and, sometimes, indie games are indistinguishable from AAA titles.

This is the brave new world that Ueda will release The Last Guardian into on December 6th. Over the past nine years, he’s kept an eye on the video game industry and he knows that the market is volatile. He knows that the industry has changed. Fans are used to a constant barrage of information, trailers, screenshots and interviews about upcoming, high-profile games. Sometimes this marketing strategy works out just fine. And sometimes, No Man’s Sky happens.

At least Ueda has been down this road before. He’s the creator of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, two cult classics that captured the hearts of players in the early 2000s. However, his experience fuels a potential issue that looms heavy over The Last Guardian: After nine years of development, fans of Ueda’s work have had time to build up the game in their minds. They’ve had the space to imagine a million perfect, uncompromising experiences, each one different and attuned to a specific person’s taste. When these fans finally sit down to play The Last Guardian, they might expect impossible things.

“Obviously there’s a level of expectation, and it’s really down to each and every person’s level of expectation and imagination that they’ve created based on what they’ve seen,” Ueda says.

That’s what happened recently with No Man’s Sky, an independent game that received massive amounts of attention from the moment its first trailer went live in 2013. Sony immediately seized the momentum and ran with it, featuring No Man’s Sky in its largest convention speeches and press tours. The game was pitched as a sprawling AAA experience, even though it came from Hello Games, a small team in the UK known for creating the quirky side-scroller series Joe Danger.

It took three years and one delay for No Man’s Sky to go gold, giving a flood of hungry fans plenty of time to envision the perfect space-exploration game. And then, when No Man’s Sky landed in August, it didn’t meet many fans’ expectations. Backlash was swift. Livid players gathered on Reddit and Steam demanding refunds, and the game’s ratings plummeted. It’s now being investigated in the UK over charges of false advertising.

Ueda is aware of the potential pitfalls that come when a game finally goes public after years of anticipation. However, instead of dissuading him from development, he says the weight of fans’ expectations actually fuels his team.

“I try not to think about the pressure that has been added or is probably assumed to be added to this title,” he says. “But, having said that, I don’t think all pressure is always negative. It’s actually kept us motivated because of the expectations that people put on our next game. What that does is it creates this weird cycle, in a good way, where the pressure that we feel is then turned into motivation, and then that in turn helps Sony and our partners and our team to have even a stronger belief in the product.”

Ueda has already proven he knows how to make moving video games that touch millions of people, but he refuses to settle for average with The Last Guardian. He says he wants as many people to play the game as possible — and this isn’t just the dream of a legendary developer yearning for another slice of glory. Instead, it’s the foundation of Ueda’s approach to The Last Guardian.

“We found out that a lot of people are very curious and interested in animals,” Ueda tells me through a translator. “So we felt like if we introduced an animal or living creature in this game that hopefully it would appeal to a wider audience. That is something that really kicked off our brainstorm in the idea and formation of The Last Guardian.”

Trico, the game’s massive bird-dog companion that’s been plastered on posters and trade show floors across the world, is a direct representation of Ueda’s attempt to intrigue a wide audience. Trico is adorable, vulnerable and the perfect tool for manipulating the hearts of every pet owner who sees him. That’s a fairly large audience.

Not only does Ueda want animal lovers across the globe to play The Last Guardian, he wants them to understand and accept the game as it is. He’s keeping many aspects of its story secret, but he says it’s a unique experience, much like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were. Those titles eschewed standard video game elements like UI and NPCs in favor of a minimalistic aesthetic, setting them apart from their contemporaries. They were different. So is The Last Guardian.

“For me, that means, ‘Oh gosh, is it going to be accepted? Are people going to understand where we’re coming from and where we want to go?’” Ueda says.

He’ll soon have his answer, regardless of whether he’s ready to hear it. Ueda he hasn’t thought much about what he’ll do on launch day, if he’ll be glued to the internet, immediately soaking up players’ reactions, or if he’ll take a step back for a while and simply let the moment sink in.

Eventually, he specifically wants to hear from people who play the game in its entirety. This isn’t a hint about The Last Guardian’s story, per se, but it does suggest a connected and thoughtful narrative that rewards those who play to the end.

“If they can share their feedback and their impressions, that’s going to be something that I really, really look forward to hearing,” Ueda says.

Whatever he decides to do on December 6th, Ueda is ready for the game to be done. The Last Guardian represents the last nine years of his life and even now, a month from release, he says it seems surreal that the journey is ending.

“Even though the game is on its way to being boxed up and going in stores and being delivered to players, it hasn’t really sunk in yet for me,” Ueda says. “I haven’t been able to digest the fact that it’s all done and completed. …What I’m looking forward to is for everything to just really be done and all the items on the checklist to be checked off. I think at that moment, hopefully, it will register and I would feel like it’s finally done. I look forward to that day.”

PS4’s Sharefactory app now lets you make GIFs from your videos

PS4’s Sharefactory app, which lets players stitch together video, music and photos into sweet highlight reels, has steadily built out its toolbox since Sony released it back in April 2014. Some have added options for slow-mo and timelapse, while the most recent introduced picture-in-picture to include simultaneous video play. But those have toyed with yesterday’s formats. For all the cool kids, Sony’s finally bringing GIF-making support to the app, letting users create animated clips up to 10 seconds long with all the captions their little hearts desire.

My kingdom for a grapple kit #PS4share pic.twitter.com/LEsX9WGJX6

— David Lumb (@OutOnALumb) November 9, 2016

It’s all part of a Sharefactory 2.0 release package. If you’ve hooked the app up to Twitter, you can tweet out your GIFs right from your console. Sony has also added a collage mode so users can arrange up to six photos in whatever arrangement they crave for their own “Wish You Were Here” gaming postcard.

While there are a few performance and UI tweaks, the last big news for the app’s new version is support for PS4 Pro. Users can now edit and export their 1080p videos and 4K screenshots. So even if your friends haven’t all upgraded their screens to take in your content’s high-definition glory, you can rest assured that all your headshot montages and GTA Online rampages are as crisp as possible.

Source: PlayStation blog

Japan has some exclusive PSVR titles, but you’re not missing much

Sony’s lineup of games and demos is often slightly different depending on the region. It’s something you may have noticed with PlayStation’s VR debut in both Europe and the US, — and that’s even more true for Japan. The virtual reality headset launched in Sony’s homeland with several titles on the PlayStation Store that are not available elsewhere. While standalone (much less stand-out) games are few, there’s still handful of experiences that are only playable with a Japanese PlayStation account. Fortunately for you, I’ve got one, and have played through some of this Japan-only content. From awkward teacher role-play with a Japanese schoolgirl, to anime J-Pop idol concerts, digitized musicians, Godzilla and virtual karaoke rooms (!), these regional exclusives very much cater to the locals. Here’s how they fared over a week-long playthrough. (Factoring in some time for Rez Infinite, of course.)

Summer Lesson

Price: 2,980 yen (about $29)

Summer Lesson is the most polished — and the weirdest — PlayStation VR game you can’t buy outside Japan. You play as a tutor hired to help Japanese high school student Hikari improve her grades. So far, so anime plotline. In reality, it’s not much of a game — more like one of the dullest PSVR experiences I’ve seen yet. The gameplay consists of choosing a lesson (logic, memory, etc.) and conversation starter (family, school, sports) with Hikari, listen through greetings and some small talk, rubberstamp a lesson report card (one of the rare in-game interactions) and wait for scenes to fade in and out. (It’s fortunate, perhaps, that you don’t have to actually sit through the multi-hour lessons.)

In the middle of study, the game lets you improve (or lower) the odds of a successful lesson by changing the learning environment. However, irrespective of what you choose to do during her lesson (vocally cheer her on, introducing a rapid-fire quiz, lowering the air-con, or even turning the lights off), it has no bearing on what you see in the next scene.

Marginally more interesting scenes are randomly drip-fed in throughout this daily grind. But even these hidden scenes aren’t exactly thrilling when written: You share headphones while listening to music, she drops her pencil, she searches for her favorite comic book or brushes some virtual fluff from your virtual shoulder. Then, after six lessons, you meet her one last time to hear the results of her midterm. This depends on how smart your lesson plans were, although it’s hard to see the reasoning behind what makes a lesson successful or not.

“Swing!” 😅 #psvr

A photo posted by Mat (@thtmtsmth) on Oct 27, 2016 at 5:06am PDT

After the eventual test result, you can repeat the whole thing again, this time armed with leveled-up lesson plans… even if the timeline is reset each time. She doesn’t remember you. She never will. She’ll tell you again and again that it’s weird to have a home tutor in her room, and that she loves softball. She always eats breakfast, loves manga comics. Oh, and she still really, really loves softball.

If there’s one redeeming feature here, it’s that you feel like Hikari is in the room; that you should obey social conventions (get too close and she will complain). When she gets a bit too close, you feel uncomfortable. But she’s not there. She’s inside the game. I have never felt that with typical video games. This is a sensation produced by VR.

The creep factor persists: Meet your weekly in-game targets and you’ll be rewarded with new costumes for your student. But for now, that’s about it . The game heavily hints at future content: At the Tokyo Game Show last year, Bandai Namco showed an English-language demo with a new caucasian student. As Summer Lesson stands, it’s an expensive mini-game that made me feel uneasy. Nonetheless, it speaks to the ability of virtual reality to convey human presence.

Joysound Karaoke

Price: 540 yen for 24 hours (about $5)

“The ultimate solo karaoke experience.” That’s the pitch, even if not everyone enjoys singing to their television, alone. Inside a VR headset. The experience adds cheesy, 360-degree video to your songs of choice. The lyrics run across the bottom of your virtual view, like any TV-based karaoke unit. (In fact, the company Joysound powers millions of karaoke bars across Japan.)

The videos are just as cloying and weird as the two-dimensional ones that we karaoke addicts are used to. There’s a cherry blossom picnic with the girls, a cat cafe (yesssss), picnic at the beach, an intimate music lesson setting and… a room full of handsome butlers. Those are your options, folks. At least for now. The karaoke app has already started to add a number of artist collaborations to flesh out the experience.

Japanese Visual-kei band “Golden Bombers” are one of the first artists to collaborate, offering two special edition 360-videos with two tracks. This includes possibly the most reality-blurring experience: singing said band’s song while the band itself cheers you on inside a 360-projected karaoke room. The second “experience” puts you on stage during a live concert, replete with cheering crowd. That’s pretty cool.

But back to the stock cat cafe/ picnic experiences: They aren’t limited to Japanese-language songs, so I was able to bust out half a rendition of “Under Pressure” before collapsing out of sheer shame. More concert-based content would totally work with VR and karaoke. Hopefully Joysound and Sony are on it.

360 Date

Price: 1,000 yen (about $10)

Combining the creepy schoolgirl component with the melodrama of a karaoke video, 360 Date is a short drama that tells the story of your walk home with a childhood friend who might be in love with you. (Spoiler: She is.) It’s a harmless, 360-degree mini-drama. The app suggests there will be further installments with different girls and different situations, but for now 360 Date consists of several scenes of your friend talking to you, with fade-out cuts between locations.

Your character manages a few one-word replies through the episode but it’s a borderline monologue. I didn’t have to touch the controller. I just watched. I didn’t want (or need to) play it twice. Because of the relatively low standard of acting (the poor girl is acting alongside a pole and a 360-degree camera), and the fact you can’t move around, the computer generated schoolgirl in Summer Lesson offered a greater VR sensation, more of a presence, than this human one. What’s happening to me?

Shin Godzilla

Price: Free

Sony collaborated with Godzilla studio Toho to make this very short VR teaser for the new feature film. You wake up to find Tokyo in flames, with Godzilla still terrorizing its residents. There’s no interaction — you just see the full computer-generated Godzilla shrug off the military attacks. (Fun fact: This Godzilla was built from the same model used in the latest movie.) It then somehow notices you, a lone human lying on the ground, and ambles over to you. Rocket launches, gunfire and crushed cars ensue. The demo finished even sooner than I thought it would — but at least it’s free?

Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls Viewing Revolution,

Price: 2,480 yen (about $24; glowsticks sold separately)

“Rhythm action game!”, I thought. “Cute anime characters that I dance along with, and look like an idiot!” I thought. Sure, that last part is true, but neither rhythm nor action are necessary — and again, it’s not really a game. Idolmaster virtually places you in the crowd while a fictional 3D anime J-Pop group sing/synth their way through a song. There’s more songs through DLC — I didn’t bite — and DLC accessories go as low as virtual glow sticks and wristbands for your audience member. Both are a con priced at three dollars each.