The Last Guardian

Who is strong in a fight tells players what the relationship is. Ueda reversed Ico's combat roles: in Ico the invincible boy protects the frail Yorda, while in The Last Guardian the boy cannot defeat the magic soldiers and Trico is invincible. The player feels vulnerable alone and grateful when Trico saves them.

This sidesteps the usual trade-off between stressful escort missions and invincible companions who clash with the story, such as BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth, who is called vulnerable yet finds Booker ammo and even revives him. "The roles that the characters take in combat tell us so much of what we need to know about their relationship to one another."

Simple two-way dependence rules make each scene instantly readable. Trico freezes in fear at stained glass eyes and won't move until the boy smashes or removes them, while the boy can't beat enemies without Trico. A room with an eye and soldiers therefore tells the player to fight through alone, which is tense and then rewarding once Trico joins in.

The two are strong in different ways: Trico in combat, the boy in platforming and puzzles. In a later room with soldiers holding stained glass shields, Brown knew he should leave Trico, sneak around and shove them off a ledge, but rushed in and was ambushed.

Trico ignores commands on purpose so it feels like a creature, not a tool. Trico was told to ignore the player's instructions about half the time. Ueda: "When the boy calls Trico, we could have made Trico come immediately, like clockwork. But if we did that, Trico would not seem like an independent creature."

Players must be patient and learn Trico's sounds and body language. Lifelike animation and hesitation, such as before jumping into water, support the illusion.

Meaningful unpredictability costs fun, and it divided players. Brown calls Trico's unreliable obedience cool but not always fun, and compares Ueda's risk to Dark Souls accepting lost players for meaningful difficulty. In a separate analysis of game AI he advises against deliberate disobedience, since cooperative play needs AI the player can plan around.

"Making systems and mechanics that are both enjoyable and charged with meaning is a brutally difficult balancing act." Brown leaves it to each player to judge whether Ueda succeeded.

Ueda built the boy and Trico's bond through rules, not cutscenes. The Last Guardian, the last of Fumito Ueda's three games about bonds, conveys the relationship through mechanics and systems the player can poke at rather than dialogue or film-style scenes. Mark Brown argues interaction is the language unique to games, as shape and colour are to painting.

Reception was mixed, with complaints about clumsy controls, input lag, clunky physics, patronising hints and tedious puzzles, yet most players agree it depicts the bond very well. Brown contrasts it with The Last of Us, which tells Joel and Ellie's story largely by borrowing from cinema.

Who is strong in a fight tells players what the relationship is. Ueda reversed Ico's combat roles: in Ico the invincible boy protects the frail Yorda, while in The Last Guardian the boy cannot defeat the magic soldiers and Trico is invincible. The player feels vulnerable alone and grateful when Trico saves them.

This sidesteps the usual trade-off between stressful escort missions and invincible companions who clash with the story, such as BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth, who is called vulnerable yet finds Booker ammo and even revives him. "The roles that the characters take in combat tell us so much of what we need to know about their relationship to one another."

Simple two-way dependence rules make each scene instantly readable. Trico freezes in fear at stained glass eyes and won't move until the boy smashes or removes them, while the boy can't beat enemies without Trico. A room with an eye and soldiers therefore tells the player to fight through alone, which is tense and then rewarding once Trico joins in.

The two are strong in different ways: Trico in combat, the boy in platforming and puzzles. In a later room with soldiers holding stained glass shields, Brown knew he should leave Trico, sneak around and shove them off a ledge, but rushed in and was ambushed.

Breaking an established rule at the key moment lands harder than a cutscene. After the game teaches that stained glass paralyses Trico, the boy faces soldiers with stained glass shields he can't beat and Trico can't pass. Trico overcomes its fear and charges in anyway, showing the boy's safety now outweighs its fear.

Because the player believed the rule was fixed and thought "It's over," the reaction is a quiet "Oh." Brown rates this above Ellie shooting a man to save Joel in The Last of Us, which he calls strong storytelling borrowed from film: "it broke a clearly established, mechanical rule."

Trico ignores commands on purpose so it feels like a creature, not a tool. Trico was told to ignore the player's instructions about half the time. Ueda: "When the boy calls Trico, we could have made Trico come immediately, like clockwork. But if we did that, Trico would not seem like an independent creature."

Players must be patient and learn Trico's sounds and body language. Lifelike animation and hesitation, such as before jumping into water, support the illusion.

How the player treats Trico changes how well it responds. Players report that removing spears, tending wounds, finding barrels of food and petting Trico after fights make it more responsive and loyal.

The system lets players feel what it is like to love or mistreat an animal through play rather than a story beat: "we can explore, as players, what it's like to love or mistreat an animal."

Meaningful unpredictability costs fun, and it divided players. Brown calls Trico's unreliable obedience cool but not always fun, and compares Ueda's risk to Dark Souls accepting lost players for meaningful difficulty. In a separate analysis of game AI he advises against deliberate disobedience, since cooperative play needs AI the player can plan around.

"Making systems and mechanics that are both enjoyable and charged with meaning is a brutally difficult balancing act." Brown leaves it to each player to judge whether Ueda succeeded.