You or someone you know bought a PlayStation 3 for a game that never ended up coming out. A heartfelt story about companionship, evocative of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, two modern classics also created by Fumito Ueda. It was called The Last Guardian, a game starring a young boy and a giant, wounded Chihuahua dragon thing navigating in an unfriendly world. For the last five years (wow, has it really been so long), many fans were certain the game simply wasn't going to happen. Myself included.Rumours began swirling that Sony was going to make things right this year during E3, but we have heard rumours like that before. We have had our hearts broken. Right out of the gates, Shawn Layden, Sony Computer Entertainment America's new CEO and human Lego figurine, wasted no time in getting to a point many wanted to hear."Our first game tonight, has been long anticipated by the gaming community," said Layden. "It is conceived as a poetic story, of adventure and friendship. Heroism and companionship." The audience began to erupt.And there it was: the first new footage in years, gameplay footage to boot. Crisper and sharper for sure, and the monster companion's horns are a little more aqua-blue, but the setting and atmosphere are almost identical to The Last Guardian's last appearance. The six minutes of material is essentially just the duo walking across precarious scaffolding but fuck it, we'll take it. Oh my god we'll take it! We'll take this! Please, Sony, let this game come out!The Last Guardian was announced many moons ago, in 2009, still hot on the heels of the PlayStation 3's release and the buzz from Shadow of the Colossus, which came out in, Christ, 2005? It was originally slated to release in 2011, which is not what happened in 2011. In 2011, Fumito Ueda left Team Ico to go, I don't know, make Half-Life 3, saying he'd still work on The Last Guardian as a freelancer, though it sounded the loudest death bell in a chorus of them. Since then the game has become a thorny ongoing joke, a promise never kept by Sony.It is a new day. The Last Guardian is slated to come out in 2016, nearly a decade after it began development in 2007, and will likely go down as one of the most heart wrenching sagas of game development, right up there with Duke Nukem Forever. Which ended up sucking. The Last Guardian won't suck. We won't allow it to suck. Feel free to tell all those aforementioned friends that their emotions were not in vain. But their purchase was, since it looks like The Last Guardian is coming out for the PlayStation 4 instead. I'm sure they'll understand.
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