At this year’s E3 a release date was finally unveiled for The Last Guardian. But the game has been delayed. It’s not very surprising.
The Last Guardian has become somewhat of a joke in gaming circles. The game has been in development nearly 10 years, but nothing other than the initial announcement was mentioned until last year. The release date given at E3 was October 25, but that date has been moved to December 6. Shuhei Yoshida had this to say in post on the official PlayStation blog.
“Fumito Ueda, gen DESIGN and JAPAN Studio have a wonderful vision for The Last Guardian’s touching, emotional journey of friendship and trust, and we want to deliver the most polished experience possible for our fans who have supported us for so long. A delay is a difficult decision, particularly with this game, but we have encountered more bugs than anticipated while in the final stages of development. To ensure that The Last Guardian delivers on the experience that the game’s creators have envisioned, we need to take the extra time to work on those issues.”
In a preview of the gameplay at E3, Polygon got some interesting information straight from director Fumito Ueda:
“We really wanted to focus on getting the game to completion. I think there’s a certain expectation that we have to set for ourselves when something is going out into the public. If I were to be really selfish, I would have still gone for, ‘No, let’s not even bring it outside to the public, let’s finish it.'”
I’m a cynic, but the fact that Ueda didn’t want the game to be shown at E3 might not bode well for the game’s current development stake. I guess we’ll see in the next few months.
