Fumito Ueda has always viewed his games as the best realizations of what he could do with a project based on the system’s constraints, be it the PlayStation 2, 3 or 4. With his and Gen Design’s next project – The Last Guardian – the designer has spoken in Edge magazine issue #294 regarding how the PS4’s technical limitations influenced the design of The Last Guardian.
“I often get asked about the themes in Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, or The Last Guardian. But I’m not really conscious of them. It’s not like I have a specific interest in those themes and that’s why they occur in those games. It’s just that when you’re creating a game you have to think about the hardware, and resources, and programming code and technologies that you have to work with, and then you think about what would be a good theme to express those with. That’s how I arrive at my ideas.
“In a videogame, it’s necessary to think about the limitations of what can be presented with a game console, how convincing that presentation can be, the cost of realizing it, and how consistent it can be with the game design. That’s probably why I keep returning to similar ideas.”
These technical constrains could be viewed as detrimental to the scope of the project, but I would also argue that they perhaps inadvertently, assist in focusing the core tenant and narrows it down to what it should and should not be.
For more of our recent The Last Guardian coverage, check out Fumito Ueda suggests “games have too much music” and Fumito Ueda is ‘worried’ about The Last Guardian’s release.