The Last Guardian, Fumito Ueda's long awaited follow up to the seminal award-winning Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, still doesn't have a release date - but it's still in active development. That's the latest word on the near-mythical project from publisher SONY.
In an interview with IGN, Scott Rohde, SONY's boss of global software product development, explained that while he couldn't offer any new details, fans will get to see the game eventually. "[I'm] not going to announce what platform it's coming on, who's working on it, who's involved," he said. "But that is still a title that's absolutely in the mix at Worldwide Studios. That's the most you're gonna get."
The Last Guardian began development in 2007, and was formally announced in 2009. Since then, the planned 2011 release date came and went with no word on when the game would be finished. The game concerns a young boy and a large cat-eagle hybrid monster, and their growing friendship as they work together to escape from a castle. Apart from screenshots and a trailer, very little has been seen of the gameplay. According to Rohde, the game is so important to so many players that the pressure to get it exactly right is what is taking so long.
"We want to make great games," he explains. "And when we see that the public is so interested in a specific game, of course that drives us to want to complete that game. But it also drives us to want to make it great. We would not want to ship that game if we don't think it's great. I love that people are still interested in it. That's an honour to us. That's not just me spinning. It's really cool that people are still interested in it, and we're trying to make the best thing we can out of The Last Guardian."
If the wait is becoming too much, why not check out the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection, which revamps the PS2 classics for the PlayStation 3.