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The Last Guardian not coming to the Tokyo Game Show, will we ever see it?

• Egon Kilin
• August 14th, 2014

There are certain games whose development is so shrouded in mystery that they almost seem like a myth by now. No, we’re not talking about Fallout 4 or Half-Life 3, although those are some pretty good examples. The game in question is Team Ico’s The Last Guardian, a title announced back in 2009 as a PS3 exclusive. Five years have passed since then so one would assume that the game will now release on the PS4 instead. But will it actually ever release or is it just a myth? We were hoping to hear more about it back at E3, but no such luck. Now Gamescom is well underway and The Last Guardian is still nowhere to be seen. The next big event of the year will be the Tokyo Game Show, but it seems the elusive title will not make an appearance there either.

Sony’s boss of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida himself confirmed this in recent interview with Eurogamer. “Will we see it at Tokyo Game Show?” Yoshida was asked. His response was a disappointing “I don’t think so, sorry.” However, while this is definitely not what we wanted to hear, at least we learned that The Last Guardian is certainly not a myth. Moreover, “the team is making great progress” according to Yoshida. But Sony’s boss didn’t drop any major details regarding the development process or a possible release date unfortunately. Believe it or not, The Last Guardian was supposed to come out in late 2011, but apparently some technical issues prevented this from happening.

“The technical issues on PS3 and the way it was engineered didn’t work,” he said. “It worked to some extent, that’s why we had a date in mind. That was a mistake, but at one time it was looking possible. It has been totally re-engineered. They’re still working on it,” Yoshida assures us. “I’ve been seeing the progress.” So if development is going well, but The Last Guardian can’t be featured at the Tokyo Game Show when can we expect to see it?  “When we are ready,” Yoshida says. “I cannot confirm any timing because we are waiting for it to be in a state where we are happy that this is the game. We have a certain time frame in our mind, and the team is making great progress, but still not to the point that we can say that, here you go.”

Well, at least The Last Guardian is certainly a reality and is being developed as we speak, but what about games like Fallout 4 or Half-Life 3? Bethesda confirmed that their Gamescom line-up doesn’t include the highly anticipated title, but didn’t say if Fallout 4 is actually in development or not so it’s anybody’s guess at this point. As of Half-Life 3, Valve didn’t mention anything about the game, but the Dota 2 update which introduced the Workshop Tools Alpha seems to contain evidence that the Source 2 engine is well underway. This has lead many to believe that Half-Life 3 will release together with the new engine when the time comes, but again, not actual confirmation as of yet.