The Last Guardian: Hands-on with a game we thought may never exist

The most adorable giant bird-dog-horse hybrid ever.

I had to wait about 30 minutes to play the E3 demo of The Last Guardian on one of the few behind-closed-doors demo stations available at this year's show. In another sense, though, I've been waiting to play Fumito Ueda's next game for seven years now, ever since its 2009 E3 debut as a PlayStation 3 game. I've been waiting even longer since Ueda's Shadow of the Colossus dazzled the gaming world in 2005.

Playing a game that has been in development that long, and with such a distinguished pedigree, it's hard to separate out the experience itself from the almost crushing weight of expectations layered on top of it. I spent a good deal of the half hour or so with The Last Guardian just in a base state of wonder that the game I was playing was actually real.

The basic gameplay in The Last Guardian demo will feel familiar to anyone who fell in love with Ueda's Ico in 2001. At its core, the game is about finding paths through intricately detailed 3D environments with light puzzle solving and navigation. In an era of sprawling, 100-hour open worlds, it's a pleasantly dated design. The Last Guardian brings an old-school focus on architectural world-building rather than endless busywork quests.

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