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Early in 2011, I travelled to Sony Japan Studio's offices in Tokyo and saw the the last live demo of The Last Guardian. Four and a half years later, sat in a hushed demo theatre somewhere above the brouhaha of E3, just as the show opens, I'm seeing the first demo of its revival as a PS4 game. I'm feeling a sense of déjà vu.It opens the same way, with the boy coming upon the giant creature Trico snoozing in a shady chamber, shafts of sunlight picking out vivid coloured butterflies. 'I remember all this,' it says in my notes. The demo is described, once again, as a "vertical slice" of gameplay - almost 10 years into the game's development. Describing the game to us (and playing it for the demonstration), director Fumito Ueda again calls it a blend of his widely adored two previous games: "Ico, when the core of the experience was the cooperation between the two characters, and Shadow of the Colossus, where there's a dynamic interaction with giant creatures." And once again, this is plain to see.
In fact, after its familiar opening, this is quite a different scene, and we don't see the mysterious and implacable enemy the boy faced last time. He approaches the beast, which is part cat, part dog, part bird, but mostly cat. (I can still only think of it as a "catweagle", copyright Ellie Gibson, circa 2009.) He calls to it to wake it, walks to it to stroke its face, then clambers onto its back to pull out two wooden stakes embedded there. The animation is - still - utterly magnificent: the urgent, energetic ungainliness of the boy; the way the creature tilts its head and nuzzles, struggles to its feet, paws uncertainly at objects, roots around for food, then fixes its gaze on a high ledge, squats and then propels itself up to it. It's enrapturing.
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