The Last Guardian follows the adventures of a young boy and a large bird-like griffin-type creature called “owashi” in Japanese. The title was officially announced at the 2009 E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles. “At the time of the E3 announcement,” says Ueda, “the tremendous response was a shock to me personally.”

While Ueda says he was especially happy about the reaction abroad, he is doing what he can recently so that he doesn’t hear the echo chamber. “The reason for that is to avoid unnecessary pressure.” Ueda already has to deal with the pressure of creating beloved titles like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

For the upcoming The Last Guardian, particular care is being giving to the game’s physics engine and the way the young boy and owashi move. In the interview, Ueda reveals that he is drawing on the game’s story board, but doing considerably less drawing when compared to the previous titles. The introduction of the game’s physics engine seems to have improved the development process for staff.

“There are a lot of things I cannot talk about right now, but this year I’d like to make new announcements,” Ueda tells the magazine. “Whether that’s at E3 or the Tokyo Game Show, that is something that will be decided.” With The Last Guardian getting its official reveal at last year’s E3, the smart money is on TGS.

Much of what you’ll see in the new official Japanese site for the game appears to be lifted from the amazing trailers from E3 and Tokyo Game Show 2009, but in super higher resolution that will require a good deal of panning and scrolling. Yes, Team ICO has prepped more of those unusually tall images for The Last Guardian, making me wonder if the PS3 game is going to support TATE mode at launch.

Here is a small selection of some of the landscape oriented screens on offer, but you’ll have to visit the official site for the rest.

The Last Guardian [SCEJ via VG247]

Because Shadow of the Colossus has already hit Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s “The Best” line of budget re-releases, so a re-issue means… well, we’re not sure. That they’re simply out of copies and that someone in Japan is hungry for Colossus slaying on the cheap?

The bad news is that this is not a a God of War Collection–style release for the PlayStation 3, giving ICO and Shadow of the Colossus a high-def once-over to drum up interest in The Last Guardian. But it may be a good sign that Sony sees value in Team ICO lead Fumito Ueda’s desire to give the first two games in the series a PlayStation 3 calibre presentation.

Shadow of the Colossus re-release next February? [Team ICO Gamers via One Last Continue]

The game designer told G4 that he is interested in making first-person shooters. Just listen to him say it: “I have an interest in making first-person game.” Ueda cites Valve’s Half-Life series as FPS games he enjoy, remarking that, “Usually, you have to incorporate storytelling with constraints, but the way…[Valve] implemented constraints was something different that I enjoyed, compared to other games.”

But what kind of FPS would Ueda make?

“[If] …you’re in the middle of play, in the middle of the game, then all of a sudden you’re in a cut-scene [and] you’re not supposed to operate at all – that’s not the kind of game I want to do. If there is some other techniques that will not give them that kind of feeling, that’s something I want to implement.”

Hey man, do it, do it, do it.

Currently Ueda and his time are hard at work on the upcoming PS3 exclusive The Last Guardian.

Fumito Ueda’s A Big Half-Life 2 [G4 via Dtoid via Kombo]

Watch the trailer for Fumito Ueda’s next game for a while and you’ll be left with questions. His team’s new game is an enigma, a PlayStation 3-exclusive successor to Ueda’s pair of PS2 games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Those games were quiet, softly-lit adventures in crumbled castles and open fields. This one appears to follow suit, posibly — Ueda won’t confirm more than what our eyes can see — following the adventures of boy and his large, furry creature companion.

The creature has proved to be captivating to those getting excited about the game.

“The idea behind the creature, for me, it is based on a cat,” Ueda said through a translator during a sit-down chat with Kotaku in a meeting room at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. “Whether it looks like it or not is up to the viewers of the game. But to me it looks like a cat, mixing in other elements from household pets like birds and dogs, mixing in some of the cute aspects of those types of animals.” Gamers could be forgiven from seeing a lot of bird in it. The creature is called Torico in Japanese. “Tori” is the Japanese word for bird.

Torico, or Trico as it is being called in English, is, nevertheless, a cat to him. What Ueda thinks it is is important, of course. But the fact that its creator seems unbothered that other people might see it differently is an Ueda signature. His games are not made to declare, but to suggest. Maybe the boy hunting colossal giants is a hero. Maybe he is a villain. The lines of definition are soft, the sunlight on the scene grayed.

During our interview in Tokyo, Ueda himself defined just general aspects of The Last Guardian, offering the shapes of his ideas but not the details within them.

The new game will be single-player, he said. Its title will mean a lot of things, none of which he is ready to reveal. Despite the fact that its star creature is called Trico (an allusion to “third Ico”), the new game is not necessarily closely linked to its predecessors. “Narratively there is no initial connection there,” Ueda said, “But there might end up being some connection there.”

The game has been anticipated by games since the 2005 release of Shadow of the Colossus. Long awaited, this project’s debut nevertheless proved awkward. On the eve of its official trailer unveiling by Sony at this year’s E3 trade show, a similar trailer featuring more primitive art, leaked online.

That trailer leak was a hurtful moment for Ueda, who still doesn’t know how it happened. “We were really working hard to make the movie on time for E3,” he said. “I had slept in the office the day before. I woke up, and, in the morning, we saw this information on the Internet. It really felt like a nightmare, because we were just waking up.”

Earlier than expected, the leaked trailer had forced Ueda to process the anxiety he had about the game’s debut. “Because Shadow of the Colossus was more of a combat-focused game and Last Guardian, from the trailer, looked more like Ico — and had a more of a subdued tone to it — I thought maybe there would be some negative feedback to that,” he said. “But there wasn’t really much of that… I was happy because there were generally good comments about it.”

The trailer’s echoes of Ico implied that the new game would share with the old game themes of companionship and exploration, moving at a slower pace. “It wouldn’t be wrong to interpret it like that, but with Ico we had some technical limitations to what we could do with the PS2. There’s a lot more we can do with the PS3 so there can be more dynamic developments in the game.”

Many game designers talk about the opportunity for this generation’s gaming hardware to make their games look better. Ueda believes that his team’s first foray on the PS3 can the improvement in visuals his team can attain on the machine will improve a key aspect to his games. “I think with the added capabilities of the PS3 can increase the feeling of something[in the game] really existing,” he said. “I think you can create more emotion with the story as well as with the characters.”

While the PS3 may help his game feel more alive, there’s something else, of about the same size as Sony’s console, that might also help The Last Guardian feel more alive: His cat.

“I started to own a cat around the same time as starting Torico and it’s been kind of a sample reference creature for me,” Ueda said. His cat’s named Royce, and while she likes to be petted when she wants food, she’s otherwise content to leave Ueda alone.

Ueda apologised for not being able to say more about the game. Who knows what his cat even knows about it? He promised more information for the future, but at TGS, it was just his presence and vision that may convince gamers that The Last Guardian is on the right path.

Yasuhide Kobayashi, the VP of Sony’s Japan Studio, states at the DICE Summit Asia that the game was given an English title so it would appeal to the US and European markets, reports game site Games Industry.

“There are so many issues we have to solve, and the biggest challenge is that the market in Japan is shrinking—the key is gaining success in the US and Europe,” stated the exec. “At the time of the original PlayStation the Japanese market was one third of the global market, and production costs weren’t that high—so we were able to generate profit from that market alone.

“But now we’re in the era of the PlayStation 3, and the Japanese market is only one fifth of the global market—when it comes to production costs, those are swelling, so it means that unless we gain success in the overseas market our studio will go bankrupt,” said Kobayashi. “It’s a crisis we recognise.”

For previously released Team Ico title ICO, Sony experimented with different ways of promoting the game and packaging the title, and the game did sell 270,000 in the US. Kobayashi thinks the game could have done even better: “If the packaging was designed differently, we think it would have sold more—in fact on the internet many people have said that the Japanese version was better.” That last comment should get Team Ico fans hope and comfort. The Last Guardian, it sounds, is in good hands.

Last Guardian game ‘named for US, Europe’ – Kobayashi [Games Industry]

Media Molecule has big things planned for LittleBigPlanet, including a batch of new Shadow of the Colossus themed content coming next week.

On June 11th, Team Ico fans will get their first taste of Wander and Colossus Sackboys and Shadow of the Colossus stickers in LittleBigPlanet. Expect something Ico related as well. But if Media Molecule throws in LBP items from the newly announced The Last Guardian, expect the PlayStation Network to buckle.

Stay tuned for more details and cross your fingers for a two-part Agro Sackboy costume.

Shadow of the Colossus Teaser [Media Molecule]

“Project Trico”, the rumoured codename for the rumoured latest project by Team Ico, has been shown off during Sony’s E3 press conference, along with its new name.

It’ll be known by the far more respectable title of “The Last Guardian”. While the footage shown to attendees at the conference was similar to that in the leaked video from a few weeks back, it was a lot more presentable. As you’d expect, with the leaked footage rumoured to be around a year old.

So, yes, totally real, totally coming to the PS3. Cannot. Wait.