The Last Guardian and the Language of Games

The Last Guardian and the Language of Video Games

The Last Guardian is the third game to be directed by this clever chap. He’s called Fumito Ueda, and he’s the Japanese designer responsible for three pretty important games. There’s Ico, which is about forging a friendship with a girl. Next came Shadow of the Colossus, which is about toppling giant mythological beasts. And now there’s The Last Guardian, which cleverly rounds off this triptych by being a game about forging a friendship with a giant mythological beast called Trico.

Now, the reaction to this game has been, shall we say, mixed, with plenty of disagreement about the clumsy controls, annoying input lag, clunky physics, patronizing hints, omnipresent button prompts, tedious puzzles, and so on. But one thing most gamers can agree on is that this game does a pretty stellar job of depicting a bond between the boy and Trico. In this article, I want to show how Ueda and his team at gen Design achieved this relationship not through lengthy cutscenes or dialogue, but instead through the unique language of video games.

I’m going to start by looking at combat, because while it’s not a significant part of the game, it offers a convenient way of comparing The Last Guardian to other games that feature a companion character. Now, back in the day, a companion often meant a dreaded escort mission, which is where the player has to protect another character, like how Monkey needs to keep Trip alive in Enslaved.

“If I die, you die.”

Oh, this means the player has to do everything. Monkey has to look after himself and kill all the robots and look after Trip, who can’t attack enemies and can be killed if you don’t look after her. It makes for an interesting dynamic, but a lot of players found this style of gameplay stressful and and frustrating. Trip is, I should say, one of the better ones because she hides well and can survive one robot attack, but anyway.

In an attempt to fix this frustration, a more recent trend has seen the rise of invincible companions, like Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite, who cannot be killed in combat. So you only need to look out for yourself and the enemies. It’s a very simple fix, really, and it certainly avoids any frustration, but it does create a nagging disconnect between what’s happening in the story and what’s happening in the gameplay.

“You think people like that are just going to let you walk away? You are an investment, and you will not be safe until you are far away from here.”

“I think she’ll be fine, dude. I mean, going by the combat, Elizabeth is not only invincible but is actually protecting Booker, as she finds him ammo, offers up her ability to pull in machine guns from an alternate dimension, and even brings him back from the dead.”

Of course, we can just write this all off as goofy video game logic, but what Fumito Ueda has always understood is that video games speak most loudly through their design, and he uses this to explore themes and tell stories almost entirely through gameplay. The game Ico doesn’t need to tell us that it’s a game about a boy protecting a girl; we get to experience it ourselves as Yorda is frail and vulnerable during combat and the invincible Ico has to save her at every turn.

The Last Guardian is the mirror image of Ico, effectively putting you in the role of Ico. The boy can’t defeat the magic soldiers and will die if he is taken into a spooky door. Trico, on the other hand, is invincible and massively effective in combat. And so we feel vulnerable when we’re alone and thankful for Trico’s company when he saves us from danger. In all of Ueda’s games, combat is not just something to do to pass the time between the story bits; the roles that the characters take in combat tell us so much of what we need to know about their relationship to one another.

Outside of combat, The Last Guardian shows us that this is actually an interdependent relationship where Trico needs the boy just as much as the boy needs Trico. And I think a stronger bond is forged when both parties help each other. That’s why Enslaved narrowly avoids the escort mission trap, as Monkey ultimately relies heavily on Trip to create distractions and hack stuff. There are lots of examples of this in The Last Guardian, such as the boy petting Trico’s back after a fight to calm it down and him finding it barrels of food.

But let’s focus on the stained glass eyes. Whenever Trico spots one, the creature becomes paralyzed with fear, and it won’t move forward until the boy has found a way to smash or remove the eye. This gives the boy a chance to protect Trico, and it shows how the two characters are strong in different ways. Trico is powerful in combat, while the boy excels in platforming and puzzle solving. But this also establishes some pretty clear-cut rules: the boy can’t defeat enemies without Trico, and Trico can’t advance until the boy destroys these stained glass eyes.

Rules like this help you understand how the game works, so when you reach a room like this, you know exactly what it all means. There’s a stained glass eye which the boy needs to remove, but he’s going to need to get through these enemies without Trico to approach it. It’s tense and nerve-wracking, but it feels good when the glass has been smashed and Trico can join the fight.

And then I got to this bit. Two soldiers are blocking this window by holding up shields made from stained glass. I knew what it meant and I knew what to do. I needed to leave Trico, sneak around, shove the baddies off the ledge, and let the beast through. Except I rushed in, dropped down, and got ambushed by soldiers. I struggled free and ran out the slope and shoved one soldier down before being grabbed again. I knew at that moment that I was screwed. The boy can’t fight these soldiers and Trico can’t help because of the shields. Rules are rules. It’s over.

And then this happened. Oh, yeah. The game wanted to show me that the relationship had advanced to the point that the boy’s safety was more important to Trico than its own fear of the stained glass eyes. And to do that, it broke a clearly established mechanical rule, which are supposed to be these unbreakable, static rules. And to me, this made it more impactful than, say, the bit in The Last of Us where, after establishing that Ellie, another invincible companion, shouldn’t use a gun—

“Uh-uh. What I need a gun.”

“No, you don’t, Joel. I can handle myself.”

—she then shoots a guy to save Joel.

“That’s a really good cut scene.”

“I shot the hell out of that guy, huh?”

But that’s a really good cut scene and strong storytelling. But I think the moment in The Last Guardian is actually stronger because, and this is going to get a bit artsy, but stick with me: it’s clear that each artistic medium has its own unique language. Painting uses the language of shape and color. Music is an exploration of sound. Literature uses the language of language. And film is about moving images. And video games can, of course, use all of this stuff, but what makes the medium unique is interaction. Things like mechanics, rules, and systems you can poke at are the language of video games. And so where Naughty Dog is largely borrowing from film to tell the story of Joel and Ellie, by using mechanics and rules to tell their story, The Last Guardian is an artistic work in the medium of video games.

The Last of Us does get some bonus points for making Ellie become a more formidable character in the combat sequences following that important cinematic.

“You’re welcome.”

Anyway, this moment is all part of Ueda’s plan to sell Trico as a real creature rather than a predictable and flawlessly programmed video game tool. We can see this in the incredibly lifelike animations and in familiar moments where, say, Trico hesitates to jump into the water. But this is also where the game’s most controversial decision crops up, as Trico does not immediately and reliably listen to the player’s commands.

Ueda says, “When the boy calls Trico, we could have made Trico come immediately like clockwork, but if we did that, Trico would not seem like an independent creature. It wouldn’t seem like it was alive, making its own decisions.” Instead, you have to be patient and learn to understand Trico’s sounds and body language. Plus, according to players on Reddit, the way you interact with Trico can impact its loyalty and responsiveness. All of those wonderful interactions with Trico, like removing spears, tending to its wounds, finding food, and petting it, can all make the creature a better companion.

In a way, this all sounds like another great decision to use gameplay mechanics to show the relationship between the boy and Trico. We see that this is an animal, and that the boy can’t rely on Trico like he could a human. And by building a system where certain interactions change Trico’s behavior, we can explore, as players, what it’s like to love or mistreat an animal, and that is cool. But it isn’t always fun. And this is a unique challenge of being a games designer who is interested in making a game that says something interesting.

Similar to our discussion on Dark Souls, where Hidetaka Miyazaki has to sacrifice certain players because those games wouldn’t be as meaningful without their intense level of difficulty, in this instance, making systems and mechanics that are both enjoyable and charged with meaning is a brutally difficult balancing act. And one that, for me, Ueda boldly attempts with every game he makes. Whether he succeeds or fails is ultimately up to each individual player. Sorry, that’s a cop out. But for my money, I’m glad there are developers like Ueda out there at least willing to take these risks to do something a bit different.

The Last Guardian is about a relationship, and not just in the cutscenes or in tiny scraps of dialogue between fights. Everything from the roles in combat to the way you solve puzzles to vignettes that are set up by the game’ rules—it’s all there to say something interesting. And we get to explore that as players because it’s said through the unique language of video games.