There are very few games that become legendary for a single moment, a single unforgettable image, but Ico is certainly one of them. For many players, when the eponymous protagonist takes the hand of the captive girl Yorda and leads her from her cage, it is a profoundly emotional experience. Most had never played anything that required one character to connect with another in such a tactile and protective way, and the idea that hand-holding could be a central mechanic was as revolutionary as it was quietly beautiful.



Now, the designer behind that moment Fumito Ueda, is nervously awaiting the release of his third game for Sony, the long-delayed Last Guardian. Little is known about this tale of a boy escaping from a ruined city with the help of a giant creature, but with its hazy, almost dreamlike lighting, vast plaintive landscapes and emphasis on a central relationship, it is very much in the style of Ico and its follow-up, Shadow of the Colossus. It is unmistakably an Ueda game.

But who is Ueda? This 40-something developer, who joined the games industry two years after graduating from Osaka university of arts in 1993, gives few interviews. We know that, as a teenager, he was a huge fan of the Amiga computer and loved the acclaimed cinematic platformers Flashback and Another World (it is perhaps from French developer Delphine that he learned the art of oblique, highly mannered storytelling). We know his first job in development was at cult studio Warp under the guidance of maverick designer Kenji Eno – creator of the D series and other strange experimental titles for the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast. This must surely have been another major influence. But what of the thinking behind his own games? His own development process?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ueda-san’s first game for Sony, Ico, was famous for its hand-holding mechanic, linking the eponymous protagonist with the prisoner he rescues, Yorda. Photograph: Sony

After meeting Ueda at E3, it’s clear why there is so little backstory about him. In person, he is a playful, mischievous but also likably frustrating presence. He certainly considers every question carefully, he is polite and focused, but time and time again he refuses to share his influences and refutes any attempt to interpret to his work. He exudes this air – whether manufactured or not – of winging it. Ten years ago, in a rare biographical interview with the Japanese games magazine Continue, he claimed that while studying art at university he specifically chose to specialise in conceptual art for the main practical component so that he could get away with bashing together something abstract a day before the course deadline. Of course, no one could accuse him of bashing his games together, but he retains the self-deprecating air of the chancer who made good, who is almost mystified by the meaning that people ascribe to his work.

When asked about the way in which intimate relationships have figured highly in his three PlayStation games, he shrugs and smiles. “It’s interesting,” he says. “From our side, we didn’t have a strong intent to portray relationships as a theme of our games. We actually tried not to do that. But as a lot of people played through Ico and Shadow of Colosuss, they said, ‘Oh, these games are about building a bond, they’re about trust.’ From my perspective, I just say, here, go ahead, play it – then at the end, the player can come to their own conclusion about what the game is trying to tell them. I don’t like to force feed themes.”

Indeed, it’s surprise about how players have interpreted his past work that led to the pairing at the centre of Last Guardian – the boy and the beast. “Once we were done with Shadow of Colossus there was a moment when I reflected on what we really wanted to communicate and portray in that game,” he says. “For me it was the main relationship between Wander and the girl, but after the release, I read a lot of feedback from players who were touched by the game, and they said that the relationship between Wander and the horse was the most important and appealing – we got the sense that this was what most people felt. I thought OK, if that’s the case, there are a lot of mechanics from that relationship that we could heighten and expand on. That’s where The Last Guardian came from.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda-san was surprised at how invested players were in the relationship between Wander and his horse Photograph: Team Ico/Sony Computer Entertainment

What’s fascinating is that Ueda doesn’t necessarily see the central relationship between the boy and Trico, or Wander and the horse as a narrative construct, as something to tell an emotional story. For him, there is a mechanical advantage too. The presence of a responsive non-player character can, in such abstract, lightly plotted game worlds, provide essential clues to the player about the nature of their protagonist.

“The main character is controlled by the player, so the main character is you,” he says. “But because every single gamer is different, it’s very hard to give the player an exact definition of the protagonist: it’s up to you who the main character is going to be. As a developer, in order to form such a character you need assistance from that character’s surroundings – that’s where the role of the NPC, or opposite character in the case of our games, comes in. The secondary character helps shape the main character. That’s how we make our games.”

In short, Yorda, Trico and the horse aren’t there just as narrative allies, they’re there – in very much the Hollywood movie script tradition – to help the player interpret the protagonist.

Ueda seems less precise in his methodology when it comes to the look of his games. Ico, Shadow and Last Guardian all share a similar aesthetic – they are vast, lonely worlds, bathed in almost blinding sunlight. Where does that look come from? Ueda claims it’s all about working with the constraints of the hardware. “We need to create using technical specifications that put limitations on what we create,” he says. “It’s really about trying to find the most effective way to visually express what I would like to do: the outcome is what you see.

“For example, when we’re doing level design and we need a character to crawl, or climb or hang, you may think, well, in real life it would look like this, but you can’t just dump that in. In games, there are so many variables and adjustments you have to make. At the same time, you can’t create something totally artificial. So you have to find the right balance, of clearly showing the player how to navigate, but also being able to express what we want to. We sometimes resort to the hazy visuals because we can’t illustrate beyond a certain point.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Last Guardian shares its hazy graphical style with Ueda’s two other PlayStation titles – but is it an aesthetic or technical choice? Photograph: Sony

It seems sort of unlikely that such a recognisable visual style comes merely out of problems with rendering draw distance, but Ueda is adamant. So how about the architecture in his games, these grand gothic structures built from stone and lined with intricate carvings and statues? Are these based on specific styles or buildings? “I don’t do a lot of study – I haven’t really travelled to see anything as reference,” he says. “I don’t do a lot of interviews, but I get this question all the time! We just go from our imagination. Although we create very large structures, it’s all down to the little details that make it seem as though they really exist. I think those are the things you’re referring to when you say the worlds are dreamlike.”

After leaving Warp, Ueda was employed as a designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, just as work was finishing on the agenda-setting PlayStation titles Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo. Sony was feeling confident and when Ueda showed the studio a teaser CGI movie he’d made for Ico, the project was greenlit almost immediately. He was given a team of just five staff, which eventually peaked at the comparatively modest 20. After leaving Sony in 2011, he’s now back with a smaller team at his own studio Gendesign, working with some original TeamIco members including lead programmer Jinji Horagai.

Here, says Ueda, his approach is partly collaborative, partly dictatorial, depending on the element of the game they’re working on – but it’s clear he has the final say on everything. “With level design, it would be impossible for just one person to manage that vision,” he says. “So we all put together ideas together, look at what works and finally we all get to what I imagined. With characters, we don’t have too many in our game and that makes it less of a team job. I already have images of all the characters in my head. I just have them made for me.”

As for video game influences, beyond those Amiga titles, and a previously admitted love for Pa Rappa the Rappa and Western games like Grand Theft Auto III, Ueda is… evasive. “In general, the games that are appealing to me are the ones where the character animations are very intricate and beautiful,” he says. “It’s not just about the asset itself, it’s how I perceive the character…” but then he drifts off into thought once again.

But despite his good-natured evasions, his talk of winging it and his apparent surprise at fans reading so much into his titles, he sometimes – almost despite himself – hints at a hidden perfectionism. When we ask about Trico, who the player needs to work with to solve certain puzzles, but who clearly has a will and intelligence of its own, he admits that the beasts’s obstinacy has been a tricky balancing act. “To be honest, we’re still fine-tuning Trico’s behaviours,” he says. “There are two extremes – if you can fully control a character, what’s the point? It becomes a pet. But at the opposite end if you can’t control it at all it becomes a nuisance, a barrier to progression. We’re still trying to find the balance.”

Ueda has never really explained why he left Sony during the development of Last Guardian. In 2013, he told Edge magazine, “I felt a sense of crisis within myself about a lot of things.” Perhaps the production process, specifically the need to port the game from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, was stressful, perhaps Sony was becoming impatient. Ueda doesn’t broach that directly, but when asked what he has learned from the elongated Last Guardian development period, he is teasingly enigmatic. “There was a lot of learning,” he smiles. “It’s hard to explain, to describe it in words at this moment, but maybe if there’s one thing …” He breaks off for a few seconds and chats animatedly with the translator. “In life, there are always things that mesh well, and things that don’t. In various ways that applies to what we’ve done in the last few years.”

Few people outside of Gendesign or Sony Japan know what’s next for Ueda and his team. A short break, probably, but then? Seven years ago Ueda expressed an interest in creating a first-person shooter like Half-Life 2 – it’s hard to image how the elegiac tone of his work would transfer into that space but it’s a fascinating prospect.

In the meantime, one thing he won’t be doing is playing Last Guardian – at least not for a while. “With all my titles – when the game is released, I’m extremely nervous,” he says. “In the week after the release I don’t want to look at the game. All I’ll see are the flaws. I wouldn’t want to see it with that perspective because I don’t want to think about regrets. Even seeing tiny bugs I’ll think, why didn’t we squash that one?But sometime later, maybe after a year, I’ll be able to calm down and take a look.”

This does not sound like the young man who once chose abstract art at university in order to avoid doing actual work. It sounds like a developer who is as careful, playful and quietly structured as his own creations.

And as challenging as Ueda’s evasion is, it’s actually refreshing to meet a designer who doesn’t have a list of worthy cinematic or literary influences to reel off. In an industry always clamouring for artistic legitimacy, here is a creator happy to say: those worlds you love? I imagined them all.

The Last Guardian is released on 25 October