2001, Game of the Year (Runoff)

[BraLoD]

SvennoJ said:

BraLoD said:

The game certainly could run on PS3, games way, way more demanding did.

The thing is Japan Studios was a mess back in the PS3 days, to the point that in 2011, the founder from Santa Monica was sent there to take over it, which started a massive shift there in 2012, many games were canned or put on hold, TLG was certainly one of them in this chaos. (That early to mid PS3 cycle was also when PD took forever to launch GT5, which to that point was, by far, Sony biggest franchise and very likely not good to keep dragging on).

Shuhei Yoshida said the game was playable on PS3 in 2011, but they were not happy enough with the results.

Then the PS4 launched in 2013, and was an instant massive success, Sony shifted everything they had to it already in 2014, they started killing the Vita without a second thought, and the PS3 was to be quickly forgotten as well.

Ueda founded genDesign in 2014, which was very likely part of the Japan Studios massive restructuration process and his way to get out of Sony but still deliver the game. He was clearly having problems with Sony during that development hell period.

After that it didn't take long for the game to be reanounced (2015) and and finally released (2016).

The PS3 was notorious from being hard to develop for, and that was certainly one of the biggest issues TLG had, but the reported mismanagement of the whole Japan Studios (which was very likely what resulted in Ueda changing from a Sony employee to an outside guy working on a contract was) also one of the other major issues that made the game drag on so long that it had to move to the PS4 because it wouldn't make sense to release in on the PS3 anymore.

There was a whole lot of other stuff than that made TLG become the mess it did, rather than the PS3 not being able to run it.

Also about TLG, the game control horribly from a PS4 standard, you get stuck everywhere and have minimal control about that, everything feels off, to the point it almost ruined TLG to me, if Trico wasn't as great as it was I would probably not have finished the game.

It was 'playable' yes, but not to the point it was anywhere near in a state it could be released

https://www.eurogamer.net/sony-had-to-re-do-work-on-the-last-guardian-still-a-ps3-game

"We had the game playable," Yoshida explained. "At one point we felt that it would be produced for a certain time period. That was the time we prematurely talked about the launch window. But it turned out the technical issues are much harder to solve. So the engineering team had to go back and re-do some of the work they had done."

It still didn't run all that well on ps4 dropping to 15 fps on the base ps4

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2016-the-last-guardian-face-off

Overall, it's no surprise that the best way to play The Last Guardian is on PlayStation 4 Pro, but it's still a shame the original PS4 struggles as much as it does. The 20-30fps performance profile is a clear upgrade over the 'cinematic' presentation seen in Shadow of the Colossus, but it's still way off the pace compared to what we've come to expect from a modern PS4 title.

After such a protracted development stretch, the conclusion is that PlayStation 4 Pro comes across as the only machine capable of delivering the ideal experience. Whether that's in aid of a solid 30fps, or boosting image quality for 4K displays, its higher specs are seemingly a better fit for the game's ambitions. It often leaves the standard console trailing behind, and from our perspective, we feel that the 1080p30 Pro mode is the best way to experience the game.

If the PS3 could have run it 720p30 with drops to 20 fps, it would have released first on PS3 and then resold again on PS4.

But yes there were other internal problems at play as well. Dunno what came first though, yet it seems plausible that technical difficulties and delays led to internal friction. Especially when you have an auteur refusing to reign in his vision to make it work on the PS3. Which I'm happy for. Rather late than a CP2077 situation on PS4/XOne. That was 'playable' as well...

I don't remember getting stuck everywhere, played it twice, replayed it again on PS5 through BC. The controls are not as easy as Mario, but once you get the hang of it they work fine. You simply can't turn on a dime and sprint over all the obstacles without falling on your ass. Traversal is a big part of the game play.

What I did notice in repeat playthroughs is that Trico is very much on rails, however the controls for 'Boy' grew more and more on me.

I got the platinum for TLG, but I still remember how frustated I was playing the game for the first time.

It legit made me feel like I just should have stopped playing it.

After that I already knew what to do and clearly knew where most of the frustation came from so it was a bit better, but still pretty bad.