… and here’s hoping that Last Guardian isn’t a game about a game auteur being a shadow of his former self.
Welcome then to a special edition of New Games Journalism 2016, Vol. 9: The Shadow of the Colossus foreshadowing edition (and that’s it for intentional poor man’s puns)
So, it just kinda hit me out of the blue that I might be heading straight into one of my biggest, recent vidya gaming disappointments of all time™, and I’m the only one to blame for it.
All the bad puns already gave it away that I’m talking about Last Guardian; and at this point in time, all we know is that Last Guardian can be a great and excellent master-piece that we’ll enjoy playing. That’s what Sony does want us me to believe, and like any poor fool trapped in the purgatory that faith comes bundled with, I am on board:
Or rather, I’ve had my ticket punched and been ready to go since the PS3 Hype Train left Fanboy station No #1 almost nine years ago ~~~
So, I want to stress that by all means it is ___me___ that should be up for trial, not a game that isn't out yet and I've not seen anything from for more than half a year. Or maybe even a full year? Cannot remember even, since I've dodged reading/watching _anything_ about it for quite a while: because I want to experience it without any expectations. So the joke's on me then, writing words about how my expectations just might be the downfall of this game to me, when I don't even want to have any expectations _at all_.
It wasn’t like lightning struck me and I had an epiphany of 30 fps jagged polygon edge FF15-hose-shaped level-boredom, it’s more like a feeling that has been creeping up on me for a while now, and it is such an unsual feeling that I have a bit of a hard time describing how it feels … it’s a sensation I’ve experience rarely before, but I can pinpoint one occasion where I felt the same way …
(and here’s where my poor attempt at NGJ ended up going, I tried to imitate it, but it just isn’t my thing, I’ll just straightline this trainwreck now)
… namely the feeling I had before having a bad date. The kind of hunch you suddenly have, that somehow it isn’t going to be what you expected, it’s too late to back out of it, you can see what’s coming right before it happens, you realize what’s going on as it pans out and you are left dumbfounded as the dust settles.
That kind of feeling knocked on my door, entered, greeted me and had a seat, looking at me, full of expectation what we’re gonna do, now that it has my attention.
So.
I tried to backtrace and see where this feeling was coming from, and it has been a post made by fellow SBer here a while ago. It had something to do with how LG might end up being more of an ico’ish game, instead of a zelda-esque™ Open World® Sandbox©-style game.
And ~ #surprise ~ I realized that yes, I actually have this expectation that LG is going to have a sandbox-esque world to explore.
So: Why?
No idea! I wasn't even aware of this three hours ago, and idk how I even started having that kind of expectation tucked away somewhere in my brain, waiting until the release day would _finally come_ to make me either go "yupp, that's cool" and forget about it, or rather give me that stinging feeling of somehow it's not shaping up to be what I expected.
I am still baffled how this could happen (trainwreck approaching final destination now), and took a peek into my SOTC-picture folder.
I saw things I’ve forgotten about, which made me laugh, sigh, feel sad, old, nostalgic, and also kinda grumpy at the same time. And before it is too late, with LG being out, - tl;dr-version - I just wanted to share these here.
And would appreciate if you’d do the same. Let’s give this old pal a nod (or a hug) before heading off to new shores in a bit less than two months time:
+bonus game:
you won’t find these anywhere (well, SB1 aside if I ended up putting them not into the axe, like I remember doing), because these were taken for my 2010 SOTC speedrun (god has it been six years ago already? …) and surprised me by how wonderful blurry and trashy they look. That’s what you get when you don’t have a share button to your disposal, but instead just a phone(y) cam and taking your hands away from the controls, always on the brink of messing up your speedrun.
I’ll follow this up after having some more time to think about this whole thing. But for the time being, let’s just celebrate how good we’ve had it!
