Fumito Ueda is the august visionary behind ICO (small boy rescues small girl from evil castle), Shadow Of The Colossus (grieving boy murders several massive stone animals), The Last Guardian (small boy and huge, dopey dogcat escape from another evil castle). Now, he’s getting into Gundams, though it looks like small boys are still a feature. Epic Games Publishing have just unveiled Ueda and genDESIGN’s latest creation – Project: Robot. Find a trailer below.
Watch on YouTube
To recap that footage: it looks like the boy has set the giant robot to self-destruct, hence the garbled countdown, in order to defeat that tsunami of evil black goop. Then he flies away in the robot’s head – a sequence that reminds me of the anime Gurren Lagann. Look, I’m struggling to phrase this elegantly and draw proper conclusions because I’m very tired. It’s 3am here. You’re not supposed to write about Fumito Ueda games at 3am – they tend to require a bit more thought, dare I say, a touch of reverie, rather than the frenzy of the Game Awards.
There’s not much to say beyond the trailer, though you’ll notice it has a bunch of text at the end in a tauntingly narrow, borderline unreadable font. It could be just the credits, but perhaps there’s a synopsis hidden away in there. When I can see straight I’ll have a go at deciphering it.
All weariness and snarking aside, I love Fumito Ueda’s stuff and it’s good to see that he and his colleagues are still churning out wacky originals. A less committed soul would have made Ico 2: Iconic by now. Project Robot seems closest in style to The Last Guardian, given that you are a small thing riding a larger thing. I am predictably concerned that the game will make me form an emotional bond with the giant robot, then destroy it in some heart-breakingly tragic way. Mind you, we did just see the robot get decapitated. So perhaps it’s more of a tool than a friend.
Release date? None yet. More as we get it. Speculations welcome.
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