Fans Of 'The Last Guardian’ Saved The Game From Being Canceled

Lauren Keating, Tech Times 02 July 2015, 11:07 am

After being in video game limbo, Sony finally released footage from The Last Guardian at its press conference at E3 2015. And while there is light at the end of the tunnel that the game will be released in the near future, we are now learning that the follow-up to the successful PlayStation 3 game almost never was.

In fact, it was fans of The Last Guardian who saved the game from being canceled.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of SCE Worldwide Studios, revealed the game might have been closed to being canned had it not been for fans consistently talking about it.

"If everyone stopped asking about it, probably we would have [been canceled]," Yoshida told EDGE.

The Last Guardian was originally planned to be a follow-up to 2011's PS3 Shadow of the Colossus, which was first revealed at E3 2009. But even though Shadow of Colossus was a big hit among gamers, it's follow-up release has remained a mystery because of development challenges.

"[It was] really, really tough. Especially because we were not sure if the game could be made," Yoshida said. "Tech issues aside, the game was still early in development, so we had to have a really strong desire to continue the project and rebuild on PS4. And of course we believed in the vision of Ueda-san, and Ueda-san and the core teams really wanted to see this realized [sic], and so did I. Having so many people asking us about the game was great encouragement for us to continue the development."

Developed by Team Ico and distributed by Sony Computer Entertainment, The Last Guardian was demoed at Sony's E3 2015 press conference. It includes navigating the world with a 12-foot take Guardian griffin by the player's side.

The Last Guardian is scheduled to be released in 2016.