Creators of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian show new game

The famed creators of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian finally unveiled a first look at it's next game, and it was worth the nearly decade-long wait.

The World Premiere trailer at The Game Awards 2024, starts off with the sound of a voice speaking and then seemingly counting. Then we hear what sounds like the roar of an ocean, and as a cloaked figure scrambles their way onto the shoulder of a massive robot, we see a wall of inky, tumbling black approaching.

The protagonist climbs to the top of the robot’s skull and the large head slowly pulls away from the shoulders, ripping away cables and a bit of spinal cord as it lifts into the air.

The approaching darkness turns the air gray and we see large objects begin colliding with the body, left behind. The forsaken body finally explodes and disappears as the screen fades to black and we see the logo for genDESIGN.

Published by Epic Games, the new game will be available on the Epic Games Store upon release, as well as PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

For years, fans have speculated wildly about genDesign's next game. We first saw indications that genDesign was working on something in 2018, when the company released a New Years image that showed a white figure on a pedestal near a large hand-like structure. This was followed up with a 2021 postcard that showed a figure beneath a strange mechanical structure.

These scant hints didn't show much in the first place—and it's been years since the last one appeared—so it's exciting to finally see what it looks like.

Why the hype? For players of a certain age, genDESIGN is legendary, though better-known under a different name: Team Ico. Led by visionary director Fumito Ueda, the studio has more than made their mark on the games industry—though they've only released three games in 20+ years.

Ueda burst onto the scene in 2001 with Ico, a puzzle-platformer for the PlayStation 2 that quietly redefined what a video game could be. Despite selling relatively few copies—in no small part due to its infamously terrible US cover art—it quickly garnered cult status.

Ico's titular hero is imprisoned in its "castle in the mist" because of his unusual horns, which mark him for sacrifice. After escaping his confines, Ico stumbles on another prisoner, a striking woman named Yorda, who speaks an unknown tongue and displays strange abilities that allow her to open supernaturally sealed doors. Unfortunately, an army of shadows relentlessly try to put her back in her fetters, and it's up to Ico to bash them back as best he can.

Ico was considered revolutionary in its day due to its minimalist approach to the puzzle genre, as well as its unique atmosphere. Its oversaturated lighting and sparse script give the castle an ethereal (almost childlike) feeling, like a fairy tale half-remembered.

There are few tutorials in Ico, and even fewer hints—you're expected to rely on intuition and pure logic to progress. Even the controls themselves require a certain degree of experimentation. In one notorious example, the player hangs from a chain, and the only path forward is a far-off platform. Holding the Circle button causes you to swing the chain back and forth so you can make the jump, but the only way to figure that out is to press every button on the controller to see what happens.

But Ico is perhaps most notable for its unusual focus on the relationship between its two major characters, epitomized by its unique hand-holding mechanic. You spend much of the game literally holding R1 to guide Yorda around, or to call her to the right spot to solve a given puzzle. Though the two can barely communicate, the game is focused on working together to progress through the castle. Ico cannot open the sealed doors without Yorda, and Yorda is helpless without the boy's assistance in fighting the shadows.

This deliberately simple setup managed to resonate emotionally with many players, bolstered by a brilliant final sequence that lingers in the memory. More than two decades later, you can still see the lasting influence of Ico in masterful puzzle games like Inside and the recent Cocoon.

Team Ico's second game, Shadow of the Colossus, is perhaps its most ambitious. Like Ico, the dramatic situation can be understood at a glance. The red-haired hero Wander must slay sixteen hulking "colossi," seemingly magic creatures of stone and fur, to bring his beloved back to life. Armed with only a sword and bow, Wander searches the desolate Forbidden Lands for his prey, taking them down in deliberate puzzle-action fights that require equal amounts of logical reasoning and fur-climbing bravado.

Even more of an overt "art game" than its predecessor, Shadow of the Colossus's clumsy hero and radically empty open world have captivated players for decades now, and it's widely considered one of the greatest games of all time. If you're tired of conquering waypoint after waypoint and you haven't yet played it, it's certainly worth a look.

Team Ico's final game was also its most labored, taking well over a decade to finally emerge. Starring a young boy and his pet, a giant bird-dog hybrid, The Last Guardian took the core Ico concept to the next level. Just like Ico and Yorda, the boy and his pet Trico must work together to navigate conundrums, fight bad guys, and explore strange ruins.

The key difference here is that Trico is essentially a wild animal, which means that he doesn't always follow your commands, and you have to take care of him—feeding him barrels of food, removing spears from his hide, and calming him down after fights. With a level of depth of animal AI and animation that had never been seen in a video game before, The Last Guardian covered similar ground to Team Ico's previous titles while managing to innovate in its own compelling way.

Owned by Sony throughout most of its previous developmental run, The Last Guardian saw Ueda and Team Ico depart and form their own independent studio, genDesign. With this latest trailer, we now know what they've been working on for the better part of a decade. Will this new game continue the Team Ico legacy? Only time will tell, but this first glimpse is certainly impressive.