“Putting aside the short-term output, more than anything I feel terribly sorry that for various reasons I have kept my audience waiting for such a long time,” said director Fumito Ueda during a recent interview.
Team Ico’s upcoming PlayStation exclusives action-adventure, The Last Guardian has been in development since 2007, it was first revealed at the E3 2009 with a planned release in 2011.
But it has suffered numerous delays and further complications, including Ueda’s departure as a full-time employee of Sony, although he remains as a consultant on the project.
Speaking with Edge, Ueda was asked how he keeps his team motivated over a production cycle of five years or more, to that he replied, “Maintaining motivation is all about producing something great.
A hobby or alcohol might help to refresh you temporarily, but they won’t motivate creativity. Also, the original staff members on Ico and SOTC are just as fussy over details as I am.
I always want to create quickly, and I always want to increase the rate of production. In the case of The Last Guardian, my creative work was mostly finished a long time ago, but the details of when, where and how it will be completed are beyond my control.”
Ueda is still involved with the game, but now he’s a freelancer. He explains his decision to leave the studio, “I felt a sense of crisis within myself about a lot of things.
It’s hard to [say exactly what], but in terms of my own growth and career and so on.”
When asked to comment on Sony’s reaction for his departure as a full-time employee of the firm, He said: “It was not easy, but I can’t go into the details just yet.
It will be good to be able to discuss it along with a post-mortem of The Last Guardian someday.”
The Last Guardian currently remains in development at Sony.
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Source: Edge