‘The Last Guardian’ Release Date & Latest News: December Launch Confirmed After Years Of Development, Gameplay Demo Releases

After years of anticipation and development, Sony seems finally set to release Team Ico's "The Last Guardian" to the PlayStation 4 in December; and to both keep fans hungry while at the same time temporarily sating their appetite, gameplay footage for the game has been released.

DualShockers recently got to play "The Last Guardian" somewhat extensively, with a recording of the demo shared through two parts on YouTube. The publication noted that as the demo was set quite a while in the latter parts of "The Last Guardian," as in way past the tutorial are reserved for learning the controls, it took a while to get used to the platforming and puzzle-solving.

As part of director Fumito Ueda's trilogy pet project, after 2001's "Ico" and 2005's "Shadow of the Colossus" both for the PlayStation 2, "The Last Guardian" focuses on the interaction between players and an AI-controlled character. As shown in the gameplay demo, "The Last Guardian's" will continue to build up on the mechanics that featured in Yoruda and Agro from its predecessors.

"The Last Guardian" will tell the story of an unnamed young boy and his efforts to navigate the crumbling remnants of a ruined city, all the while having to work together with Trico. A chimeric creature resembling a griffin, Trico is a gigantic creature apparently still in his infancy despite his size.

Philip Kollar of Polygon also recently got his hands on "The Last Guardian" demo, which became the subject of a piece he wrote about the subject. Kollar notes that as "The Last Guardian" took almost a decade in development and skipped a generation over its predecessors, the experience playing the game was somewhat bittersweet.

Considering that "The Last Guardian" began life in the waning days of the PlayStation 2, it was noted that overall the game still feels like a game made for that generation despite releasing for the PlayStation 4 in December. Despite that, however, Trico of "The Last Guardian" responds and overall feels like a living creature who might possibly take advantage of the current console generation's stronger hardware capabilities.

Players can get ready to journey alongside Trico when "The Last Guardian" finally releases for the PlayStation 4 on December 6.