Sweating, crying, throwing up. The dog will not listen to me. It looks me in the eyes and laughs. I point and point, I yell and weep, but to no avail, it does not want to hear it. My words fall on deaf ears, a trail of dust thrown in the wind. In my most vulnerable moment, the dog knocks me off a pillar into the depths of Hell. This is not the first time it will happen, nor will it be the last. That’s it, my controller is about to go through the wall. I grip it with all my strength, and raise my arm as far as I can. Slow motion begins, my drywall begins to brace for impact again. As the air moves itself away from the swing of my arm, I look down and to my left and see this.
dogs.
Personally, The Last Guardian is a game that has been done pretty dirty by the average complainer. It’s not a game with the most high octane speedrunning or a set destination that’s glinted over the horizon. It’s a slow, slow burn and a journey that challenges you in ways that aren’t immediately obvious or even immediately rewarding. It’s not really here to make you feel accomplished through difficulty, but to slow you down enough to absorb your surroundings; a dilapidated ruin of mysterious origins where life once lived and zero indication of where life went. In doing so, it coaxes out your inner empathy and invites you to build a bond with the creature that you know nothing about, in a language that you’re never meant to understand. Did people get through even 20 minutes of this presentation and seriously expect it to run like a rollercoaster ride at kiddie land?
Don’t get me wrong, I am one of the most impatient people on the planet. I too initially fell for the brick wall ears, the occasional slip up into Trico dissociation. Left alone in this doggy dog world while the bumbling fool calculates the binary code inside its head to avoid the oncoming angle of the nearest corner. Getting it to jump over that bridge near the beginning was like helplessly pleading for the second coming of Jesus Christ. That was until I found two barrels for it to snack on and then.. Ohhhhh yeahh, oh uh huh, now you’ll sail across it like it’s no big deal. Kind of reminds me of someone before bedtime every night. Of course, this was the most frustrating part of the game at the time without realizing that immediately after this segment, the environment evolves into extreme levels.
The game has a very uncanny knack for compressing you and your friend at any given time, making it harder for Trico to maneuver around all the randomly placed pillars and low ceiling tunnels. When it’s wide open and breezy, there’s always a sense of peace where the both of you can breathe for just the slightest moment, tugging you closer to each other in the metaphorical sense. You begin to realize that the longer you stay with Trico, the more it understands your commands, and what was once a frustrating section of begging it to jump a bridge quickly becomes effortless wall climbing between several massive towers. Obviously, there’s still a mistake here and there where you’ll forget to grip on its back or you’ll have to wait a moment for Trico to turn itself around, but at least the horrendous missteps are always accompanied with some of the funniest ragdolls I have ever seen in any game ever.
Personally, I think the people who hate this game have somehow gone their whole life without meeting a single dog. Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not tend to listen. There’s a scene where you get separated from each other and Trico doesn’t even notice, which is the most realistic thing it’s ever done. Pets in general don’t just come out of the box already accepting your bullsh*t and giving you unconditional love, it genuinely takes a ton of time, effort, and money to build a relationship with an animal. I’m not a dog person anymore, but I can forgive Trico for even its most annoying transgressions. Because personally, whenever I looked at this, I saw this and that was usually an immediate brake slam for any resentment that started to build over the smallest of hurdles. I don’t mean to come off as a parent informing a child about the responsibility of pet ownership, and by no means is Trico even considered a pet at all, but the bond you build with it over time I find to be tapping into the inner sanctum of my heart. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing the fruits of your labor when it comes to animals. It took me two years of consistency to get this bozo to kiss me back, so pleading with Trico to stand on its hind legs when I need it to is nothing in comparison, yet still challenging enough to hit the same spot in a shorter period of time.
I also just really like Trico because it’s impressively made. It stalks around hesitantly and plays with objects when you’re not looking. It’s a living creature that understands its own size and shifts itself around objects as much as it can in any setting it’s in. When you’re in the sun, it basks in the warmth and whines whenever you’re in an area that is much too small. It genuinely feels like it has weight. The area crumbles beneath its feet and the ground shakes whenever it gets excited. I always liked giving it snacks because if it couldn’t reach them then it’d stop itself and paw for you to move them closer. If this were any other game, its body parts and tail would be clipping and t-posing through the f*cking walls and floors, which makes just watching it exist on its own a fun activity in itself. Unfortunately though, because it takes longer than 30 seconds to walk down a hallway, that apparently makes it “boring” and “not worth your time”. Trico won’t roll over and do a backflip on my immediate command, what a “waste of 8 years”. Like, have you seen this thing walk around? Shut up, it’s cool. Save those arguments for sh*t that actually sucks ass.
If anything, the only times I got filtered were caused by the playable character, not Trico. The controls for The Boy are rather clunky, but I expected no less. I’ve played Shadow of the Colossus and the controls of that game were a minor irk in an otherwise magnificent game as well. I get it though. There’s so much room for error when you’re traversing the tiniest planks of rocks and wreckage. You often get invisible walled in weird ways to prevent numerous pitfall deaths after slipping off the sides. I found that this caused an unfortunate side effect of other numerous deaths since it would often make it difficult to climb up and jump off of Trico’s back specifically, where a large majority of them would be caused from lining myself up for the perfect jump just to be glued to it’s fur and then ruining the timing after it randomly cranes it’s neck around. There’s many sections where the game becomes a pseudo-platformer that would lead to many resets due to these issues. It’s unfortunate that you can even die at all in a game like this since I feel it really does a disservice to the cinematics of it all, but it’s not as much of an issue once you slow yourself down and actually take your time.
Frustration is some of the most cathartic ways a game can tell its own story. There’s a fine line to being able to craft a narrative built around frustrating mechanics. Maybe the bosses are difficult and the reward is given through defeating them. Or the controls are hard to master in immersive games such as Outer Wilds or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, two of my favorite games in terms of interactive storytelling. Personally, I really enjoy when games challenge me in ways that aren’t just how many dodge rolls I can get away with before I get my spine crushed by Dinkle Dick Smasher or whatever the f*ck. I don’t find the frustration in this game to be a criticism, but a very conscious decision to help solidify the The Last Guardian’s narrative and that’s what makes the journey worthwhile. It’s genuinely a sight to see Trico come much more into its own as the game progresses and naturally helps you perform the co-op puzzles at a quicker rate. It takes time and effort, where expecting it to work like a charm immediately would completely ruin the entire point.
When thinking back on it, I’m left feeling pretty heart warmed to be honest. Waking my ferrets up every morning has been the highlight of my every day for the last 4 or so years and there’s no amount of occasional sh*tting in the wrong place, digging up my carpets, or rummaging through my stuff that has ever changed that. If I could make them live longer than my entire lifespan then I would in a heartbeat, but for now they’re here for a short moment and I don’t think I will ever get tired of it, not even for a second. I don’t know, maybe this was just a good game to play while my old boy becomes more geriatric by the day and it makes me want to f*cking scream AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I seem to have gotten myself worked up a bit while writing this so I'll leave you with this relevant palate cleanser on your way out.
