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“The music used for the trailers will not appear in the game.

Three different fonts are used in the Japanese logo of the game. This mixing of typefaces was done to mimic the mismatching look of Toriko and to reflect the many gameplay aspects of the game.

The team is not yet ready to disclose how much progress they’ve made on the game even though the game has been at a playable stage for quite some time.

The game world is filled with air, so animals like birds affect the objects around them. For example, if a bird flies to a tree the leaves will move about because the air around them is affected.

The choice to have a young child as the protagonist, instead of an older chap, was done because the pairing with the creature reflects one of the central themes of the game - companionship. The team considered choosing a female lead but the idea was dropped due to the particular requirements of level design.

The graphical fidelity of the game world’s environments is quite realistic but effort was made to make scenery look surreal, as if in a fantasy world.

When talking about the creature’s design, Ueda is most fond of Toriko’s face.

Everything is being hand-animated, just like in Shadow of the Colossus. There is no motion capture. This is because there are numerous subtle movements that are not possible to capture using motion capture techniques. Animations are filtered out using a special program first used when working on Shadow of the Colossus. Every little unnatural looking animation is eliminated and replaced with a better looking one.

Ueda says the team tried to cater for the Western market along with Japanese tastes from the very first day. This is because ICO and Shadow of the Colossus were welcomed very warmly in Europe and America.

The change of title (The man devouring giant eagle Toriko to The Last Guardian) was made to cater for both markets. The Western title is more direct, can be translated freely in many different languages and describes the game fully. The Japanese title on the other hand is more ambiguous, and evokes a feeling of uneasiness - that there’s something quite mysterious about this giant creature.

Ueda wants to release the game as soon as humanly possible but he wants the game to be complete, without having to discard elements that wouldn’t make it in due to time constraints. That said he knows fans have waited for a very long time and he says it’s not that far into the future as we may think.”