Fumito Ueda, the iconic game director behind PlayStation classics Shadow of the Colossus, Ico and The Last Guardian, believes that hyper-polished games end up being less memorable than “clunky” ones.
Ueda, who has spent decades pushing the medium of games into his own surreal cinematic state, sat down with No More Heroes director Suda51 to discuss his unique brand of game design. At the time of writing, Uesda is working on GenAtlas, originally titles Project Robot, which was recently shown during Summer Games Fest.
In the interview, reported by Automaton, Suda explained that there was a moment in Shadow of the Colossus that he “was terrible at”. However, decades after the game’s release, that section remains one of his all-time most memorable gaming experiences.
Ueda explained that, even through he “didn’t necessarily intend” for the game to be difficult in that section, it’s experiences like that which stick with players. “Those difficult parts, or elements that are a bit unforgiving or clunky, are what actually end up being memorable,” the director said.
The Shadow of the Colossus director added: “If I saw that today, I’d probably think I have to fix it. I’d look at the playtest results and immediately think, ‘If players are struggling here, we need to patch it right now.”
Perhaps, in a way, that’s one of the issues with modern games. When I think back to both Ueda and Suda51’s library of games, they’re not hyper-polished or extensively playtested. The Last Guardian is a controversial release, but I have far more memories of that game than the majority of AAA titles that have released in the years since.
When I think to my favourite games of all time, they’re all a little clunky. Halo: Combat Evolved has whacky physics; Alien Isolation has a way-too-long second half; Morrowind is, well, Morrowind; Cave Story has a multi-ending progression that no one would possibly know just by playing. Even when you think to some of the most popular games of recent years—Clair Obscur, Arc Raiders, etc—many of them have a degree of clunk to them.
Shadow of the Colossus, to this day, is one of the greatest video games ever made, and it is undeniably clunky compared to most modern releases. Nevertheless, it’s beautiful, and it’s definitely memorable, and it was undeniably less clunky than many games that launched during that time.
