Ico - Development

Development

Lead developer Fumito Ueda came up with the concept for Ico in 1997, envisioning a "boy meets girl" story where the two main characters would hold hands during their adventure, forming a bond between them without communication. Ueda's main inspiration for Ico was Eric Chahi's game Another World (Outer World in Japan), which used cinematic cutscenes and lacked any head-up display elements as to play like a movie. It also featured an emotional connection between two characters, despite the use of minimal dialog. Ueda also cited Lemmings, Flashback and the original Prince of Persia games as influences, specifically regarding animation and gameplay style. With the help of an assistant, Ueda created an animation in Lightwave to get a feel for the final game and to better convey his vision. In the three-minute demonstration reel, Yorda had the horns instead of Ico, and flying robotic creatures were seen firing weapons to destroy the castle. Ueda stated that having this movie that represented his vision helped to keep the team on track for the long development process, and he reused this technique for the development of Shadow of the Colossus, the team's next effort.

Ueda began working with producer Kenji Kaido in 1998 to develop the idea and bring the game to the PlayStation. Ico's design aesthetics were guided by three key notions: to make a game that would be different from others in the genre, feature an aesthetic style that would be consistently artistic, and play out in an imaginary yet realistic setting. This was achieved through the use of "subtracting design"; they removed elements from the game which interfered with the game's reality. This included removing any form of interface elements, keeping the gameplay focused only on the escape from the castle, and reducing the number of types of enemies in the game to a single foe. An interim design of the game shows Ico and Yorda facing horned warriors similar to those that take Ico to the castle. The game originally focused on Ico's attempt to return Yorda to her room in the castle after she was kidnapped by these warriors. Ueda believed this version had too much detail for the graphics engine they had developed, and as part of the "subtracting design", replaced the warriors with the shadow creatures. Ueda also brought in a number of people outside the video game industry to help with development. These consisted of two programmers, four artists, and one designer in addition to Ueda and Kaido, forming the base of what is now known as Team Ico. On reflection, Ueda noted that the subtracting design may have taken too much out of the game, and did not go to as great an extreme with Shadow of the Colossus.

After two years of development, the team ran into limitations on the PlayStation hardware and faced a critical choice: either terminate the project altogether, alter their vision to fit the constraints of the hardware, or continue to explore more options. The team decided to remain true to Ueda's vision, and began to use the Emotion Engine of the PlayStation 2, taking advantage of the improved abilities of the platform. Character animation was accomplished through key frame animation instead of the more common motion capture technique. Ico is recognized as one of the first games to incorporate bloom lighting into video games, a feature that is common in later seventh generation console video games. The game took about four years to create. Ueda purposely left the ending vague, not stating whether Yorda was alive, whether she would travel with Ico, or if it was simply the protagonist's dream.

The cover used for releases in Japan and PAL regions was drawn by Ueda himself, and was inspired by the surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico and his work, The Nostalgia of the Infinite. Ueda believed that "the surrealistic world of de Chirico matched the allegoric world of Ico". The North American version lacks this cover as well as additional features that become available after the player completes the game once. The development team was unable to provide Ueda's cover or the additional features such as the two-player mode in time for Sony's planned North American release date, but included them for the later releases in Japan and PAL regions. On reflection, Yasuhide Kobayashi, vice-president of Sony's Japan Studio, believed the North American box art and lack of an identifiable English title led to the game's poor sales in the United States, and stated plans to correct that for the release of The Last Guardian. For its original release, a limited edition of the game was available in PAL regions that included a cardboard wrapping displaying artwork from the game and four art cards inside the box. The game was re-released as a standard edition in 2006 across all PAL regions except France after the 2005 release of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico's spiritual sequel, to allow players to "fill the gap in their collection".

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