Fumito Ueda, creator of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the Last Guardian, showed off his new game at this weekend's Summer Game Fest showcase. Gen Atlas sees you step into the shoes of a scavenger in a desert world littered with the carcasses of vast robots. It falls to you to piece one of these machines back together and… well, what your aim is exactly is unclear. However, as stark as the landscapes of the dead world, was that your character has a machine gun slung across their back and, judging by a couple of sequences in the trailer, they're not afraid to use it.
This might not sound surprising, games have had guns since Spacewar!, but Ueda's games have either steered away from doing violence or, particularly in the case of Shadow of the Colossus, made you feel ruddy awful for killing something.
But, have no fear, reader: Fumito Ueda says he's not become trigger happy in his old age.
"Yes it's new, and probably unexpected from me, but it's not going to be the main mechanic in this game," Ueda told PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon. "It's really one of the ways that you're going to be able to overcome hurdles in the game. It's not 'how many enemies can I shoot down and how many points can I earn.' It's not implemented in that way. It's one of the ways that you're able to progress."
There are two moments in the trailer where you see the player use their gun. In one, they're mowing down creatures chasing them as they race along the desert in a truck. In another, though, they're stood on the clavicle of a robot, using the gun to shoot at a joint in the machine's neck. That latter use does seem to be more along the lines of a puzzle solving tool.
Still, that first use does seem to be the relatively traditional use of guns in games. Though, Ueda cryptically suggests there may be more going on. "I don't know if 'frustration' is the right way to frame it, but whenever you're playing a game you want to be challenged, right?," Ueda says. "And you start to feel a little bit of frustration because you're not winning in the most simple and easy manner. For me, you want to give a healthy amount of frustration, but by the time you earn or learn how to use said mechanic, you see the potential of having that sense of achievement once you utilize it. The shooting mechanic in this game I position as such that maybe there's a more effective way to overcome some hurdles, and that's how I see this naturally implemented in the game."
Fenlon suggests Ueda may be implying there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and the gun is the shortcut, to which Ueda says "the short answer is yes". But he also goes on to frame it in terms related to Ico – his PlayStation 2 game, in which you play a boy trying to lead a princess to safety – where you could kill enemies with your sword, and you could kill more than you had to. "It's not that you have to defeat all the enemies that you encounter," Ueda says. "That is not what the game is asking you to do. But in the moment, you may feel as if you have to defeat certain enemies, or you can choose not to. So in that sense, it's not to score points, but it's there so that it matters, and you feel that you do exist in that world."
Whereas, in Shadow of the Colossus, it's not possible to complete the game without killing the creatures that stalk its plains. But each of their deaths is communicated to you as an irreparable damage and loss to the world.
I'd be interested to see where Ueda and his team strike the balance with Gen Atlas. It sounds like it will be closer to Ico, where you are choosing your level of violence, and it also sounds like you will discover more about the world and the impact of your actions within it as you go. It's certainly intriguing and, in the hands of other developers this may all just sound like lip service, but Ueda has consistently made players of his games consider the harm they can cause a world, however they justify their violence to themselves.