Fumito Ueda, the creator of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, returned to Summer Game Fest with his previously-hinted-at Project Robot, now renamed Gen Atlas. And the brief showing of in-game footage looks as beautiful as you’d hope, as we fly around what appear to be the ruined remains of a vast robot.
Fumito Ueda appeared at the Summer Game Fest event, albeit silently from the audience, before footage from what we now know is called Gen Atlas was shown, eliciting gasps from the crowd and the Kotaku Slack.
Because it’s an Ueda-san game, it’s obviously about a small guy in an imbalanced relationship with an enormous guy, this time two differently sized robots. The head we see floating around in the footage eventually meets the collapsed body, which then rises up to meet it and the two connect. Meanwhile the smaller robo-dude, also looking like he’s been decaying for a while, is firing a gun at crowds of alien enemies, in a striking action sequence from a creator best known for methodically slow and calm games.
We’ve then got running, jetpacks, battling goliath robots, and fast tanks, all in a vista that makes me want to find a PS2 and boot up Ico immediately. This is looking like an interesting departure for the developer and his team, albeit with many of his trademark features.
Things are still very vague when it comes to details, not least for a release date or indication of when we might learn something more concrete. But hopefully this could be the beginning of those giant doors creaking open.