What to make of the TRICO teaser-trailer

Shadow of the Colosuss was, by far, my pick for best game on the PS2.  The title came from Team ICO, the masterminds behind the early PS2 cult classic, ICO.  Much has been made about the developer’s highly anticipated third title, a game shrouded in mystery until now.  Who knows how the guys at PlayStation LifeStyle got their hands on the teaser-trailer for Project TRICO–it’s just great to see that Fumito Ueda and his team are very deep into production.

If we’re to believe this is in fact the next Team ICO game (and I do), you need to play ICO and Shadow of the Colossus (especially the latter) to appreciate what’s going on here.  So go out and play them right now if you haven’t already.  OK, good.  Welcome back.  Weren’t they awesome?  What we take away from these two titles isn’t necessarily their storylines alone, but that combined with their gameplay styles.

In the video for TRICO, we see a boy very similar to the hero in both ICO and SotC.  We’re then introduced to a giant, feline-esque animal who shares a special connection with the boy.  A creature so enormous, we immediately think of a colossus.  From here on out it’s just a bunch of climbing and jumping around, the boy riding the giant cat looking like the kid from The Never Ending Story.

What I think we’ll see in TRICO is an interesting sort of dichotomy of gameplay styles.   Clearly, the animal can jump over chasms and valleys–and where it can’t investigate, you’ll need to control the boy.  I think we’re going to see a lot of back and forth between the two, and I’d imagine the user will have control over both–maybe activated by some sort of “switch-player” button (think Donkey Kong Country).

Just think of what an intense boss battle would be like where you need to switch between the boy and animal, cleverly connecting attacks and acrobatics.  Such an original style would undoubtedly need to be complemented by first-rate level design, something we all know Team ICO is more than capable of crafting.

This sort of unique teamwork will probably be offered as an on or offline co-op feature too, since every damn game on Earth feels somehow compelled to offer this overrated mechanic.

It’s tough to draw a lot conclusions from such a short video.  It’s clear the magic that Team ICO is capable of creating is still very much alive and well in the form of whatever TRICO winds up being called.  We’ll see if this video gets replayed during the Sony press conference at E3 and whether or not there’s more to learn about this boy and his abnormally large animal friend.

Make sure you check out my CNET coverage of E3 2009, where I’m sure we’ll learn a bit more about Project TRICO.