Upskirt Danger Caused Sex Change in Ico’s The Last Guardian

The Last Guardian originally starred a female character until the designers realized that much of the game involved camera shots from below.

In The Last Guardian, the player will control a young boy who befriends a giant creature called the Trico. Lead designer Fumito Ueda revealed that he originally wrote the story with an adolescent girl in mind, but was forced to change the sex of his main character when he realized that much of the view would be from below. And young girls wear a lot of skirts…

“The Trico is a very powerful creature,” Ueda said. “If we’d had a beefed-up, powerful hero, it would have thrown off the balance a little bit, so the design naturally drove me to create an adolescent female character who was light on her feet.

“But in the end I decided a boy would have a little more grip to climb the Trico. Another problem is that girls tend to wear skirts, and The Last Guardian features a lot of climbing…”

Luckily, the PS3 exclusive from the creators of Shadow of the Colossus isn’t due out until the end of 2011 so Ueda has had time to make the sex change.

Of course, it begs the question as to why a Japanese developer making games for a Japanese-centric console would be so worried about upskirt shots, but I suppose Ueda has the international market to consider. Also, how about just putting the lady in pants? Seems like a much easier fix than scrapping the female character altogether.

Just saying.

Source: CVG