A jarringly simple question…one with as surprisingly complex an answer.



A question that I recently posed to myself after reading an article discussing the newest game from Katamari creator Keita Takahashi, to a T, and an exchange that briefly occurred with another famous game designer Fumito Ueda, who helped lead the teams responsible for ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, about how one goes about playing the game itself.


The game, to a T, underlines what we take for granted everyday: even the simplest tasks can be daunting affairs when one has limitations they need to overcome

An innocuous enough exchange, but one that does help frame the mightiest of questions posed in the headline. As the story goes, Ueda, after being interested in wondering how to a T worked after seeing a trailer, reached out to Takahashi with the simple question of “How do you play this game?”, with Takahashi responding the game didn’t have any unique mechanics one would have to get use to in order to master the gameplay, and Ueda reportedly thought “That’s great”, going later to elaborate his thought process further:

“While I don’t know why I replied with ‘That’s great’ back then, I was most likely thinking – The age of gameplay mechanics had already passed. I guess this is not the age to release new devices or offer new mechanics with each and every new game…..even if there’s nothing novel about the mechanics, you can push the game further with a certain vibe or artwork. Personal preferences aside, what I’m saying is – I think it would be better to give already existing game mechanics more definition.”

There’s so much to unpack here, in a good way mind you, and this small blurb really acts as a launching point for a much bigger conversation to be had in terms of the video game industry as a whole. In fact, it is a rarity that such a simple notion poses such a huge undertaking in my own head as an issue that needs to be tackled, but I can at least micro-focus on baby stepping my way through the beginning of the dialog.

If nothing else, reading about this small exchange was an excellent reminder to finally start to a T, which is a simple enough straight forward (mechanically speaking) 3D narrative, puzzle game, that is packaged in the kind of vibey way one would imagine a quirky, indie title would be, complete with musical numbers, an emotional core to the story, and littered with feel good story beats and humor every step of the way. As much as I’ve enjoyed my time with the game, there is something to be said, and I’m including myself in this notion, that not being a AAA game, and or at least being released in a sea of titles that have, on a technical level, more exciting premises, to a T remains, and maybe tragically so, a game that is way too easy in putting off in playing. This raises a whole host of separate questions involving possibly murky questions like “what kind of responsibility do consumers have in helping maintain a healthy industry?”, but again, one problem at a time.

To a T makes sense coming from Takahashi, as he has helped lead other games with simple, out there, but gloriously engaging premises, like Katmari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, with the goal of said titles being more of a fanciful whimsy in immersing the player in an artistic backdrop of quirky imagination, and exposing them to a world of absurdity for them to douse themselves. Within the abstract nature of the titles, there always remains this sense of warm invitation, in allowing an extremely simplified control scheme availing itself to players in an incredibly accessible manner, so as to make the gamers themselves trip into Takahashi’s own virtual wonderland, ones that always represent an experience of ease and bizarre joviality.

Ueda’s comments on being delighted by the concept of to a T tracks, as he himself has worked on games that have traded in similar kinds of imagined fantasy; in going as far to make the driving force of many of the titles he’s worked on have a serious fixation on the atmosphere, how the art style envelops the player, and creating a general sense of mystifying mystery in magically enrapturing the player within the world that they occupy. Similar to to a T, all three major titles Ueda has worked on, ICO, Shadow, and The Last Guardian, are all rather straight forward affairs, in that they aren’t overly complicated with the mechanics that are needed to be understood to success and flourish within their realms. They are all more or less 3D action/adventures with puzzle-elements involved, obviously, mixed in different manners depending on which title you go with, action being more present within Shadow, while The Last Guardian being heavy on resolving cryptic environmental obstacles to advance gameplay. None of the titles however, I would say from my own experience, necessarily demands the players themselves grapple with any massively unique gameplay systems in order to enjoy the experiences, nor even any seriously novel approaches in how the players interact with the titles themselves.

So, if we look at the host of games we have thus far in these examples, we have an excellent sample data with which to draw from in formulating our first answers. Both Katamari and Noby Noby Boy are both qurky titles, and while Noby Noby Boy was more fo a sleeper hit, was still received well for it’s unique approach. One could argue that Katamari Damacy may have eclipsed beyond cult status at this point however, for the novelty with which the player goes about interacting with the world, albeit simply so, in dealing with the mechanics involving rolling the Katamari itself. Hell, Namco even has a patent on that exact style of gameplay, preventing others from even utilizing it until the patent expires years from now. On the other hand, we have ICO and The Last Guardian, which I would say are both fairly celebrated titles, in terms of the artistry and style they brought to the fray, in helping to create a diversity within the gaming medium itself, whereas Shadow of the Colussus is widely lauded across the board, being heralded as such a big deal within the world of games, it arguably helped to solidify the notion that games had reached the maturity level of being considered art, when the conversation reached fever pitch decades ago, in being one of the clinching reasons Roger Ebert famously conceded the notion video games may in fact be worthy of artistic consideration.

So within this framework, do these titles help to solidify the notion that great games need great mechanics? Or are great games great in spite of the quality of mechanics they may in fact possess, not being able to attribute their greatness to mechanics alone?

Lots to consider with just these few points of data, and an interesting conversation that will likely continue unabated for years to come.

~Pashford