Shadow Of The Colossus Director Expecting To Reveal New Game In 2023

Japan has given us some of the best video game developers in gaming history. From Hideo Kojima to Hidetaka Miyazaki, the list of visionaries that have come from the country is a long-lasting one. Among these creative forces is the director of Shadow of the Colossus and Ico: Fumito Ueda. 

The Japanese video game designer has made his mark with the projects mentioned above. However, his last game was The Last Guardian in 2016, and nothing new has come out about his next mystery project for GenDesign. Now, it seems like Fumito Ueda is looking forward to announcing his anticipated project in 2023. 

Major Takeaways

• Fumito Ueda is hoping to announce his next game in 2023.
• In a year-end sit-down with Famitsu, the designer said this was his ambition for 2023.
• This next project was first teased in 2018 and will be published and funded by Epic Games. 
• We only have a quarter of a screenshot of knowledge about this game as of yet.

An eagle-eyed user on ResetEra first took note of this exciting news. It actually comes from a new Famitsu article that discusses the ambitions of creators going into 2023. What we find out in this certainly has us excited for the upcoming year. 

Famitsu sat down with 141 creators to interview them and gauge their goals for the next year. One of these was none other than Fumito Ueda, the lead designer, and director of Shadow of the Colossus. He gave us an interesting insight into his ambition, which goes like this:

All of genDesign is working hard to be able to finally announce something, so please give us your support.”

Even though the answer is vague and doesn’t give us an exact date, this was his answer to a question regarding his 2023 goals. So, even though it’s not clear-cut, we can correctly assume this announcement is for 2023.  Hence, it seems like Ueda and GenDesign are expecting to reveal their new project in 2023.

There is a reason this is just an ambition because his last project, The Last Guardian, went through multiple delays. From disagreements with publishers Sony to switching consoles after 3 years, it was a hellish development.

After that, Fumito Ueda and Sony went on their separate ways, with GenDesign already starting work on a new game. Details of this game have been kept under wraps, and that makes sense after The Last Guardian’s fiasco. But we have got some crumbs here and there over the past few years. 

The first time we heard of this new project was in 2018 from Fumito Ueda. He said GenDesign was in the process of prototyping the new game and had funding from Kowloon Nights. In an interview with Famitsu, the developer said this project would not be a sequel but an entirely different game. 

A year before that, Fumito Ueda had said this game would not be like his previous 3 games, which had similarities. Even though this project is similar in scale to the previous ones, it will be approached differently. In January 2018, an image was present in GenDesign’s new year message, it had the caption “Beauty and the Beast, 2018” in the website’s source code.

As you can see, the image features a woman in a bathtub and a beast. Previous Fumito Ueda titles have had this aspect, so we can assume this feature will persist in the next game. Only time will tell if that is the case, though.

Next, we heard about the game in 2020 when GenDesign announced a partnership with Epic Games. The company will publish this new project, which will be multi-platform. Fumito Ueda’s GenDesign will completely develop the game, with Epic fully funding the project. 

As a result, this new project is GenDesign’s first full game as an independent studio. Epic announced a 50/50 profit split for the game, meaning a beneficial partnership for both of them. Hence, the new project was a reality, and it was probably saved from what The Last Guardian went through with Sony. 

We got our best look at the game as of yet at the start of 2021 in the form of a new year card greeting. The 4 digits of 2021 each had a picture of a GenDesign/Fumito Ueda game. Even though the first 3 images were of the previous games, the 4th image featured a screenshot never seen before.

A character with dark hair was standing in the shadow of a sci-fi-like object, wearing a robe. This was the first solid evidence of the game existing, but it gave away nothing about it. It just piqued our interest more in the upcoming title. 

Fumito Ueda did say that he would start making announcements in 2022, but that didn’t come to fruition. This is the latest news we have on the game. Hopefully, GenDesign will finally announce what the director’s new game is about in 2023 because we can’t wait.

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