@Legendseeing as you're making a game
Since a few years back when I was about to give up on TLG I started thinking what was going on with the game and all I could think of that'd put it in development hell was Trico's AI. Some people have already talked about this but i'm gonna explain things as if nobody had, anyway
If you look back at the history of games, you'll find plenty of examples of companions or "escorts". Some are infamous for being annoying, unreliable, glitchy, etc. Here's the thing. Those characters, as far as i know/remember, were always..."normal". And by normal I mean in the same vein as the main character that you're controlling. Whether it's because they're the same thing as you (human) or they're about the ~same size as you (animals like dogs, horses, etc). You know what kind of stuff can happen with these guys. They can get confused and walk around in circles, run into walls, go into the opposite direction due to pathfinding problems. Glitchy animations. Yorda herself, despite not being a bad companion compared to many other games, occasionally did stupid stuff.
Now, if even NPCs who are roughly like you can be troublesome when traversing game content made for you (and therefore for anyone/anything of a similar nature), imagine having a giant companion going through a man made environment made for men, traversing game content built for a much smaller player character, and applying these potential issues to someone who is often front and center in your screen (simply because he fills up so much ofi t). It sounds like a real challenge and the possible source of the game's development hell last generation.
These are not the best examples as they already have a sort-of-solution to them but i'm gonna point them out anyway to illustrate part of the issue:
E3 Trailer
go to 1:24 and the following seconds
Petting a horse like Agro in STOC would be fine here. When the animal moves the head, because he's not huge, the PC's hand would simply move with it, but not his body. Here, Trico is huge, and the animation pushes the boy forward. If he was any closer to the ledge, he'd have been pushed off.
Now, 1:50
Here, Trico is about to jump. Now...the person playing it has already played this before and is probably on its 10th "take" or more for recording the trailer. He's in what most players would think of as a normal place to stand, but knowing better, this player moves closer to the ledge to avoid being pushed off by Trico's jump. Someone playing for the first time would probably not remember to move that way, and what happens? Do they get pushed to their death below?
Now, 2:59
This is similar to the first instance. Because we're on an ascending ledge, Trico's animation basically squashes the boy, which is treated by the game as being pushed. Once again, the risk of being pushed off by an harmless animation/behavior.
Now, these things aren't an huge issue because if it's anything like ICO or SOTC, the solution to these specific examples is already kinda there. In ICO, you automatically grab on to any ledge, so if you happened to be pushed by Trico, you wouldn't die. It's not Souls, you're not automatically dead if you don't have ground beneath your feet. In SOTC, you'll grab any closeby ledge as long as you press/hold the R1 button. It could still become annoying to be put in danger so often by what is supposed to be a friendly ally, but at least you wouldn't keep dying because of it.
But now expand this to a whole game and several (including interior) environments.. Sounds like a true development hell hole to me.
The concept was great but executing it does not sound easy at all. Which is why I don't buy Shu's technical excuses. Or rather, any technical/performance stuff only influenced the transition to PS4, not the PS3-era-prolonged development; that had to be Trico's AI and its relationship with the environment. Ueda said in 2013 that the game had been finished on a creative level. So I assume that's how long it took to make these things finally click/work. The AI scripting and the level design to accomodate it. Only after that did the platform transition come into play. Besides, Ueda has already contradicted Shu's public statements more than once (includes saying that he felt the game did not need the PS4, which could mean that even the performance/technical part is a lie and the switch was made purely for market reasons, and could have maybe been released for PS3 in 2013/2014..though i'm fine with getting it on PS4), and I'm certainly more willing to believe Ueda than Shu.
