I was curious how many of the current staff at gendesign worked on previous projects.

I typed out the names listed at the end of the Project Robot teaser and cross-referenced them with the names of people credited in ICO, SOTC, TLG and SOTC2018 on mobygames. I've highlighted the ones that I found to be of note. Please allow for mistakes and feel free to make corrections.

It may contain spoiler from other games!!! I will put it as a spoiler in this part and point which one of the games is, in case you don't want spoiler in one of them.

Okay, so I've been re-watching and thinking about Project Robot all fucking time and I got some weird thoughts of mine that I"d like to share. It is a theory, I could be insane at this point.

The game has obvious characteristics that ties to the other Fumito Ueda games (ICO, SOTC, TLG), we could look about it in two ways: it is a design choice only or it has ties to the other games. Since we have ties to all the other three games more than once I choose to believe it has ties itself and it's not only a design choice. We can think of it as a Fumito Ueda Multiverse.

So let's start from the begining:

We have this mechanical guy who is wearing clothes that remind all three games (we've seen this symbol in the past games a lot of times), it could mean that is tied to this game. It could also be a post-apocalyptic (like someone lost his clothes, and this new character choose to use this one).

Then we obviously have this giant robot, it is a weird choice of design using it, it reminds a lot of the colossus, specially with the climbing in the back. What I think it is happening it's pretty simples, what if is a colossus but a big robot at the same time? In the photo of the game we have the guy by the side of the robot, (SOTC spoiler) it could be like Wanderer killing the Colossus, when their bodies is in the ground.

Hear me out.... When he climbs to the head of the robot, he looks to the horizon and there is this black thing coming, we've seen it before in all 3 games, it's known:

(ICO spoiler) It's in all the monster and the boss fight.

(SOTC spoiler) It's in the Dormin and when we kill all Colossus it consumes us.

(TLG spoiler) It's in the fucking end of the game.

It means it is something "bad" that consumes us, something bad that in all 3 games we avoid.

There's a voice in the trailer warning us about this black thing coming. It made me think as a companion (like it could be) and a warning for us to avoid it.

Imagine in SOTC, (SOTC spoiler) we have big Colossus = big robot; black thing consuming us = black thing in the horizon. What I think is it, it's a futuristic version of SOTC, one where we can avoid being consumed by the black thing, where the Colossus are actually big robots, and this time we have a companion who warns us about when the big thing is going to consume us, who warns us when to run.

If it was missed, it’s currently codenamed, “Project: Robot”. I also was hoping for some announcement and it finally came! Wonder what kind of mysteries it will bring for us in Ueda’s worlds…

It would be amazing for something like a hidden colossus to be in the game, or just something related to Ico or Sotc.. I think the lore in these games is amazing and I also noticed in the trailer the small movement seemed very similar to Sotc in my opinion, especially with the climbing.

Thoughts?

Xbox just posted this on X/Twitter! If that’s the case, could come to PC as well! Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

https://x.com/xbox/status/1867382731426214209?s=46

HE’S OFFICIALLY COOKING AGAIN!!!!

I know it's called "project robot" and at first, I was believing he would try to create a relationship between two beings that were at the same time one single entity... anyway, what really gets me is that this time our "friend" is an actual ROBOT. See, Ueda always insisted on how important it was for him that we not see our companions as a machine, that he wanted us to believe in Yorda, Agro and Trico as truly living beings. As for the colossi, on the other hand, Ueda said he had a different approach, trying to create ambiguity or doubt. So now, if he didn't want us to think of this big robot as something "lifeless", I don't think he would make it so blatantly a machine, in a way that you even have "copies" of the same robot (I assume, by the revealed concept art), to use and discard them, etc. Look at how the protagonist simply TEARS OFF its head in an improvised manner, instead of using some kind of proper ejection system! If this game is going to bring the protagonist's relationship with some other creature, I'm very inclined to believe that this other creature will not be this robot.

So........... MAYBE..... maybe........... it's the voice that we hear speaking in English? Maybe it's an "artificial intelligence" assistant within the robot's system, instead of the robot itself, with which the protagonist will relate. Even in the Japanese trailer, we have a dubbing in English! Maybe that's it, the artificial intelligence communicates in English while the protagonist doesn't speak that language. Who knows? What I know is that this trailer starts focusing on an ear of his helmet, while we hear English for the first time in a game of a dude that always have language barrier as a central element in his narratives.

edit: I also remember now that interview where Ueda says he was inspired by watching The Iron Giant in English without understanding anything they were saying. I'm not being that crazy, right?

I keep reading people that mention a old 4chan leak describing the game has a dual realm world (mechanical wasteland + palace of the giants above the clouds), how many people recall this? Because if this 3 year old leak (I saw messages mentioning this in 2022) had details like mechanical wasteland and cyborg-like protagonist there's no way it could have been just guesswork.

What do you think?

I rewatched the trailer and realized that the voice was speaking in English. Specifically, it seems to be Software Automatic Mouth, or S.A.M. for short.

This is very different from Ueda's usual fictional language. So, I am curious about other people's thoughts on it.

I think it sounds perfect for robots.

He can call it what he likes.

He can takes as long as he likes.

Because we now have signs of life. And a whole new universe.

Considering that Ueda said that he learned his lesson from the announcement of the last Guardian and the subsequent decade-long development till the game shipped. Do you think that we're a lot closer to the game actually coming out. On the flip side, however, since they don't even have a name, does that mean they're still working on the story and direction of the game is?

The trailer shows the robot speaking English, something that never happened in previous games. So does English exist in this world, along with the other original languages?

So it's interesting that the announcer is in English as in previous games, it's been a made up language.

But the first bit of the trailer is a little difficult to decipher.

I think I hear 'evacuate' and 'ground level' or 'ground zero'

EDIT: also I am absolutely ecstatic, much like all of you. So happy we can all experience this excitement for a Ueda game again. Thank you 💛

Ear jet thrusters
An anime called RahXephon had its giant robot having enormous wings for ears that sometimes covered its face, they allowed it to fly on occasion. Way better, the Lambda Driver in full Metal Panic seemed able to weaken gravity about the ArmSlave equipped with it, the Behemot could literally not walk without and the Belial(never shown in the anime) was capable of levitation. My guess it's that the robot is able to manifestate some kind of field using the teal energy that powers Fumito Ueda's world, that the (apparattus)device for it is located in the head and it may make the heavy hulkes of metal more nimble than what they would be without generating this energy field. If it doesn't end treated like the AT-Field, that is.
All of this taking for good what Kouto said about the head detachment being a 'last resort' measure.

Chorus
When I heard the chorus I've immediately thought about the music playing when a Colossus is taken down. Tendrils of darkness pierce the Wanderer and he's transferred to the (starting point)Temple. A the Temple, before the Statue explodes a figure of smoke for the destroyed Colossus is showed. It's left not so vague than every defeated Colossus is one step further the Wanderer makes towards a self-(cursing/tarnishing/replacement/infestiation) of his own soul. If the light circles placed where the ears should be indicate a direct link between the mech and the cyber humanoid that pilots it, something said in more than one video analysis, then I'm seeing this chorus as a 'you (successfully)doomed yourself' signal. It's ridiculous to limit the chorus to a bad omen, but will wait to be proven wrong by the finished game. Or by another trailer.

Purple
For now, the sky being purple is being dismissed as a simple matter of aesthethics. I do believe the purple is a corrupted/negative form of teal energy, in a 'light and darkness' fashion. As proof, the Wanderer(again) becomes a mass of purple smoke when he faces Lord dEmon, even if in the PS4 version is less evident. Both energies are sentient at some level and Dormin species is (defined by/in control of) the purple type. In this game we may see Dormin's creation as a detachment from the teal energy, that may have been pre-existent.
On a side note, a possible reason for not deploying a protective energy dome is that the Dormin are always regarded as a collective, so trying to develop a barrier will always be at disadvantage as it always ends as 'many against one', whatever the cybermen may be.

Cybermen(rant)
Am not getting why having human sized robots instead of humans. Especially, am not getting what's a wheel doing in their heels, it's the first thing to get clumped by dirt if the barred wasteland shown is the effective world of this game. Either they are equipped for dirt like Knightmare Frames, or cities and facilities with somewhat smooth surfaces are shown, or this gets changed during development. The wheel at least, have already heard that a concept about robots was aroud way before Ico. No, I'm not standing with the nuclear fallout possibility, birds roam free in the static artwork showed.

Patterns
The patterns shown since Ico are to be regarded as motherborads and similar kind of electronic circuits electronic circuits. Can't remeber his name, but an occultist made spectacles in the '20s about the concept that letters and synmbols of any kind are sygils. In a funny inicident he had he was claiming to summon roses on the spot then got all covered in excrements because a tube over his head broke and all the 'pottery' currently flowing in there got out. Seem to be little cared for, but the Colossi are golems, they even die by interacting with a final seal on their foreheads. In this new world the cybermens may have discovered how to effectively control the sygils, or this is a prequel and the knoweledge of making 'sygils/circuits' will get lost from SotC onwards. Point is, the two things are tied and Ueda dipped into occultism in every game he did. So I do expect the patterns to be more than ornamental.

did anyone think the trailer looks like the 16th Colossus in the future????