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The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 game director Bruce Straley is back with a game that basically sells itself from the word go: Coven of the Chicken Foot has you play as a witchy grandma with chicken feet as she builds a bond with a hulking fantasy creature. And Straley's taking some inspiration from lots of places, from his own post-apocalyptic work and a Studio Ghibli classic to Fumito Ueda.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ about his upcoming "semi-open-world" explorative puzzle game, Straley explains that while building the central relationship between our grandma Gertie and our odd, unnamed companion, the team looked at "the bond between the Red Elk Yakuul and Ahitaka from Princess Mononoke, and of course Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us" as reference.
The biggest reference point was the hugely influential Japanese game maker Fumito Ueda, however, who directed ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, and an upcoming project featuring massive robots - all games that, to varying degrees, are about connecting with a character outside of your control.
"Ueda's games have definitely had an influence on our game," Straley explains. "ICO was the first game to ever make me cry. Before that, games were just games to me. But after playing ICO, my entire philosophy of what kind of experiences the medium had the potential to deliver completely changed. Before hiring Wouter Gort as Art Director, Wouter and I bonded over the idea of capturing some of the relationship building between ICO's horned boy and Yorda, as well as Agro the horse and the adventurer from Shadow of the Colossus."
While Straley doesn't outright mention it, Coven of the Chicken Foot most reminds me of The Last Guardian, which is also about a sometimes helpless protagonist's push-and-pull relationship with a fantasy beast that's several times stronger and bigger than him. Coven of the Chicken Foot's Steam description even makes reference to "innovative technology" that lets our companion learn based on our behaviour while also pushing back based on its own motivations, which sounds a lot like Trico's role in The Last Guardian.
"Ueda has a way of creating atmosphere and has set the bar for creating bonds between the player and the characters in his games that we've been inspired by," Straley continued. Ueda's design by subtraction has left its mark on countless games, including The Last of Us, so it's no surprise to see it carried over here.
