Is it a bird? Is it a cat? Is it a griffin? Well, Team Ico simply isn't saying, but perhaps it's not all that important what Toriko (the giant creature in The Last Guardian), actually is so much as how you feel about it.
Fumito Ueda and his team have tried before to create close relationships between the player and his companions.
Ico had Yorda, Wander had Agro and now we have this new mysterious partnership, but the essence will be the same.
Team Ico wants you to really believe in this fantastic creature and grow to care for it in turn.
While your partner in this game may not be human (and we say that assuming you play as the boy, but that's still not clear) The Last Guardian is tonally much closer to Ico than anything else.
While moments of confrontation are likely this much more a game based on exploration and puzzle solving than anything else.
Of course, the guys at Team Ico are master of blending these concepts together to create something unique.
In many respects, Shadow of The Colossus was a puzzle game too as you climbed the Colossi to find their weak points.
Looking beyond the developer's own background, influences as diverse as ET, My Neighbour Totoro and the behavior of different animals in the wild and tame have been mentioned as inspiration for The Last Guardian.
And with the power of the PS3 a great deal of time is being spent on making Toriko's expressions and body language as nuanced as possible.
Most interestingly there have been hints recently that by the end of The Last Guardian there will be some kind of connection revealed between this game and Team Ico's other.
What could that link be? We'll just have to wait to find out.