Yes, you have a gun in Gen Atlas, but Fumito Ueda doesn’t want you to think it’s a shooter
Fumito Ueda, the renowned creator of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, unveiled his latest game, Gen Atlas, at Summer Game Fest. The game places players in the role of a scavenger navigating a desolate desert landscape filled with the decaying remains of enormous robotic creatures. Central to the gameplay is the task of collecting and reassembling one of these colossal machines, though what the player ultimately intends to accomplish with the reassembled machine remains intentionally unclear.
A striking design element is the presence of a machine gun on the protagonist’s back. The game’s trailer shows the character wielding this weapon, indicating it will be used in gameplay. However, despite the gun’s presence and demonstrated usage, Ueda appears keen to distance Gen Atlas from the traditional shooter genre. This positioning is significant given Ueda’s track record: his previous games have typically avoided firearms as primary mechanics, instead focusing on exploration, puzzle-solving, and unconventional interaction systems.
The introduction of a weapon like a machine gun represents a notable, if subtle, shift in Ueda’s design philosophy, even as he resists classifying Gen Atlas as a shooter. This tension between the presence of a gun and the desire to avoid shooter conventions highlights the game’s intent to occupy an unconventional space within game design.