to save her. He was surprised and inspired to find players felt a stronger connection between Wander and his horse Agro. Ueda wanted to make the relationship between a human and a creature the central concept for his next game. Ueda found that people were drawn to games with lifelike creatures, and felt The Last Guardian needed something similar to attract a broad audience. He wanted to create a virtual creature that behaved as realistically as possible, avoiding the unnatural behavior of other virtual animals. He based much of Trico's behavior on his childhood experiences growing up in a home full of animals. The final version of Trico is an amalgam of several creatures; the design was "deliberately unbalanced because looking strange was important", according to Ueda. The team wanted to avoid making the animal cute, and instead focused on realistic-looking behavior with "animal-like expressions". Trico's ears react with a cat-like "twitch" if they touch ceilings or other tall features, using the game's mesh-based collision detection. The team added the ability to summon lightning from Trico's tail to have players understand Trico's "force and ferocity". Ueda described Trico as "adolescent", allowing the developers to add humor through its actions. The team used programmed key frame animations instead of more common motion capture techniques, allowing them to capture subtleties that would be difficult using live animal subjects. As Trico functions similarly to the colossi the player climbs in Shadow of the Colossus, journalists have described The Last Guardian as a combination of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus; Ueda stated there was "a bit of each of those [games] in there". He described the relationship between the boy, Trico, and the guards as a game of rock-paper-scissors that changes throughout the game; at times, the boy needs Trico to protect him, while at others the situation is reversed. Though Ico and Shadow of the Colossus have a similar changing connection between pairs of characters, Ueda said there was more "dynamic range" in The Last Guardian. The Last Guardian is the first Team Ico game to use voice-over narration. As much of the game relies on non-verbal communication between the boy and Trico, Ueda felt the voice-over helped immerse the player in the mindset of the boy. It also provided a way to provide gameplay hints and other context to the player. Whereas the team had designed the areas of previous games