Fumito Ueda, the man behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, has clarified a bit on how Torico, the cute but huge cat/chicken animal seen in the upcoming PlayStation 3 The Last Guardian, came about.

“When we came up with this animal, we wanted to make an attractive and cute kind of character,” Ueda explained to Eurogamer in an interview conducted at TGS. “We also created this design to match up with and comply with the game design itself. So that’s how we decided on the size, the quality of the character and its physical capabilities - it was about fitting with the game design.”

The look they ended up with was one of several they were actually working on, “We ended up having this animal which was much closer in style to the cat, but we also had some other options - a dog-type of cat and also a camel-type character.”

Ueda was also asked about a possible release date which he skillfully dodged, saying only that they “want to avoid releasing an incomplete version.”