The Robot Project character could be a cyborg

Summary

Fans think Team Ico's new game Project Robot has a cyborg protagonist.
They notice the metal, robotic-looking face, legs, and hands, as well as the wheels attached to their feet.

Last week, Team Ico announced a brand new game called Project Robot in an exciting but brief reveal teaser that showed a massive mech decapitating itself to escape a strange incoming storm.

Considering the patterns on the main character's clothes, it seems like it's a sequel to Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. But what's really interesting is that they could be a cyborg.

Because I love the comforting solitude of Team Ico and Fumito Ueda

Fumito Ueda and Team ICO are the masters of melancholy in games.

As pointed out by attentive fans like Reddit user Few-Opportunity-4947, the protagonist appears to have metal hands and legs, as well as a robotic “face” (some speculate that it is actually a helmet). They even have what look like wheels attached to their feet.

The new game may be based on Fumito Ueda's old concept art

Others, like Reddit user ralg666, note that the protagonist resembles one of Fumito Ueda's old, unused character designs from when they were art students, which could shed light on the theory that the new protagonist is a cyborg.

The original design has a much more human face, suggesting the idea that the “robot” head is actually a mask. They also appear to have metal legs and arms, just like the new character.

Ueda said of the project that it was “out of the ordinary for an art student” and “could have been simpler”, also revealing that the developers rejected it for this reason. It's possible he's revisiting this old design in Project Robot all these years later, making things “simpler” by more explicitly making the new protagonist a cyborg.

Another potential inspiration behind Project Robot is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, one of Ueda's favorite films as a child. It tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world devastated by God Warriors, gigantic biomechanical beings, aka cyborgs.

Giving credence to this idea is the “Sea of Corruption” in Nausicaä, a toxic jungle that is slowly suffocating the entire world, just like the miasma from which we see the protagonist escape in the Project Robot trailer.

Perhaps Ueda is further exploring the idea of humanity's intrinsic ties to technology in Team Ico's new game. If so, a cyborg protagonist makes perfect sense.