soggybagel

Video Game Trailers

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I hope I'm not treading on another thread but I did a quick search and didn't find anything in particular where this could go.

Anyways, just saw the new Dead Space 3 trailer which is allegedly a TV Spot. It uses a cover of 'In the Air Tonight' and it makes the game look seem much dumber than I would like and totally turns me off the game.

Dead Space 3 Trailer:

This happened as well with Aliens: Colonial Marines with this trailer that came out last week.

Pretty much universally hated for its HORRENDOUS voice over. It was noted by various Gearbox employees on twitter and various sites that this is not any dialogue that is in the game and it was created by a separate marketing team. Now I sympathize with this issue. It's something that happens all the time in the film industry where an entirely separate group of people put together a trailer (most of the time this is the case, rarely does a director have any input in marketing) with the clips they're given and it can mean the tone of a film being sold is completely different than the movie, but somehow this Aliens trailer seems far worse because its actually just inventing a voice over that by all standards of inference we are going to assume is coming from the actual game.

Any other trailers anyone can think of that have such a dulling effect that you end up being completely turned off of a game you were once kind of interested in? I feel like video game trailers more often than not have this type of effect.

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Remember when Aliens was was just an allegory for the Vietnam war and the whole point of the movie was how incompetent, and not badass the Marines were?

I've actually had the opposite happen, where a trailer set me up to expect something that turned out not to be in the game at all. A big example is the Mass Effect 3 trailer that showed Earth as a major fighting zone. When I actually played the game, I was pretty disappointed at how little time you spend actually spend on Earth.

Ever since the movie Drive came out, I've learned to completely distrust all trailers. The way that movie was marketed, I assumed it was just another dumb Fast and the Furious knock off with Bryan Cranston.

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Trailers rarely move me one way or the other these days. However more often than not I tend to be excited by trailers even if they're not at all representative of the game. More because they do fun things.

Like for example the Dead Island trailer that got everyone excited. It got me excited too, but never for a second did I think the game would be like that. Similarly there's the Cyberpunk teaser and all those fun Magicka trailers.

I feel more and more that trailers are completely disconnected from the game itself. Especially nowadays when there's heaps and heaps of Let's Plays and other similar videos floating around. Even developers themselves often have those videos so I just take the cinematic trailers as a standalone piece.

Though let's be honest. If that standalone piece is really good then I will take a second look at a game I previously wasn't interested in. Or get me more excited about a game I already was excited about. Like for example those Magicka trailers. They were filled with so much fun that even though the game is buggy (but very fun) it was always a joy to encounter those things.

But yeah that Colonial Marines trailer was really, really bad.

And as a last point I have to admit that trailers consisting of pure gameplay footage (with GUIs and everything present) are often worse than pre-rendered cinematic trailers to me. Because more often than not watching those pure gameplay footage trailers is incredibly boring.

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If I look back at my trailer-watching behavior over the past year, I've noticed that I've all but stopped watching them. I've also stopped reading previews or even checking for new games. I don't see that as me growing out of gaming, but as an evolving trend that I don't care about hype and just want to play games. You know, Idle Thumbs is such a good selective system for that. Because my tastes are pretty well attuned to the community, whenever a game is worth playing, there'll inevitably be a topic about it here. The best thing is, that usually means the game is for sale and I can just immediately indulge in it.

I have other sources for keeping up to date with games, of course, but across the board I've noticed that personal recommendations by friends has far surpassed trailers and traditional media as a source of information and purchasing decisions.

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Here are some instances of trailers in video games (I could only think of a couple off the top of my head).

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It's pretty rare that a trailer turns me off from a game completely. Even the exceedingly awful Dead Space 3 and Aliens: Colonial Marines trailers above wouldn't have kept me from wanting to try these titles had I not read a lot of dispiriting stuff about both.

And that's what it really comes down to. Rodi has it right. Recommendations and reviews from trustworthy sources are what I rely on for game buying decisions. Trailers tend to be designed for hype; not for providing information. And they're even less useful for video games than they are for film because what you're seeing in a film trailer is a cut up version of what you're going to be experiencing when you watch the full thing. A video game, granted it provides a decently broad possibility space is often going to play a lot differently than how it looked in the trailer.

An example of the kind of trailer I want to see more of is the Dishonored Golden Cat walkthrough:

Because it shows plainly the nature of the game; exploring different paths and methods of play. And then the game played exactly like that.

Also the Antichamber launch trailer is great:

Understated and playful, and sets up a clear expectation for the kind of eery, mind-bending puzzles the game will be centered around.

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Is this thread supposed to be trailers for upcoming games, or classic trailers of awesomeness/awfulness?

If the latter, here's the only trailer in recent memory that utterly convinced me that I needed to preorder the game:

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I think in general the reason why video game trailers are so ineffective, is because they are essentially the same; just look at the Dead Space 3/Aliens trailers. Unless the mechanics are super innovative or original, showing shots of it in a trailer isn't going to tell me anything new; I already know what a typical shooter looks like, I don't need a trailer to remind me.

That's why I like the latest Bioshock Infinite trailer. It's sets up the tone and history of its universe, which is what makes that game interesting to me. It attempts to convey more information than just: here's some context-free gameplay footage!

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so i'm having a hard time trying to describe what i'm thinking, so please bear with me!

so dead space 3 uses 'in the air tonight' and gears of war used that minimal 'mad world' cover, both of them heavily featured popular music in an attempt to lend a sense of gravitas to their goofy games.

what other game trailers have attempted to do this? Do any of you feel like it's effective at all? I feel like there have been several but I probably just immediately dismissed them

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Dead Island is the prime example of all time. Gravitas soaked trailer for a game where you hit dead bikini clad women with cricket bats until they pop.

Re: Argobot: Bioshock: I hugely appreciated the world building in their retro trailer but what convinced me about that game was seeing the gameplay footage from 2 years ago where they walk through the city and listen to incidental conversations and stumble into a bar and so on. If they can live up to the experience that trailer promises it's gonna be something really special.

Which also ties into gameplay footage of tired mechanics. It's more a fault of the mechanics than the trailer. Bioshock and my Dishonored example both had gameplay walkthroughs that excited me precisely because they show fresh and interesting-looking mechanics.

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The trailer for the Lume sequel was just released

(apparently I can't embed Vimeo?)

Personally, I was extremely underwhelmed with Lume, mostly because it was so short but also because some of the puzzles felt obtuse and there were straight-up too few of them. I didn't feel like there was really a fun overall arc, I don't really remember having any big "ah-ha!" moments so much as a few underwhelming "I guess I'm supposed to do this". Also the plot had a similar tone and preachiness to the scene in Ponyo when Sosuke takes Ponyo home and shows her how self-sufficient they are. But the visual aesthetic is so charming and relaxing that I'm still willing to give the sequel a shot.

I'm intrigued by the concept of trailers in general. In film, sometimes trailers are just gorgeous masterpieces by themselves, like for Where the Wild Things Are, but they don't necessarily tell you much about what the movie is really going to be (although I find more often than not that if the trailer really captures my eye, I end up loving the film). One trailer I saw that actually did a superb job was for The Devil Wears Prada. Instead of a mashup collage of highlight scenes, the trailer was just three-to-five minutes lifted straight from the film, the scene where Anne Hathaway's character first goes into the Runway office. You meet all of the principle characters, in proper context, you get to know the protagonist, how she feels about fashion, what kind of person she is, what kind of people she's up against, and you get an idea of what the plot is going to be. And again, it's about four minutes lifted straight from the film, so you're actually experience, for a short moment, what it feels like to actually watch the movie.

I think demos can be really good at this. Chris mentioned how much he liked the demo for Offspring Fling!, which is really just the tutorial. But it's a good tutorial; there's no hand-holding, you actually solve some puzzles, you learn almost all the mechanics, and get an idea of what you're going to be playing.

There's not really a perfect formula. Sometimes the best way to communicate what makes your game special is with a trailer that highlights what kind of tone and atmosphere you'll have (Sword & Sworcery). Or maybe build some sort of broader context around the game (

). I dunno. There's good trailers. Good demos. Video games. They're cool.

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so i'm having a hard time trying to describe what i'm thinking, so please bear with me!

so dead space 3 uses 'in the air tonight' and gears of war used that minimal 'mad world' cover, both of them heavily featured popular music in an attempt to lend a sense of gravitas to their goofy games.

what other game trailers have attempted to do this? Do any of you feel like it's effective at all? I feel like there have been several but I probably just immediately dismissed them

I believe the thumbs talked about this on a pod not too long ago but it really has to do with the fact that in terms of Gears of War using Mad World it works and it doesn't. Because at the time we as consumers had no real knowledge of how the game played or what it was all about, that trailer sold us (ME) something more. It sold ideas. On the strength of the song it evoked a lot of unearned interest because of what the song and the trailer implied about what WE MIGHT see and experience. The melancholy of the song, having the Dom reach down and investigate a blown up statues head, these things indicate something that wasn't at all what the game was about.

I don't begrudge the people who put that commercial together because they did a hell of a job. It's just that the reality of the game experience was vastly different from what we were being sold. Which in itself is an issue, but something that I'm completely accustomed to.

It is similarly how shitty and dumb and rote (in my view) the halo story is by and large but their commercial offerings hint at something a lot more impressive and interesting.

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I never played the actual final game, but I remember back in the day being fascinated with the progression of Kameo: Elements of Power.

In 2002 Kameo was looking to be a classic platformer set in a charming fantasy world inhabited by singing choreographed tigers. Also there was going to be a variety of playable characters with different powers and stuff? Sounds cool. The opening melody is both classic and a little weird, which is awesome, and there's a catchy battle theme.

Kind of an awkward bit of exposition in this trailer, but all the charming fairy tale stuff is there, you see betrayal, evil being unleashed into the world, and a bunch of cool platforming mechanics with a few cinematic twists. Alright, cool. Someone added some nonsense lyrics to that familiar battle music, which is cool, and though the tone of this trailer is a little darker, there's still some of those chimes of fairy tale magic ringing in the music.

It's an Xbox 360 game now, which means that instead of wearing brightly colored fairy clothes, Cameo is dressed in some kind of huntress warrior thing with a miniskirt and has war paint. Also being on the 360 means that there's a million dudes. At all times. Also everything is really dark for some reason but everything is really shiny. The catchy orchestral melody is still there and it's still a well-done piece, don't get me wrong, I love the composers at Rare, that was the soundtrack of my childhood, but by 2005 overdone orchestral bullshit was at an all-time high, and the charming melodies have been apparently replaced by choirs and dramatic orchestra swells.

Like I said, I never played this game (I never owned an Xbox 360 anyway), but watching the changes happened made me think sad thoughts. Probably they're unjustified, I bet that the game released in 2005 was way better than the builds they were making in 2002, but I still wanted stupid tigers jumping into formation and singing stupid tiger battle songs. That was great. For all I know that actually made it into the final game and I'm an idiot and can't find it.

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I really hate modern video game trailers, most of them, at least a certain genre of games all follow the same formula which was established by Gear's Mad world trailer.

I give credit to the idea of what the mad world trailer did, juxtapose unassuming music to the game and basically sell us a different game tone/mood to the game. Also in terms of song, at least mad world sort of describes what was going on in Gears... at least a shit load more than that Deadspace 3 trailer. There was a short Gears 3 trailer with a poem from Alan Seeger and it essentially was trying the same thing and thought it worked.

What annoyed me the most about Deadspace 3 trailer was it sounds like a shitty cover and juxtaposition is fine, it's just that had f#$%ing nothing to do with anything in Deadspace, it's just piss poor editing that makes it feel like they animated the trailer then found some random piece of music to set it to. The editing doesn't match up with anything and the context of the song has no relation to the product they are selling.

I'm sure I made that same rant on this forum about another game that did the same thing. It's just a tired formula for game advertisement as much as the roaring whatever was/is; but if you're going to do it, at least edit the cinematography to the song.

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I always really liked this Halo 3 trailer, just really well cut gameplay footage showing off everything new about the game and setting the tone perfectly, it did way more to get me interested than any of the other elaborate marketing around the game. I mean, and i was going in really skeptical, i thought Halo 2 sucked.

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I was kind of disappointed in Twilight Princess for not living up to what I expected from the E3 2004 trailer. Which I know is totally stupid but my expectation was that there'd be battles on horseback and night raids and cool interesting monsters all over the place. There was that one scene where you chased people around Hyrule field which was okay but it honestly made the field feel smaller, since it was just trotting around old terrain in circles. I wanted battles to be exciting feel big and important, and then they turned out, as usual, to be the thing that gets in the way of solving puzzles, which is fine but not what I hoped for. I have no idea how my conceptions would have worked or have been any fun, but it didn't feel at all like what I hoped.

Twilight Princess disappointed me in a lot of dumb ways really. Eh.

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I really hate the Call of Duty trailers that are "real" people playing the game and constantly one-upping each other. The fact that they don't show gameplay doesn't bother me, but the idea that the entire game seems to be populated by assholes who like nothing better than to show off how good they are makes me not want to play the game at all. I'm not saying the game actually is that way (I wouldn't know, I don't play CoD) but the trailers sure make it seem like it.

On the other hand, I really like the trailer FreddieW made for Battlefield 3. It also has "real" people and no gameplay but seems much more representative of what actually happens in the game and shows a fun and hilarious scenario. I don't play that game either, but if I had to choose based solely on the trailers, I'd pick BF3 just because it says "hey, look at this fun thing you can do" instead of "come play our game and get constantly killed by douchebags".

Sorry for lack of video evidence, the filters at work won't let me view YouTube. I'll post links later.

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I really hate the Call of Duty trailers that are "real" people playing the game and constantly one-upping each other. The fact that they don't show gameplay doesn't bother me, but the idea that the entire game seems to be populated by assholes who like nothing better than to show off how good they are makes me not want to play the game at all. I'm not saying the game actually is that way (I wouldn't know, I don't play CoD) but the trailers sure make it seem like it.

On the other hand, I really like the trailer FreddieW made for Battlefield 3. It also has "real" people and no gameplay but seems much more representative of what actually happens in the game and shows a fun and hilarious scenario. I don't play that game either, but if I had to choose based solely on the trailers, I'd pick BF3 just because it says "hey, look at this fun thing you can do" instead of "come play our game and get constantly killed by douchebags".

Sorry for lack of video evidence, the filters at work won't let me view YouTube. I'll post links later.

Call Of Duty

Battlefield 3 (with intro from FreddieW, skip to 18s for trailer)

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FreddieW and others make me really optimistic. It's exciting that we have talented productive filmmakers who play and understand video games and are able to draw from their experience meaningfully, both from understanding what it's like to play games as well as what it's like to be a person who likes games, both of which have been hilariously terribly portrayed for years (Spy Kids 3D, The Wizard respectively)

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I disagree. And I realize that COD trailers have gotten some heat recently because they are advertising 'war is fun' but really, that is what they're doing intentionally. I'm not the biggest fan of the series but I think they are selling a very specific image and it works. I think they're bombastic in a way that I totally understand why swaths of the fanbase would eat up.

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This is still my favourite commercial ever made.

Huh. Games as drugs. I know it's an old trope but playing it that straight just seems a bit crass, what with the specious links made recently between gaming and other social ills. Do we really want gaming to be seen in that light? I know it's just some oblivious marketing drone's brain fart, but it still rankles.

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