• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

AegonSnake

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,566
EA claimed during that E3 it was running on Xbox One X. They were actually given an opportunity to clarify to Digital Foundry if the footage was truly Xbox One X and not PC, EA insisted it was Xbox One X, forcing Digital Foundry to update their reporting.
maybe it was running on the Xbox One X media player.
 

Taker34

QA Tester
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,122
building stone people
Everyone does it, but they should stop doing it. You know what the hardware specs are, you know what you're working with, just be more honest. There's having to make changes during development and then there is "YOLO we know we'll never be able to do this render, but put it out anyway to get cheers at E3"
Then you still don't understand what vertical slices and most reveal trailers are all about. First off all they provide some sort of guideline / proof of concept in terms of visuals and gameplay loop/mechanics/structure - whatever. Ideally you want to get as close as possible to that idea but realistically a lot of stuff will be dialed back and cut. Sometimes it's material for shareholders or the publisher to seek funding but we're focusing on Anthem now.
So thanks to the enormous marketing machinery required for AAA titles, EA probably wanted to show something early on for E3 and the rest is history. In the end the marketing folks decide when something is being shown, even if it's just the game logo.
Though what I would say to OP is including Killzone 2 is just a bit unfair. That was straight up next-level bullshit.
Absolutely, that was something else to say the least.
The question and answer by the dev was:
"Is the [gameplay] we've seen so far still representative of the game?" His question stemming from a trend of titles downgrading game visuals compared to when they were first announced. The first half of Holmes' response, a brief "Yep!," was exciting to hear.

So they didn't "literally say it won't be downgraded". As far as I know Anthem is representative of what we saw in the trailer, albeit not without differences.
 
Last edited:

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
I think the mod need to change the title Killzone 2 as nothing to do with Anthem demo, it is vertical slice against true gameplay. A better question would be do we need to change how the game are presented maybe Nintendo direct presentation are the best way to go and show a game when it is ready...
 

Jeronimo

Member
Nov 16, 2017
2,377
So that's why people were so hyped for it. The co-op focus didn't interest me so I never really followed any of the news.

You can tell they tried hard to blur the lines between how the game would actually play and look and how they wanted it to.
 
Oct 25, 2017
8,257
The Cyclone State
You may end up being right OP, however:
1. The game is not out yet.
2. The VIP demo had issues that BioWare is fixing (apparently).

I'll wait for the full release to verify. Graphically the game looks like the reveal, so it beats Watch Dogs at that.
 

EvilBoris

Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
Verified
Oct 29, 2017
16,678
I think it's pretty representative of how the game looks and plays..
 

Deleted member 888

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,361
Then you still don't understand what vertical slices and most reveal trailers are all about. First off all they provide some sort of guideline / proof of concept in terms of visuals and gameplay loop/mechanics/structure - whatever. Ideally you want to get as close as possible to that idea but realistically a lot of stuff will be dialed back and cut. Sometimes it's material for shareholders or the publisher to seek funding but we're focusing on Anthem now.
So thanks to the enormous marketing machinery required for AAA titles, EA probably wanted to show something early on for E3 and the rest is history. In the end the marketing folks decide when something is being shown, even if it's just the game logo.

Absolutely, that was something else to say the least.

Okay, but, the framing and presentation of them is always "hey look, running on real hardware/real-time!".

The misleading entry into setting expectations is done on purpose to woo at game shows. That ends up causing the mess at the other end when the devs and pubs know for a fact this is not running as is, with the end product, on consoles. Or heck, sometimes even PCs can't manage the heights of the vertical slice.

Buyers expect changes and often some downgrades or compromises, but the extent to which some slices are framed and presented can't be blamed on the greater community when the YouTube comparisons are done 12~36 months later.

Yes, sometimes things like puddle-gate are petty bullshit, but other times you can't just say "vertical slice!" to defend the heights of some of the things displayed at E3/wherever else. You have to know fine well as a developer at that moment you are never meeting that expectation on a console, or coming close.
 
Last edited:

SweetNicole

The Old Guard
Member
Oct 24, 2017
6,542
Really now? It's false advertisement, no matter how you slice it, and there are companies far more guilty of it than others in this industry. DOOM or Mario Odyssey never looked better in trailers than in actual gameplay.

The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.
 

Pat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
612
If you put aside the trailer high level of graphics and the UI (which looks nice in the trailer, I wonder why they changed it), it is representative of how you play the game.

Killzone 2 was something totally different.
 

Firefly

Member
Jul 10, 2018
8,615
I'm saying at the time it was presented it was running on a PC then scaled down to fit on consoles which ultimately meant the now current PC version would look just like the consoles.
Oh.
But as someone has posted earlier in this thread, an official statement was given insisting that its running real time on Xbox One X.
 

The Letter C

Alt account
Banned
Aug 1, 2018
234
Bioware hasn't made a good game since mass effect 2... Imo of course. And before that the last good title was KOTOR.

Really spotty studio.
 

Wamb0wneD

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
18,735
The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.
Nobody forces them to display graphics that are not doable on consoles in their vertical slices. They know the specs of these things for years now. This isn't about games shown being "complete", it's about them showing stuff to entice people that won't be in the final game. I'm understanding quite well, thank you.

Most developers engage in the practice of having vertical slices. A lot of them don't resort to false advertising while doing so.
 

MillionIII

Banned
Sep 11, 2018
6,816
The question and answer by the dev was:
"Is the [gameplay] we've seen so far still representative of the game?" His question stemming from a trend of titles downgrading game visuals compared to when they were first announced. The first half of Holmes' response, a brief "Yep!," was exciting to hear.

So they didn't "literally say it won't be downgraded". As far as I know Anthem is representative of what we saw in the trailer, albeit not without differences.
The AI doesn't work like in the e3 demo, even from a gameplay perspective it looks worse, they showed a living breathing world with enemies going about their day and in the demo all I saw was enemies standing around not doing anything or straight up disappearing.
 

Taker34

QA Tester
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,122
building stone people
Okay, but, the framing and presentation of them is always "hey look, running on real hardware/real-time!".

The misleading entry into setting expectations is done on purpose to woo at game shows. That ends up causing the mess at the other end when the devs and pubs know for a fact this is not running as is, with the end product, on consoles. Or heck, sometimes even PCs can't manage the heights of the vertical slice.

Buyers expect changes and often some downgrades or compromises, but the extent to which some slices are framed and presented can't be blamed on the greater community when the YouTube comparisons are done 12~36 months later.

Yes, sometimes things like puddle-gate are petty bullshit, but other times you can't just say "vertical slice!" to defend the heights of some of the things displayed at E3/wherever else. You have to know fine well as a developer at that moment you are never meeting that expectation on a console, or coming close.
Fair enough, I understand what you mean. To me that's just bad communication and overzealous marketing at worst. I personally don't feel deceived unless something like the Destiny reveal happens where I feel like we only got 20% of their envisioned game.
 

Ferrs

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
18,829
The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.

I think the problem is that some vertical slices are so overdone and clearly out of what consoles can do.

Like almost all games got downgraded and it's something expected, but it's not the same a game that gets toned down in lighting or textures than what we see in the first Anthem trailer where it's lighting, texture, geometry, AI, animals running around, more complex collision with the scenery... I mean I very much doubt that was running on an X when they did that even though they claimed it.

Downgrades are expected by everyone nowadays but I think you gotta be more careful with what you show.
 

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.

This, while factually accurate, somehow sounds like, "oh well, it is what it is".



Well to be fair they never state "on consoles".
I mean they probably weren't lying, just that it's on a high end dev PC and a custom build of the game to show it off.

https://youtu.be/zQhbHwkMSA4
 

Deleted member 888

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,361
Fair enough, I understand what you mean. To me that's just bad communication and overzealous marketing at worst. I personally don't feel deceived unless something like the Destiny reveal happens where I feel like we only got 20% of their envisioned game.

This, while factually accurate, somehow sounds like, "oh well, it is what it is".

https://youtu.be/zQhbHwkMSA4

Yeah Taker I mean stuff that is more outwith the realms of reasonable. Puddlegate and gamers zooming in on textures of socks, door knobs and some shadows and flipping their shit isn't reasonable.

Presenting something as running on an Xbox One X and then it's quite different is going to cause a bit more of a ruckus. What was shown at E3 for Anthem, running on an Xbox One X, isn't even matched by a PC (as far as I can see). Devs must have known this render was simply outside the realms of achievable on the One X.

Then obviously your Aliens Colonial Marines is up there as some of the most deceiving you can get besides Watchdogs. Killzone 2 still has that top spot because of how bad of a lie it was, irrespective of how good Killzone 2 ended up looking for a PS3. So comparing Killzone 2 to others is just unfair.
 

spad3

Member
Oct 30, 2017
7,121
California
I'll be honest here, the visuals are pretty close to what was shown, but the hub area in the beginning was no where near as bustling or interactive as it was shown to be here. The game world itself has far less polish and far less liveliness than what was shown.

Generally speaking, if the initial showing was Anthem at 100% (as in 100% of what they were aiming the game to be, not 100% as in 100% complete by any means), the demo was at about a 75%.
 

Noodle

Banned
Aug 22, 2018
3,427
The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.

1. "Everyone does [crappy business practice]" has never been a good excuse.

2. There are different levels of misleading game reveals and it's wrong to equate them as all the same. There's downsampling from super-high resolutions and cranking stuff like the screen space reflections, and then there's stuff like No Man's Sky. I don't recall Mass Effect or Battlefield having as nearly a big a gulf between reveal and actual product.

3. This isn't a case of the game being incomplete and them having to fill the gaps with what they might think the final product will be like. Compressing a quest/dungeon down to 3 minute cliffnotes, scripted moments like wildlife appearances rather than random encounters, scene-specific animations - those are aspects of a vertical slice. This is going out of their way to make the graphics better than the hardware had any chance of supporting for a marketing benefit.
 

Shpeshal Nick

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,856
Melbourne, Australia
Am I missing seomthing? That isn't far off what I've been paying th past few days. I don't get it. Just because the foliage isn't quite as dense?

Killzone 2 and Watch Dogs were straight up CG
 

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,647
Am I missing seomthing? That isn't far off what I've been paying th past few days. I don't get it. Just because the foliage isn't quite as dense?

Killzone 2 and Watch Dogs were straight up CG

I think it's mostly about the first two minutes of the trailer set in the hub world than the gameplay proper.
 

Crayon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,580
I watched some of that gameplay demo and I was left far from impressed by the graphics.
 

Cripterion

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,104
Haha while it looks good the city's graphical effects are definitely scaled back, didn't such amazing animations from mobs, the landscape shot from outside looks crazy good in this video and no loading screens!

Also the UI seemed and audio seemed way better too.

They pulled the same thing as the inital trailer for the Division basically...
 
Last edited:
Apr 25, 2018
1,651
Rockwall, Texas
Then you still don't understand what vertical slices and most reveal trailers are all about. First off all they provide some sort of guideline / proof of concept in terms of visuals and gameplay loop/mechanics/structure - whatever. Ideally you want to get as close as possible to that idea but realistically a lot of stuff will be dialed back and cut. Sometimes it's material for shareholders or the publisher to seek funding but we're focusing on Anthem now.
So thanks to the enormous marketing machinery required for AAA titles, EA probably wanted to show something early on for E3 and the rest is history. In the end the marketing folks decide when something is being shown, even if it's just the game logo.

Absolutely, that was something else to say the least.

The question and answer by the dev was:
"Is the [gameplay] we've seen so far still representative of the game?" His question stemming from a trend of titles downgrading game visuals compared to when they were first announced. The first half of Holmes' response, a brief "Yep!," was exciting to hear.

So they didn't "literally say it won't be downgraded". As far as I know Anthem is representative of what we saw in the trailer, albeit not without differences.

Then stop putting that little blurb on the video about "running in realtime on real hardware, etc.". THAT'S the deceptive part that's done on purpose to wow the crowds and you can spin it all you want but it needs to stop.
 

MotionBlue

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
738
The thing you have to understand is almost every game developer engages in this practice. Vertical slices are the standard in the industry, as much as people hate them. No game is ever "complete" when being shown at E3.
It is pretty odd how often and regularly it happens. Why hasn't consumer rights watchdogs or government agencies looked at it?
 

zombiejames

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,912
2019-01-2602_14_42-andwkdp.png


anthemdemo_2019_01_256xj3z.png
Not the exact same locations but the difference in lighting and physics objects density is particularly egregious. Don't know why people are defending this as "lol, it's your fault for not knowing demos are total lies".

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAm8eNl1iD8
Yup, this is pretty drastic. I wouldn't put it on the same level as Killzone 2 (that thing was 100% CG, after all) but it's right up there with Watch Dogs. Maybe worse since it seems EA didn't learn anything from the backlash Ubisoft got. This is really bad.
 

Leo-Tyrant

Member
Jan 14, 2019
5,072
San Jose, Costa Rica
Not the exact same locations but the difference in lighting and physics objects density is particularly egregious. Don't know why people are defending this as "lol, it's your fault for not knowing demos are total lies".

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAm8eNl1iD8

I always knew that it was not going to look like that. Just the lightning and level of detail was a clear indicator.

I also think that the demo is very close to the overall vibe of the initial presentation. I think it still looks good but ...yeah, seeing your comparison made the differences much more clear. Thank you.

Still, this is not like KZ2, that was CGI. And the actual game in here looks very good, compared to the terrible IQ of Watchdogs.
 

Salty Rice

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,612
Pancake City
Yeah the moment i saw the reveal trailer i knew that its not gonna be nowhere close to it.

But the difference between the trailer hub and the real hub is just ooof.
 
Oct 29, 2017
5,354
Not the exact same locations but the difference in lighting and physics objects density is particularly egregious. Don't know why people are defending this as "lol, it's your fault for not knowing demos are total lies".

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif

giphy.gif
giphy.gif


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAm8eNl1iD8

While I don't think the actual footage on the right looks "bad" by any means, the differences are pretty egregious. Vertical-slice demos are almost always "if we had infinite money and time" targets, which is shitty because that's all people have to go on.
 

haradaku7

Member
May 28, 2018
1,816
Yeah I hadn't watched any trailers since the reveal and was ready to be blown away......

not like this bioware....please.
 
Oct 27, 2017
5,618
Spain
Then stop putting that little blurb on the video about "running in realtime on real hardware, etc.". THAT'S the deceptive part that's done on purpose to wow the crowds and you can spin it all you want but it needs to stop.
Honestly, I don't see how anybody could possibly believe that gameplay was real. It boggles my mind. It was so obviously faked, the animation was fake beyond belief, with CGI-like quality and downright choreographed, the crowd system in that video was above anything a team of humans could craft in a lifetime and beyond the amount of animations that could be implemented in a lifetime, the open world streaming and scripting was beyond anything the Frostbite engine has been known to produce, and it comes from the developer and publisher that gave us Mass Effect Andromeda, the game so bad, janky and broken it became a meme, also after a beautiful and faked presentation.

Seriously, if anyone believed that demo was real, it's entirely on them.
As for the final game, I don't know why anyone would want to buy it when Warframe scratches the same itch, for free.
 

gcwy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,685
Houston, TX
It doesn't matter if people know they're bullshit, they shouldn't do these in the first place.

This just in: heavily polished, vertical slices designed specifically for a single press event and nothing else rarely turn out to be indicative of the final product.
It's misleading, and posts like this that seem to be trying to justify them aren't helpful either.
 

Waaghals

Member
Oct 27, 2017
856
You need to rewatch that Killzone 2 announcement trailer...


Edit:
So I'll elaborate on what I said:
The Anthem trailer looks about as good as the game running on ultra on pc.

The difference is in the density of effects and assets. Essentially it runs at in game cinematic levels of detail, but is very much seems to be the game engine running.

The same can be said for Watchdogs, though it was certainly worse and here you could talk about false advertising.
There can be many reasons for this, maybe they couldn't get a stable framerate, or maybe it was just too labor intensive to build the whole game to that level.

The Killzone 2 trailer isn't Killzone 2, it is a proof-of-concept CGI cinematic probably made by the same guys who made KZ1's intro.
The geometric detail, the high resolution volumetric effects and the insane texture quality wasn't possible on any system back then, and certainly not the PS3.
The "demo" was never a game, it was never a game engine, it was never running at 2fps on a devkit or anything like that.

In conclusion, The cutbacks seen on Anthem and Watchdogs are reasonable given time constraints and the need to have a similar product on all platforms.
The KZ2 demo was just fantasy.

(I would like to add that I very much liked KZ2, and that it was a fantastically good looking game when it launched).
 
Last edited: