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What were your favorite bullshot trailers?
- Thread starter Gentlemen
- Start date
I was 12 in 2005, and I believed every god damn thing Sony showed for the PS3. Motorstorm, Killzone, F1. All of it.
The only one I didn't believe from that era was the Red Steel trailer. The super stiff way the camera and reticle moved was a dead giveaway. Oh, and the bit where the dude looks behind him at the wall where you just shot. Yeah, no, AI/animation wasn't gonna be that good on an overclocked GameCube.
I still quite enjoyed Red Steel for what it was, but holy shit. How did they get away with this?
The only one I didn't believe from that era was the Red Steel trailer. The super stiff way the camera and reticle moved was a dead giveaway. Oh, and the bit where the dude looks behind him at the wall where you just shot. Yeah, no, AI/animation wasn't gonna be that good on an overclocked GameCube.
I still quite enjoyed Red Steel for what it was, but holy shit. How did they get away with this?
Not sure if TV adverts count as a trailer but I'll always remember that the Call of Duty 2 advertising was so misleading they not only got banned but they actually set a precedent from the ASA that future TV ads had to make state if games weren't using in-game footage.
OP, You are totally wrong about 8 days. There were so many videos about the game after it got canned showing more of the gameplay and all fo them shwoed very advanced graphics, physics and everything exceeding the trailer. The game was real and it could have ended up looking even better than the first trailer if it was fully completed. The problem si that the whole studio got buried sadly alongside Getaway 3 too.
It's entirely possible they developed (or at least tried to make) the gameplay functions, but couldn't get it running on hardware.
I fired the game back up just to see how much changed after a recent discussion, and while it is a significant improvement from my last play, key moments in particular still suffer. I believe they just hit a technical wall in their engine with the level of fidelity and functionality they were trying to achieve simultaneously, probably do to with asset streaming.
They cut swappable characters down to occasional combined attacks at initial release. Level loading for the "city" areas was far too frequent even with all they cut and updated even in final release. The story changes weren't really different enough to warrant these scripted scenarios being cut, so we wound up with tangents and truncations.
They were plenty willing to add more cutscenes, and different types of gameplay, but were still not able to overcome those hurdles like Altissia.
Furthermore it just was not worth the 3 year wait or additional DLC cost for it to even get to this point. And apparently the MP mode was already shut down a couple years ago.
The hardware and leadership swaps clearly caused issues with the development timelines for this game, but they have been given time and money since. 10 million copies + DLC and 3 years of updates means their vision probably never was going to be fulfilled on 8th gen hardware.
I'm getting the same vibes from this here. But, the KH3 team was actually pretty close to delivering the gameplay equivalent of their cinematic. lighting still looks a little more clean than I would expect.
Thanks BTW, completely missed this announcement.
Ghost of Tsushima absolutely does not look as good as that debut trailer which was in-engine.
It looks magnificent. Maybe not 1:1 but bullshit is exaggeration.
Eight Days looked ridiculous when the trailer was first shown, but now it's kinda "that's just Uncharted"
And then I look at the Motorstorm trailer and wow, I hope some day we get games as cool as the ones Sony claimed they already had 15 years ago
And then I look at the Motorstorm trailer and wow, I hope some day we get games as cool as the ones Sony claimed they already had 15 years ago
Literally nothing in this trailer is in the final game.
Not even simple stuff like Cor and Noctis exchanging a few words on the cliff overlooking Insomnia. In the final product that's handled as a cell phone call.
I like XV and the Royal Edition fixed even more about it, but the Versus XIII trailers and even this XV debut re-titling trailer are some wild cutting-room-floor stuff.
I still remember posters in like 2008 and for years afterward swearing up and down that the revealed real Killzone 2 looked "just as good" or "even better" than the CG concept video. Bonus points if they posted that image comparison of the first E3 real time trailer version of intro alongside the final game to try and pretend that the first one was the 2005 video.
How has the Dead Island announcement trailer not been mentioned yet?
What's amazing about this trailer is that I don't think I've ever seen a second of Dead Island gameplay footage, but this trailer was a whole thing when it came out.
What's amazing about this trailer is that I don't think I've ever seen a second of Dead Island gameplay footage, but this trailer was a whole thing when it came out.
Wasn't even close on an xbox one X.
Even if you discard the differences in graphics the features shown in that game never made it to the retail release. The quick look at the arm to access the inventory, the collection of physical items from the shelves once in the building, and the opening of a lock box to grab a physical weapon for inspection followed by walking out and using that weapon.
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This is such a great trailer for such a completely forgettable game, it's like they put all their budget towards this instead of actual development.
But then... Once you get past the technical competency and pathos of it it's... pretty tasteless? Not on the level of the bloody disembodied bikini babe bust that you could get for pre-ordering, but having a trailer open on an extreme close-up of a dead child's eye and then rewinding through them being thrown out a skyscraper window is... The people who made this had obvious talent and put obvious effort into it, but that kind of just makes it weirder, somehow? It's manipulative, is maybe the best word I can come up with for what I'm trying to articulate.
[Begrudingly] Fiiiinnnneeeee...
But, god, I forgot about "A World of the VERSUS epic."
Nomura really couldn't let Versus XIII go, could he?
Oh, wait...
He REALLY can't let it go.
How Nomura-crazy-conspiracy theory are we getting? Why is "world" capitalized? How long has he had this whole Versus XIII/Quadratum/Verum Rex swerve/do-over in the back of his head?
I don't know who remembers this one, but the Ubisoft game Killing Day (which never came out) had a trailer at E3 2005 that floored me at the time. Looking back at it a few years ago, I noticed how fake it looks in retrospect. The way the camera moves is unnatural for an FPS and it seems obvious now, but at the time I was duped.
These used to be some of my favorite things, forgot how actually far the went at times though… yowza
Right that's all true, I was just talking about the overall feel of the graphics, I guess.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Spaceworld 2000 Zelda demo. They specifically mentioned that it was a tech demo, but it set up expectations for people regardless. When Wind Waker was revealed and then released so many people were absolutely pissed off and thought that "Celda" was an abomination. I personally wasn't one of them, from the day it released it has been one of my favorite games ever. But still, I do think that an N64 style "mature" Zelda with those graphics and art style would be really cool.
I think it wasn't mentioned because the OP said that type of trailer wasn't the intention. I do agree that it's a great trailer though, and what I came in here to post. Far more memorable than the actual game.
Madden is the first one that came to mind. That was like 15+ years ago and it still looks maybe half as good as that original trailer, lol.
You beat me to it, this is what I was searching for to post. But here's the actual 60FPS trailer in 60FPS.
When the next gameplay trailer came out for it and it was choppy as all hell, it broke my heart.
Agreed. This is Square's MO. Granted, they will probably come close to this in the final game. KH3 did the same shit for its reveal, but the target render was fairly restrained and the game ended up looking just as good. Nothing in the KH4 trailer looks outlandish for PS5/XSX.
The thing I always found kinda sad about "Eight Days" was that beta footage of it came out after it was cancelled and it seemed like they were at least *trying* to get it close to that pre-rendered trailer, or at least as close as they realistically could on that hardware. One of those games I still wish had actually come out because it seemed pretty cool but now will be almost entirely just remembered for that goofy E3 trailer.
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Thanks for sharing this, I never saw this... What is also sad is that the gameplay shown is still better than nearly anything else that came out on PS3.
These old hype trailers were fun to rewatch, thanks for the thread Gentlemen ... I remember my friends and I watching a lot of these multiple times back in the day, the night before getting in line for the PS3 launch. Funny how bad they look now.
The "in game" stuff was CG dressed up as gameplay, im not surprised the Altissia content was toned down as it looked a bit much for PS4/XO maybe.
The CG being cut is inexcusable, what a waste of time and money.
Does cut content from the game count as a bullshot? All that Leviathan stuff in Altissia was gonna be in the game.
Although, the reason they cut it was because they couldn't get it running on PS4 hardware, so maybe it does count.
I never hold it against a developer for having to cut content or optimize visuals prior to release.
I always focus on this trailer because it looks like a completely different game that was never going to run on that generation's hardware.
Immediately thought of this, FFXIII:Versus and all the FFXV trailers when seeing the thread. The "gameplay" portions in these trailers are so obviously scripted animations with some QTE fake UI thrown on them. I'm sure KH4 will look good and have dynamic set pieces, but people thinking this is at all live gameplay are fooling themselves.
As someone who is almost obsessively in love with NMS I still long for a game that can fully deliver on the vibe of these trailers. They were so insanely good, but outside the scope the team could deliver. Still a fan of the game we got, but man these trailers just hit different.
I dunno, Sora fighting a black colossus in a completely empty city space with pretty bare textures actually looks LESS ambitious, and more realistic to possible gameplay, than did that last FFXV trailer I posted.
It's not at all something the current consoles couldn't do.
Does the Nintendo ON hoax trailer count? Because that one was mindblowing and still is relative to its time 👀
In terms of fidelity? Sure, I'm confident the final game will look as good or better than that. But in terms of how the fight mechanics, traversal, and interactivity work? I don't believe for a second that anyone is actually playing that.
Not to say what we get in the final game won't have similar QTE's just at this stage of development that's clearly all just scripted animations.
Man, it still hurts to watch those FFXV trailers
I enjoyed the game we got, but I really wanted to see the story in those trailers.
Bioshock Infinite was another big one. Again, I mostly enjoyed the game that we got in the end, but those early trailers were so different. I should've known that shit wasn't possible on PS3/360, though lol
I enjoyed the game we got, but I really wanted to see the story in those trailers.
Bioshock Infinite was another big one. Again, I mostly enjoyed the game that we got in the end, but those early trailers were so different. I should've known that shit wasn't possible on PS3/360, though lol
Not really a "bullshot" but I remember when Dead Island 2 was first getting showed off and the announcement was "First Gameplay Reveal" and this followed:
Honestly, I still think some of these look reasonably close to the final game, at least in terms of the art assets or look like they could have plausibly represented where the game was at the time those trailers were made. In the case of some of them, the game wound up going through another year-plus of development afterwards, and things changed mid-development. Stuff like this is why I'm in favor of devs just not showing anything off at all until the game is basically done, or at least in post-production or something.
To be fair, didn't Sony changing the PS3's GPU later on sort of pull the rug out from under Kojima?
This one probably hurts the most.
To be fair, didn't Sony changing the PS3's GPU later on sort of pull the rug out from under Kojima?