Summary
If there’s anything that years of watching gaming showcases has taught me, it’s that you shouldnevertrust a cinematic trailer. I hate to say it, but I actively refuse to get invested in a game until I see what the gameplay looks like – before then, I simply do not care. My eyes glaze over. I start getting distracted by my housemates’ cats, or the smell of food wafting from the house next door. I am the opposite of locked in.
It hasn’t always been this way. I used to be the kind of sucker who would see a cinematic trailer with zero gameplay and think, “Oh my god, this is going to be so good”. I figured if theconceptand thestorywere good, the execution couldn’t be too far off in quality. I’ve since been jaded by the number of games I’ve played that seemed cool in theory, but ended up just being mid.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Edenis a great example: the story looked well-written and moving, but the short snippets of gameplay provided were brief enough that players couldn’t tell that the combat felt unwieldy and plodding.
Cinematic Trailers Don’t Show You What A Game Feels Like
That’s the main thing about cinematic trailers: they don’t show you what it’s like to actually play the game. If it’s an open-world game, a trailer that cobbles together compelling cutscenes doesn’t represent what actually moving through the world feels like, nor will it show you how full or empty that open world feels. A cinematic can’t show you what combat truly feels like, it can only render what the developer hopes you will feel when you play the game.
By nature, it can’t show you what the game will feel like as a sum of its parts, which is really the only thing about a game that matters. You can’t play a game without interacting with its core mechanics, and how can you decide if a game is worth caring about without seeing those crucial parts of the game? When I wrote about howpeople shouldn’t be pre-ordering Star Wars Outlaws, one of the reasons I cited was that at that point, we hadn’t even seen gameplay for the game. I still stand by that – there is really no way to tell if a game will be appealing to you or not without seeing extended gameplay.
Now that we have seen some gameplay ofStar Wars Outlawsat theUbisoftForward, and what we’ve seen seems largely lacklustre with brief moments of potential, I feel vindicated.
They Show You Cinematics When There’s Nothing Else To Show
Another reason I dislike cinematic trailers is that, when released without an accompanying gameplay trailer, they often indicate that a developer is trying to drum up hype without actually having a finished game yet. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory – sometimes, these trailers servemore as recruitment ads for developers than teases for players, but it’s kind of weird to use a fan-centred event for that. But most of the time it’s also an attempt to kickstart the hype cycle before there’s a finished product to market at all, and the vague, cinematic trailers we’re offered that don’t actually tell us anything about the game apart from that it’s theoretically in the works are that way because there isn’t a working game yet.
How many times have we seen a trailer announcing a game just for it to disappear for years, or even entirely, because of issues during development? Star Wars Eclipse was announced in 2021 with aconcept trailer, not even a real cinematic. TheKnights of the Old Republic Remakewas announced the same year, also with a brief cinematic. ThePerfect Darkremake, before this year’s trailer, had gone totally silent since its 2020 announcement.Fablewas announced officially at the 2020 Xbox Games Showcase, and we only started to see cinematic trailers last year, let alone any gameplay.
None of these games had any gameplay, because when they were announced, they weren’t complete games as much as they were games intheory. This doesn’t doom a game, by any means – Perfect Dark is a great example of how to come back from the supposed dead, since it blasted back on the scene with a sick trailer full of compelling gameplay. But what if it hadn’t? It’s all too easy for games to get cancelled because their entire studio got shuttered or shareholders weren’t happy with the product, especially in this economic climate. I don’t trust a cinematic trailer at all, because it usually means the game isn’t anywhere close to being ready for release.
So while I’ve been enjoying the weekend’s showcases, I am unfortunately unmoved by any trailer that hasn’t shown me what it’s like to actually play the game. SorryState of Decay 3, no gameplay, no care. Sorry Fable, I still don’t care. SorryDragon Age: The Veilguard, I’ll need to see that gameplay trailer before I let myself get excited, though I’ve heard good things through the grapevine. SorryIndiana Jones and the Great Circle, I only care a little bit, because I’m not sure how true the gameplay trailer is to the feeling of actually playing it.
Yes, give me cinematic trailers because vibes are important, but make sure there’s a decent chunk of gameplay in there. Otherwise, it’s not a trailer for a game, it’s a trailer for an idea of what the game will be.
