Please note that I still trust Silicon Knights to make a good game, but I’m worried about Too Human. I downloaded the trailer last night, and I’ve seen the offscreen gameplay video circulating the internet. Right now, it doesn’t look too compelling. I’ve read decent—if brief—accounts that say it’s pretty good, but the trailers definitely don’t show it. I fear this may be the developer’s inability to make a good trailer though. Just like movies, great games can have bad trailers and vice versa.
That got me to thinking last night. You always hear people saying that trailers or commercials should show more gameplay. That’s BS. If you want proof, just look at any message board mentioning MGS4 and see what you find. There hasn’t been a single screenshot of actual gameplay yet, but people are frothing at the mouth to play MGS4. Why? Because the trailer sets the mood. That’s more important than most people realize. Check out the original teaser trailer for Too Human. Now watch the new gameplay trailer. Tell me which one you’d rather play.
I realize this is just semantics. It’s a good game or it isn’t. I personally believe that Silicon Knights are going to make a kick ass game. I’m just talking about mood here.
A trailer is a hook, not a tech demo. I think a lot of the fanboys don’t realize this. Even with Kojima’s “real-time” demo, he wasn’t controlling snake, it was just moving the camera around on a frozen frame.
A couple of good questions to pose are: how many movies have you seen because the trailer grabbed your interest? How many of those ended up being a waste of your 2 hours?