Stuff That Sucks: Pre-rendered CGI game trailers
Reveal trailers nowadays offer a lot of cool CGI, intense battle scenes, and visual eye candy. What they all-too-often don't offer is actual gameplay and that's the subject of this week's Stuff That Sucks.
Game reveals are exciting. They give people an opportunity to get excited for the next big thing, whether it's a whole new property or a sequel to a favorite classic. So imagine the disappointment that those same people start to feel when they see that the entire reveal trailer is just a pre-rendered trailer? Sure, it looks pretty and all, but there's no way that it will be indicative of the final product.
For this week's "Stuff That Sucks," Greg takes a look at pre-rendered CGI trailers. And yes, he starts with the recent Star Wars Battlefront reveal, noting its coolness, but also its lack of gameplay. From there, he expands into what's become a trend in gaming, with more games relying on CGI footage that will inevitably fail to match the eventual game itself. Check out the full video below.
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replyShack Staff posted a new article, Stuff That Sucks: Pre-rendered CGI game trailers
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Yeah, I don't agree with this. CGI trailers are awesome IMO. I love a trailer that is pretty, and gives me a glimpse into the world I will be playing in. I do think we're reaching a point where CGI trailers are less needed as graphics improve though. BUT-GAMEPLAY TRAILERS ARE BORING. WATCHING SOMEONE PLAY THE GAME IN A TRAILER IS BORING. Going back to your 'burger' example-if restaurants showed you the actual burger you'll be buying in a commercial...would you really want it? Would you really be all that excited to try it???
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I don't know if I'd compare a let's play to a gameplay trailer...kinda different. I was actually thinking that if I wanted to see gameplay, I'd go to Youtube and watch a let's play video. A trailer should get you excited to play the game, don't you think? But personally I can't stand those gameplay trailers where there's a narrator saying 'watch as the player uses this new feature we've added to the game! Isn't that cool to watch someone else do these things?' NO! Not in a trailer! Here's an example of the terrible trailers I'm thinking of:
The crew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZXV-2gnRw4
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CGI Trailers are fine so long as they don't try to pass it off as real gameplay.
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The Assassin's Creed trailers (for the Ezio Trilogy) that were CGI do well to tease the setting and gameplay elements that end up in the game.
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And I think that's my main issue with CGI trailers,a lot of times the DO try to pass them off as actual gameplay,and when they don't,they still don't show you any gameplay whatsoever.
I couldn't care less about a pre-rendered CGI trailer,because that's not what I'll be playing.It's a total bait and switch to just get people lathered up for a game.
Batman did it perfectly combining the two to give us that great cinematic feel,while including the actual gameplay that we want to see.
I've hated these full CGI trailers for quite a long time now and I'm glad that someone has finally brought it up.
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It sucks a lot in 3 screen set ups where the game is fixed to the horizontal resolution instead of vertical. In horizontal the video is stretched to the left and right edge so the top and bottom thirds are cropped out. Borderlands 2 had this. When tied to a vertical resolution, it ends up filling the center screen only and the left and right screen just gets blacked out and in some cases not blacked out so you see the game loading assets or whatever is happening behind the scenes.
The latter is much more bearable but in an in-engine cutscenes it sometimes breaks the cutscenes because you can see the assets being loaded ahead of time or paused waiting for a cue/trigger.
Some games do it best like the Assassin's Creed series where they black out the side monitors as needed. -
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I love them for setting the tone of the fiction. Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are two of my favorites.
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I've always enjoyed Blizzard's pre-rendered teasers. They used to blow my mind as a kid, and got me really excited for the game.
I agree that pre-rendered stuff passed off as gameplay sucks though.-
Blizzards pre-rendered stuff is always fun and usually really really high quality stuff. It helps that they really haven't, at least in my memory, tried to do anything with it other than teasers.
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They use it for more than teasers. They use it in all of their games (well, the RTS's anyway - don't know about the others), and to great effect.
Warcraft 3 had some great cinematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkiJXnSRM8
And the Starcraft cinematics have always helped provide a nice sense of scale for the stuff that happens in game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbeoSPqRs4-
I've played pretty much every Blizzard game. I was refering to their trailers, as the OP was focused on.
They do great ingame cinematic stuff too. I love their stuff all around.
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I hope you are not talking about intro CGI that plays in the beginning of games. Some of those are bad ass. Everything Blizzard has done is excellent and the Dawn of War intro movie got me so pumped to play the game and get into the lore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFkFo5SBx-g-
Yeah, I love pre-rendered in game cinematics. There have been some really memorable ones over the years. Hell, the Dawn of War intro cinematic not only got me interested in that game, it got me interested in WH40K in general!
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I wish all pre-rendered CGI in video games would die, not just the trailers.
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I think when the studios market it as "The world premier trailer will be shown on X date" and then its pre-rendered CGI crap, I'm not ok with that. However if they said "Here's a glimpse of what the action will be like, not necessarily look like", that's better. Branding it as gameplay is wrong.
