I Don't Want To See Trailers Unless There's Gameplay

Summary

Never trust a cinematic trailer. I, personally, refuse to even get excited for a game until I've seen at least a few minutes of uninterrupted gameplay.
Cinematic trailers simply can't give you an accurate vision of what the game feels like to play.
Also, studios usually give you cinematics when there isn't even a playable game yet, so you're probably going to get hyped up for a game that might only materialise in a couple of years, if ever.

If there’s anything that years of watching gaming showcases has taught me, it’s that you should never trust 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 the concept and the story were good, the execution couldn’t be too far off in qualit☂y. I’ve since been jaded by the number of games I’ve played that sജeemed cool in theory, but ended up just being mid.

isಌ a great example: the story looked well-written and moving, b𝕴ut 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 ꦚfull 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 how peop🉐le shouldn’t be pre-ordering Star Wars Outlaws, one of the reasons I cited was that at that point, we hadn’t even seen gamep✃lay 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 of at the Forward, and what we’ve seen seems largely lacklustre with brief mome🉐nts 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 serve more as recruitment ads f๊or 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&rs🅘quo;☂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 a concept trailer, not even a real cinematic. The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Knights of the Old Republic Remake was announced the same year, also with a brief cinematic. The remake, before this year’s trailer, had gone totally silent since its 2020 announcement. was 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 in theory. 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 compel📖ling 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. Sorꦆry , no gameplay, no care. Sorry Fable, I still don’t care. Sorry , I’ll need to see that gameplay trailer before I let myself get ꦑexcited, though I’ve heard good things through the grapevine. Sorry , 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.