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Most misleading game trailers of all time

ClosBSAS

Member
Yeah, part of me foolishly hopes the next gen version they are playing around with will look closer to this (i know it wont)
i dont get it. the sword of destiny trailer would be the one to look at, not this one...this one looks like the pc version cranked up. dont see how it manages to look misleading compared to the sword of destiny trailer.
 

Fbh

Member
KZ2 for sure, though to be fair I think the final game looks better in many ways.


I don't think it's the worst but just to post something that hasn't been mentioned yet. I was always salty about the early showing of White Knight Chronicles looking cooler than what we got....even though looking at it now it definitely looks like an animation with some hud elements put on top.



It wasn't misleading on purpose. The game just changed direction from xiii versus to xv.

What? yeah that was misleading as hell.
That's not a Versus XIII trailer, that's the trailer they used when they re-revealed it as FFXV.
And literally nothing from the trailer is in the actual game, only some of CG stuff was used in the prologue movie.
 

Ezquimacore

Banned
Kinda famously



Some things were actually improved from this and the game ended up looking damn fine years later, but some of the lighting and volumetric clouds and animations weren't matched in real time for another several years after, the general flow still might not be

Also I for one don't know why Nintendo gets a pass for this, BoTW didn't look like that on either the Wii U this was announced and made for or even the Switch




I'm still a bit sad about that Halo Infinite engine demo, it hinted at so much potential, the end result was a decent game but kind of left you wondering what was going on for the last 7 years

There was plenty of criticism when Aonuma admitted the footage was a "cinematic" and when the game was revealed at the game awards a few months later, maybe you don't remember but in 2014 the game was advertised with low resolution and looked worse than the final product.
 
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I_D

Member
The original trailer for Dark Sector looked fucking awesome, and I'm still pissed that nothing ever came out to replace it.


I guess they ended up scrapping the whole game, or the trailer was all fake, or something to that extent, because the final game looks like a totally unrelated IP.
 

Corndog

Banned
Next time i turn in an incomplete project to my boss im gonna say “well its a ten year project” then everyone will instantly come to my defense, as is what happened with halo
Plenty of people were dissatisfied with the graphics. Why do you think they decided to delay it?
 
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vrhveo.jpg


Damn, just beaten

Very Glad they did this. Would make no sense to give any indication of when Joel would die.

If the trailer only showed him in Jackson the story wouldn't be so shocking as it would be obvious what's coming.

Movies do this as well which I'm good with.


Bioshock infinite would be up there as even though I loved the game and it doesn't match the trailer.
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
This commercial shows a smiling child playing ET for the Atari 2600.

There have been zero reported instances of any child ever smiling while playing this so called game. Fraud.


Dude I played hundreds of smiling hours of ET when it came out. IMO it was pretty much par for the course as far as 2600 games go. If it would have been released with a different character besides ET it would have been just another shovelware Atari game. But I guess if there were a different character Atari wouldn't have dumped all of their money into overselling it and wouldn't have collapsed as soon.

Either way, there were far worse 2600 games that should have killed Atari. This one was average to below average and my friends and I somewhat enjoyed it and did speedruns and stuff.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Lol. The Halo Infinite one is shocking. 2018 trailer shows multiple different biomes, unique wildlife, underwater exploration and lush visuals. Absolutely nothing like what the final product turned out to be. Suppose Covid could be to blame or they just they were way too ambitious. Either way, that trailer gets my vote.

Cyberpunk is also up there.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
The early Shenmue 1 trailers. They were full of spoilers, and made it seem like the game would go much farther along in terms of story.

We barely got
Shenhua, in the game. In fact she was only present in dreams, and the intro
. That was fucked up.
 

Graciaus

Member
I don't know about all time but I remember Tales of Zestiria was marketed as having a specific character as the female lead. But they pulled a switcheroo and she ended up leaving the party early on and wasn't in the game. Japan had a meltdown over it. The game was trash anyway and that was the least of its worries.
 

Quantum253

Member
This immediately comes to mind:


When I seen the thread, PS3 e3 2005 came to mind instantly. So many, "this is all running on hardware and made possible because of Cell." I wanted to believe that Kill Zone and Motorstorm was what I was going to experience. Naive me, but the launch PS3 is still a badass system I still keep around. However, I stopped trusting what a game is going to look like until I see it specifically becuase of that E3 showcase
 

Allandor

Member
I guess almost any game trailer from the 90s would fall in that category as most of them were "CGI" trailers that had nothing todo with the game.
Problem with such trailers was that the tech just wasn't good enough for videos to show actual gameplay. So the trailer wanted more to sell you the feeling/atmosphere of the game
 
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LordOfChaos

Member
There was plenty of criticism when Aonuma admitted the footage was a "cinematic" and when the game was revealed at the game awards a few months later, maybe you don't remember but in 2014 the game was advertised with low resolution and looked worse than the final product.


Even from here you can see how many Wii U features they stripped out for Switch parity though. I also always lol at this video because it seems like there's some not so under the surface competition going on there, "So this will be out next year for sure, right?" "What about Star Fox?" "This must be a dungeon" "Horses don't usually run into trees" lol

Also I dunno, some of that lighting still looks better than what I remember playing on my Wii U
 
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fatmarco

Member
People need to remember that the stuff Sony showed for PS3 before launch, they explicitly lied and said it was all real time, against the wishes of the developers of course. I remember when everyone had the feeling that effectively the 360 was a joke power wise compared to the PS3 because of stuff like that.

Then Resistance 1 and Genji were released, and reality set in.
 
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Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
Lol, this is easy: Dead Island. I thought I was getting an immersive zombie sim, ended up with a looter shooter.
Overkill's The Walking Dead, ditto. It's like they knew exactly what they were doing.
 

TheKratos

Member
More than 20 years later and you guys are still hang up on that? Why does a protagonist switch bother you guys that much? Snake is still in the game.
Wut? I loved MGS2 and liked Raiden, I just wanted MORE of Solid Snake. We got him back in MGS4 as an old dying man and that's basically last time we played as him.

Why is it surprising people want Solid Snake, he's a great character and MGS1 was the first game for many in the metal gear universe so needless to say fans wanted more of him.

Love Raiden all you want but don't act surprised when people want to play as Solid Snake ESPECIALLY when all trailers showed off Snake only.
 

CamHostage

Member


Yeah, in this case sadly gearbox built a high end verticle slice that would only run on super beefy pc’s. Then they outsourced the rest of the game
To a small company named time gate who had to hastily put together a product based off of that verticle slice, it also had to run on the aging xbox 360 and ps3. It doesnt help that gear box took most of the funds that sega gave them for the game and put them towards borderlands 2


And then, a class-action lawsuit was filed against SEGA and Gearbox for false advertising so they had to go to court over it, and THEN, Gearbox somehow wiggled out of the lawsuit while SEGA had to pay out $1.25mil in damages.




One of the few cases where a game maker was actually held accountable for misleading game trailers. (And I'd actually argue that it's one of the few warranted cases where fans deserved retribution. Usually, a game is shown several times after that first "target render" debut look, but Aliens never really had that, "OK, here's our actual product" moment where press was let to play it and a more indicative video runthrough was shown. They did do a tour of the sucky final version , but that was in the final weeks before the game launched.)
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
The original trailer for Dark Sector looked fucking awesome, and I'm still pissed that nothing ever came out to replace it.


I guess they ended up scrapping the whole game, or the trailer was all fake, or something to that extent, because the final game looks like a totally unrelated IP.

That version of dark sector became warframe
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Well, that's gaming for ya. And they keep doing it because it works.

Too bad game companies resort to this bullshotting because you dont see movie studios do this. The trailer they show is representative of what you get. Unless it's some last minute footage cut out of the movie to slim down the time, there's a possibility 100% of the trailer is in the movie.

You dont see them spend time and money making some fake ass awesome scene in a trailer or TV ad to purposely mislead viewers.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
However as far as stated "gameplay" trailers



That Honor goes to Ubisoft for most of their titles

UBI gameplay trailers are the worst. Out of the 1000s of hours I've done MP in various games, I have never played one game that has teammates banter like the paid actors do in their PR videos. The Division was bad too.
 

Hestar69

Member
Lol, this is easy: Dead Island. I thought I was getting an immersive zombie sim, ended up with a looter shooter.
100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000x this..the trailer was so good and the game was...okay.But from the trailer I was expecting something alot better story wise.

also, Who do you voodoo bitch!
 
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