Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Razgovory]

There's a comparison video of the E3 "gameplay demo" vs the actual game and the difference in tone, quality and graphics is staggering. Considering that the E3 demo remained one of the primary ad tools (and never clarified that this might be a pre-render) there's a vocal group crying "foul". This would indeed go far beyond a few touched up screenshots which is pretty much the norm. Sure, preview gameplay demos usually have the caveat "subject to change", but the understanding in general is that things will improve, not become worse in the course of development.

The video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_588812&feature=iv&src_vid=3z2qVebxlUo&v=6lGXDM3LGnk

They are pretty naive.  Who doesn't know that the the E3 demos are often fake.   Shit, valve's demo of Half-life 2 was largely fake.  Not to defend the makers, but c'mon you shouldn't get suckered in by that.

[Syt]

They are pretty naive.  Who doesn't know that the the E3 demos are often fake.   Shit, valve's demo of Half-life 2 was largely fake.  Not to defend the makers, but c'mon you shouldn't get suckered in by that.

Most of those pre-rendered scenes act as cut-scene-like material, not as a work in progress gameplay video. Also, it's true that that console titles are often shown off on PCs for better graphics quality - but if even on PC you can't get anywhere near that quality something's amiss.

I had a look at a few E3 trailers for games I've played (Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age Origins, Saints Row: The Third, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sleeping Dogs, GTA IV), and I've only found the Saints Row trailer (which was clearly a pre-rendered, non-gameplay cutscene) not to be indiciative of the visual quality of the final product.

[Razgovory]

I don't think it was pre-rendered, but I suspect it was heavily touched up and scripted.

[Syt]

Without a doubt, but a number of games writers from different publications who attended different screenings of the materials have gone on record that they were told that this was a demo of actual gameplay footage - work in progress, yes, but representative of the final game.

[Razgovory]

Without a doubt, but a number of games writers from different publications who attended different screenings of the materials have gone on record that they were told that this was a demo of actual gameplay footage - work in progress, yes, but representative of the final game.

Yeah, they shouldn't have believed that.  Developers lie like crazy at E3.  I would think that game writers would have figured that out by now.