> 2533274836465274;17:
> That’s fine, but it’s still disingenuous to place the old ad campaigns and the most recent ad campaign on the same level. Let’s just assume for a second that 343 are following a trend. If so—why? Why follow the trend? Following trends has done nothing but bite them in the behind, so maybe the preferable thing to do is to stop.
Initial trailers are almost never an exact representation of what the final game will look like; this applies to pretty much every game dev out there. It’s less a trend and more a fact of reality that announcement trailers and other early trailers depict a game as it is at that time, and no dev can predict if/when massic changes are going to occur. If you want trailers to only accurately depict final products, then you’re asking for no trailers to come out until maybe 1-2 months before a games actual release.
Luckily, for Halo Infinite, 343 has provided a disclaimer so everybody understands that what was shown was not indicative of a final product. So due diligence was done there. They should continue that diligence for later trailers, even gameplay trailers, just like CDPR did for Cyberpunk. Nobody should be under the impression that the Infinite teaser is representative of the actual game since “Game Engine Demonstration” text was shown at the beginning. I think as a rule game devs should do disclaimers for every trailer, because not everyone understands that trailers inherently don’t advertise the final product and that things are subject to change at virtually any point before a game’s release.
> 2533274836465274;17:
> One out of two ain’t a great track record.
1 out of 3. I never hear anybody complain about the Halo Wars 2 trailers. Besides, a track record is indicative of a pattern. One slip-up doesn’t mean a pattern. As far as “bad” ad campaigns go, Halo 5 was 343’s first. Could end up being their only, too; there’s no reason to think future ad campaigns will follow the same route, because no trend has been set. After they’ve had 2 bad ad campaigns, then you can argue they have a pattern of misdirection with their ads.
> 2533274836465274;17:
> First time I’ve heard that, so I’ll have to take your word on it. Even so, the Believe trailers are still considered canon, in addition to Deliver Hope.
You can look it up for yourself. I typed into Google “is Believe ad campaign canon?” and got plenty of entries to read on it. Even so, that’s what, 2 ad campaigns out of all the campaigns Bungie did that are considered explicitly canon? Now that’s not good track record for having trailers be canon.
> 2533274836465274;17:
> Sure, if that was the actual focus of the game. In reality, it’s centred around the Prometheans and the emergence of the Guardians as opposed to the relationship between the Chief and Locke. It’s briefly explored once, but only as a means to introduce the Warden Eternal and give Osiris a reason to go to Genesis. Halo 5 was sold as this “covert,” military science fiction game. What we got was a run of the mill action game.
I’m not sure what you mean about Halo 5 being sold as a covert military sci fi game. We got two “hunt the truth” trailers designed to make people question who was the “good guy” and 2 seasons of audio dramas that were relatively self-contained and did promise anything about the actual game (season 1 further played on the “Chief is the bad guy” subterfuge, but it was resolved by the end; season 2 just tied into the Guardians). As far as the “hunt the truth” trailers were from the actual interactions between Chief and Locke, at no point in the ad campaign did I ever see suggested that Halo 5 would be anything else than a FPS action game. I don’t even know what “covert military sci-fi game” means; how do those games play? For me, the mark missed by the game we got was that Chief’s status as a “hero” was never shrouded in mystery or questioned like the ads suggested; in that respect, you can say that it wasn’t covert in how it presented the Chief in the story, but beyond that we still got military themes and science fiction themes.
This is all kind of besides the point though, because talking about the degree to which Halo 5’s trailers misdirected is a moved goal post to what you originally said about 343 not having a good track record of trailers depicting in game events or canon events. At that level of talking about canon and in-game events, Bungie trailers too do not show things exactly as they happened. That’s all. It’s not a condemnation nor an endorsement; it’s just how it is.