Star Wars Battle-Affront - A teaser for the greatest animated Star Wars movie that will never be made
Stormtroopers, AT-ATs and Y-Wing bombing runs all beautifully rendered using “in-engine footage”. This is of course the Star Wars Battlefront Cinematic Trailer which whipped up a frenzy over the weekend. My social media feeds were filled with excitement and comments on how great it looked.
That’s the problem though isn’t it? This trailer will be plastered all over the internet and our televisions screens as part of yet another obscenely expensive EA marketing campaign and showed us precisely nothing of the game it begged us to pre-order in the final ten seconds.
The scripted and edited combat and chase scenes are very well done but they are just that, scripted and edited. The graphics and animation, while impressive, are so heavily polished in post-production that it will be impossible to match that fluidity when combined with actual gameplay. When we do finally get our grubby little hands on Star Wars Battlefront it will play and look nothing like the trailer suggests.
What we were shown was a teaser for the greatest animated Star Wars movie that will sadly never be made. And why? To distract the gaming populace with impressive pyrotechnics and then grasp for their wallets with a pre-order stinger at the end? Cinematic trailers and large scale marketing campaigns aren’t cheap you know, best get as many pre-orders as we can to cover the costs. Step right this way good sir and pre-order your digital copy, you don’t want the Origin warehouse to run out of codes now do you?
What baffles me is the apparent fear of showing off the actual game, you know the thing we’re going to be shelling out £30-50+ for? (Not including season passes, special editions, limited editions, ultimate editions, DLC and Vader knows what else.) Surely it is easier and cheaper to show some gameplay clips set to a John Williams score than it is to script, animate and edit a two minute cinematic. The consumer also benefits as she or he can actually see what they’re bloody buying. Imagine that!
Don’t get me wrong, I want to see Rebel Commandos and Imperial Stormtroopers shredding each other with blaster fire, I want to see Y-Wings raining hot proton death on imperial AT-ATs, but I want to know that humans did that in the heat of the moment. I want to know if they did it in first or third person. I want to know that these intense fire fights involve people who are having a great time murdering their friends. That is worth so much more than a heavily edited collection of animation and sound assets no matter how impressive they may be.
Yes, you can reveal details gradually and pace out your feature reveals up until release day if you really want to be a tease, but embrace the quality of your product in its promotional material. You want us to buy the game. We want to see the game. Show us the game.
Imagine any other form of entertainment media trying to pull this shit. Music albums advertised with clips from different songs, movies showing scenes not in any way related to the theatrical release. Imagine the special effects for a movie trailer were of a higher quality than what we got to see at the cinema, all those gorgeous CGI dragon and space ship battles supplanted by cardboard cut-outs and stop motion hand puppets. You’d be lying if you say you wouldn’t lose your shit. Reviewers pulled up Reign of Fire for its misleading promo material and that was a poster rather than a full blown trailer. Why is it acceptable practice for video game publishers to spend millions of dollars lying to you?
The second official Star Wars Battlefront promo material is a developer diary that shows off an entire screenshot. It’s a very pretty screenshot to be fair, but a screenshot nonetheless. We also get to see bits of the cinematic trailer in a slightly different order. A screenshot is a baby step in the right direction but I prefer my screenshots moving.
If you want me to buy your bloody game, show me your bloody game. This isn’t too difficult a concept to grasp. You may think I’m being a cynical curmudgeon but ask yourself this. Why are EA unwilling to show you their product but willing to take your money? The answer is they see you as an ATM. They do think that dangling a lightshow in front of you will get you to throw money at them. Don’t let them get away with it.
Now I want you to ask yourself one final question, what are your favourite gaming moments? Storming the Reichstag in World At War? Beating Gwyn while wearing nothing but your underwear and a fetching hat? I’d say not many of you are thinking about cut scenes or cinematics. Chances are you’re thinking about something you have done as that is what makes games so special. That pocket of escapism after a tumultuous day at work where you and your friends annihilated the other team in Dota 2 or when you spent a few hours building your very own skull fortress in Minecraft complete with lava flow nostrils, that is what videogames are all about.
The trailer for The Force Awakens got me hyped for the Episode VII and rightly so, I was shown snippets of scenes and characters that I want to see more of and find out more about. As a movie trailer it worked, I want to see more. Battlefront is not truly linear like even the greatest films are, player interaction will make up a majority of the experience so advertising it in the same way as linear entertainment is doing their own product a disservice.
Why do they feel the need to dress Battlefront up like a movie and parade it around as if seeking some higher level of appreciation? I love movies, my personal hype-ometer has exploded in the build-up to my going to see Age of Ultron on Friday, but trying to sell games as movies cheapens the very core of what makes games great. Interactivity is what elevates games above all other entertainment media, get me interested in that, and I’ll think about opening my wallet. Videogames are amazing. Show them off please.
What do you fine ladies and gentlemen think? Do cinematic trailers loosen your purse strings or would you prefer some genuine gameplay footage?