Interesting Trailer

Hey, everyone. Normally I would talk for a while in this section but I'm just going to skip to the meat and potatoes of this post because it's just that good.

Cinematics in games are getting better and better all the time. BioWare is a company that has been making their games cinematic for a long time. And cinematic trailers have been around long enough to have advanced to the point of almost being movie trailers.

Usually cinematic trailers get me interested in or really excited for a game (even though the actual gameplay will look completely different). However, it is rare that a trailer, cinematic or not, can evoke such emotions as this trailer. You are probably confused right now, but just watch it and you will understand. Please note that this video is a bit graphic and emotional.

Note: I do not own this trailer, nor do I claim to.

From what I have read, my thought's on this game are similar to everyone's. Part of me thinks this game will be really emotional and will make me think for a while after playing it, but another part of me thinks that it will be an awesome, tropical, Zombieland vacation with plenty of fun zombie-slaying action.

The developers really did their homework on this trailer, though. If you will notice, they want the viewer to just watch and think that these people are all just survivors, while still leaving a little bit of confusion about their identity. Then they really make sense of it all at the end. This is how they give the viewer that lasting emotional effect that will stay on your mind for a little while. If they had showed that these survivors were a happy family on vacation at the beginning of the trailer, the viewer would have been sad but only for the length of the video...maybe a little longer. By putting it at the end, they allow the viewer to just watch the trailer and then think about what they saw instead of thinking about it while they watched.

Did the developers go overboard with the presentation of the trailer? I don't think so. They took a risk and presented it a bit differently than what we normally see. And their risk was rewarded with a lot of publicity, which is something every developer wants. This just shows that sometimes risks need to be taken to get something quickly.

What did you think of the trailer? Tell me your thoughts on the whole matter. As always, thanks for reading my blog. If you have any suggestions, I'm always open to ways I can improve my blog. If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to leave me a comment and I will try to answer it. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter.

Midterms Are Over!

Hey all. It's been a while since I last posted. This quarter of school has been busy...really busy. Perhaps it's because I am trying to really polish my stuff for my classes. Especially my Level Design Mechanics class. I will try and get our latest project (the midterm) up here soon.

We had our critique today in class and my teacher and the TA both brought up interesting points. Somehow we got on to the topic of boss battles and grinds in games. The TA would love to see a game that is nothing but boss battles. This idea is one that could work sometimes but not all the time. Some games need the small puzzles or objectives that lead up to the boss battle but other games could just throw the player into the game and it would work.

The teacher said that he thought that games need to get rid of the grinds in between the really cinematic portions of games. He would like to see games played more like movies...two or three hours in length and really cinematic with a good story. He then backed up his statement by saying that nobody wants to pay $50 or $60 for a really short game BUT if games were made shorter, the cost of production would go down and the cost of the game would also decrease. It would be a little like buying an extremely interactive movie.

I agree with both points. To back up my teachers point, a game that I can see already trying to do this is Left4Dead and Left4Dead2. If you have read my previous posts, you would see that I use Left4Dead for a lot of examples but that's because it fits...and I happen to enjoy it a lot. But back to my point. The Left4Dead games are like several different zombie movies with the same main characters. There may be several campaigns but each campaign (movie) only takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to play through. This is great because you can pick up the game, play it for an hour or 2, and be completely satisfied.

As far as cinematic goes, the Left4Dead games are a bit lacking. That does not mean that it doesn't work. Not being cinematic actually works for this series. Instead of it feeling like you are watching an interactive movie, the player is put into the "movie." So the player is actually a part of the "movie" instead of just playing as a character in the "movie" which, in turn, also helps with the immersion.

Well, that's my thoughts for today. As always, thanks for reading my blog. If you have any suggestions, I'm always open to ways I can improve my blog. If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to leave me a comment and I will try to answer it. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter.