• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

When Xbox announced Hellblade II there was no game, just a trailer made for the TGAs

GHG

Gold Member
Cook him GHG GHG !!!!

I would, but the last person to put Little Chicken Little Chicken in a blender got banned.

Vegan Love GIF by Desafío 22
 

Oppoi

Member
You’re implying only Xbox has done this. How many years… cough… generations rather (Holy shit) did it take for The Last Guardian to be delivered after its reveal? What about Deep Down?


Jokes on you, that trailer made me buy three PS4's!
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Yes you are, you didn’t say industry in general, you’re singling out Xbox
There are 3 console developers on the market. Are you trying to say Nintendo and Sony have both done this in equal measure to Microsoft in the last decade?

And even if I am, cry more. Go and make a thread on Nintendo and Sony doing this if you want to discuss it. I made this thread because of this interview that I saw today.
 
Last edited:
You’re implying only Xbox has done this. How many years… cough… generations rather (Holy shit) did it take for The Last Guardian to be delivered after its reveal? What about Deep Down?


Sony Too™️. Look, yes they can be guilty of it too somewhat, wolverine is another example of a game announced way early when it didn't need to be. But this was MS announcement show of the series consoles and here are some games shown off/revealed:

Hellblade 2 - ended up being a $50 game releasing 4 years later. Isn't longer in length than the first game. Wasn't even a game started on development either, just a trailer.

State of decay 3 - basically no updates since. When SoD 2 was revealed the game was out 2 years later. Was is a sequel taking more than double that amount of time?

Fable - a CGI trailer in which anyone knows that game was a long ways away.

Everwild - a game that was announced which didn't even have a concept!! Rare was trying to figure out how to incorporate the theme of the game into gameplay.

This doesn't even include perfect dark, which we have not much to go off of either but that was shown later in 2020, if memory serves I think TGA that year. It's just astonishing how MS continues to shoot themselves in the foot. None of these games should have been announced, the only expect may be fable, as it was bringing back an iconic franchise. It just shows how MS always finds a way to be unprepared. It's not like the end of the Xbox one gen they were lighting it up with exclusives... Now all this does is add added pressure on the devs. Everytime they have a showcase or w/e and the games aren't shown, people are gonna continue to ask why. Then when they finally do release, the expectations are gonna be sky high, as people have been waiting years for them to drop, in which MS never seems to match those expectations. It's like they try to setup their studios to fail.
 
Last edited:
No mate it didn't look as good 😅

Lol, not even close.

Fuck no, lol

Here's a refresher:



EDIT: I mean to say the 2007 trailer, not 2005 :/

KZ2 the game had far better art style but the original trailer had a lot of aspects clearly not possible

I can agree with that. But there are also some areas where the final game looked better on technical level vs. the 2005 2007 footage, too.

Maybe not all areas of course, but some. In some cases very noticeably.
 
Last edited:

midnightAI

Member
No, I’m not.

But for your info there is a difference between announcing a game that is in already development that is then delayed for 10 years due to development hell, and announcing a game that hasn’t even begun development.
Not unusual for MS, take Elder Scrolls 6 for example, probably Fable also. I think they just like to show something even if it's 5+ years away. Sony is the opposite, shows nothing until less than 2 years from launch (unless it's Insomniac for some reason, but they still are mostly inside that timescale)
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Here's a refresher:





I can agree with that. But there are also some areas where the final game looked better on technical level vs. the 2005 footage, too.

Maybe not all areas of course, but some. In some cases very noticeably.

You said CG trailer. I thought you meant the infamous E3 2005 trailer, not 2007, which I don't think is CG.
 

T4keD0wN

Member
Honestly doesnt sound like a bad strategy to gauge if there is any interest at all before dumping lots of cash and time into a project, not to mention feedback on what people expect, but lmao.
Meanwhile Bethesda were dropping a trailer for TES6 whole 5 years before even starting.
 
Last edited:
I honestly can't even blame Xbox for this. They were forced to release the Series consoles with no exclusives games. On top of that they are under constant pressure about releasing more games. No surprise they did something like this to get the fan base excited.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Not the first and not the last time this has happened. These days I tend to ignore or at least not got excited about newly announced games without a shred of gameplay.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
Sony Too™️. Look, yes they can be guilty of it too somewhat, wolverine is another example of a game announced way early when it didn't need to be. But this was MS announcement show of the series consoles and here are some games shown off/revealed:

Hellblade 2 - ended up being a $50 game releasing 4 years later. Isn't longer in length than the first game. Wasn't even a game started on development either, just a trailer.

State of decay 3 - basically no updates since. When SoD 2 was revealed the game was out 2 years later. Was is a sequel taking more than double that amount of time?

Fable - a CGI trailer in which anyone knows that game was a long ways away.

Everwild - a game that was announced which didn't even have a concept!! Rare was trying to figure out how to incorporate the theme of the game into gameplay.

This doesn't even include perfect dark, which we have not much to go off of either but that was shown later in 2020, if memory serves I think TGA that year. It's just astonishing how MS continues to shoot themselves in the foot. None of these games should have been announced, the only expect may be fable, as it was bringing back an iconic franchise. It just shows how MS always finds a way to be unprepared. It's not like the end of the Xbox one gen they were lighting it up with exclusives... Now all this does is add added pressure on the devs. Everytime they have a showcase or w/e and the games aren't shown, people are gonna continue to ask why. Then when they finally do release, the expectations are gonna be sky high, as people have been waiting years for them to drop, in which MS never seems to match those expectations. It's like they try to setup their studios to fail.



We’re talking about a SEQUEL, give me a break. There’s an entire first game to look at if you want to speculate what the sequel is going to be like. No one made a stink if a teaser of Uncharted 2 was revealed early, we already know what’s coming.

The practice does exist, but this one is the wrong example.
 

Perrott

Member
You’re implying only Xbox has done this. How many years… cough… generations rather (Holy shit) did it take for The Last Guardian to be delivered after its reveal? What about Deep Down?


That was on Capcom to shelve the game due to quality concerns when it was near-completion by 2015.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
We’re talking about a SEQUEL, give me a break. There’s an entire first game to look at if you want to speculate what the sequel is going to be like. No one made a stink if a teaser of Uncharted 2 was revealed early, we already know what’s coming.

The practice does exist, but this one is the wrong example.
p0qngbP.jpeg

There you go lad, go and tell the world about Uncharted 2’s trailer being released prior to work on the game starting.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
That was on Capcom to shelve the game due to quality concerns when it was near-completion by 2015.


Right, it was announced too early before we knew if the formula would work. That’s is NOT the case with a sequel where the first game already proves the formula is good… capiche?
 

JackMcGunns

Member
p0qngbP.jpeg

There you go lad, go and tell the world about Uncharted 2’s trailer being released prior to work on the game starting.


It was not. You missed the point. For sequels it’s Completely fine. We know Uncharted 1 worked and we know Senua’s Sacrifice worked. Teasing something like Deep Down without knowing if it’s going to work is irresponsible, in fact Capcom scrapped it.
 
We’re talking about a SEQUEL, give me a break. There’s an entire first game to look at if you want to speculate what the sequel is going to be like. No one made a stink if a teaser of Uncharted 2 was revealed early, we already know what’s coming.

The practice does exist, but this one is the wrong example.


For the longest time, MS and shills preached that this game was "so much bigger" in scope than the original, a blatant lie that made people believe that this was the GOW killer.

None in his right mind would assume they took seven years to make an 8-hour sequel. That wasn't what they suggested. They have ripped off MS big time.
 

Perrott

Member
Right, it was announced too early before we knew if the formula would work. That’s is NOT the case with a sequel where the first game already proves the formula is good… capiche?
It wasn't announced too early, the game was playable six months after its announcement at TGS 2013, running at 60fps even.

It was shelved in, again, a near-complete state because of Capcom's shift in strategy, moving away from the 12 F2P games they had in development at once at a certain point in time over at Capcom Online Games and putting their focus as a publisher on high-quality, premium releases of their most well-known brands, which we started to see with the arrival of Resident Evil 7, Monster Hunter World, Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5 between 2017 and 2019.
 

Three

Gold Member
It was not. You missed the point. For sequels it’s Completely fine. We know Uncharted 1 worked and we know Senua’s Sacrifice worked. Teasing something like Deep Down without knowing if it’s going to work is irresponsible, in fact Capcom scrapped it.
If you want to go back to "irresponsiblility" in 2013 from Capcom for showing that trailer I've got one for you from 2014 that isn't a sequel and was also scrapped. Nobody is even comparing or saying others don't do it though

 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
Not only that, but MS doubled down as soon as Unreal Engine 5 was showcased in May 2000 to proclaim Hellblade 2 a UE5 game... even though Ninja Theory basically would not have been able to have UE5 in house until later that November (which is when key partner studios like The Coalition got a build in to evaluate it on hardware.)


The power of Xbox Series X was first demonstrated with the unveiling of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. The team will be building the game on Unreal 5 and leveraging the power of Xbox Series X to bring the Hellblade franchise to levels never before seen. The footage shown was captured in-engine and reflects the power of Xbox Series X available to developers to deliver new universes, experiences and games in ways you have never imagined.

Not that Ninja Theory wasn't already equipped enough to embark on such a project with the tech systems already in place and the development trajectory planned. (Developers already knew some things about UE5 features before it debuted, and studios like Coalition were already prepping materials to test in anticipation of having the tool on their own.) And not that Ninja Theory didn't eventually (or will eventually) actually deliver the game on the engine that got promised onto them. However, the wording was careful to maximize the imagery of what this game supposedly represented while packing a parachute in the slipped-in phrase, "The team will be building the game on Unreal 5..."

I really don't appreciate when publishers try to use tech hype as part of their product announcement. The name Hellblade 2 and that exotic, haunting trailer would have been enough to sell the product (albeit at that time, they were trying to sell new Xboxes, not games,) but instead they went into it being "captured in-engine" and "leveraging the power of Xbox Series X" with UE5 when in reality, at that time, the trailer that they showed was neither of those two things.
 
Last edited:

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Well, at least they didn't just show the title like Nintendo did with Metroid Prime 4. And I'm not saying this to be petty, I'm genuinely tired of that one.

I'm gonna be playing Hellblade II soon, so at least we are actually getting the game.
 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
It wasn't announced too early, the game was playable six months after its announcement at TGS 2013, running at 60fps even.

It was shelved in, again, a near-complete state because of Capcom's shift in strategy, moving away from the 12 F2P games they had in development at once at a certain point in time over at Capcom Online Games and putting their focus as a publisher on high-quality, premium releases of their most well-known brands...

Yeah, I don't want to get into whatever the "Who's the Good Guy/Bad Guy" thing going on as far as how publishers announce their games as tech showcases, but Deep Down is a little of both and neither. (All the big guys are guilty somewhere on the record of using prerendered footage in place of actual gameplay, as well as using builds specced well above what they can actually deliver or with tech that they're already pretty sure will need to be torn out and redone in the actual game.) The original March 2013 trailer was something of a target render based on Panta Rhei features, and then the September TGS 2013 trailer was generally the real thing running, and at the same TGS they also had the Deep Down playable demo. (It's a shame they went with a bullshot when the real footage was actually quite strong for the time, but who knows what they actually had running six months earlier.)

Reality was, it was a dungeon-crawler project, and I wish we could have seen more of it, but the real game and the limitations it worked with (which is partly why its effects were so rich) probably would have been a letdown...
People saw the Deep Down / Panta Rhei teaser an immediately filled their own heads filled with gigantic fantasy landscapes and complex RPG systems, but in reality what they were going to get was 4P F2P RTAB Wizardry.
 
It's amazing what the media let MS/Xbox get away with. Sony still has to deal with people bringing up E3 2005. MS, on the other hand, gets away with pushing CGI as in game and having better demos running on PC HW far more advanced than theirs at E3 2013. As for the latter, they even brought their fake Forza demo on Jimmy Fallon, right before launch, acting like that was the final product. Where's the countless videos on that. I guess money talks.

Suppose I'll just have to find solace in the fact that that media cover they benefit from didn't stop them from becoming a sinking ship.
 

nial

Gold Member
There was a barebones demo, years later. Not even the Panty Raid game engine survived.

Still waiting on Pragmata.
Nope, it was already playable by Tokyo Game Show 2014, it obviously got cancelled over the course of development.
I'm not sure why we're bringing up Capcom in all of this, they've been critcized for Pragmata too.
 

CamHostage

Member
Sounds like what Bungie did with Halo 2. Square did it with FFXIII. Probably not a rare thing at all.

It's not a rare thing, but it's a problem. It's not a problem that has an easy answer, but it's a problem, and it has been for some time now.

When tech products are announced, often times, the tech doesn't actually work. Sometimes they're announcing an empty box. Sometimes they have a software demo that is all smoke and mirrors, with little resemblance to the state of the real product. Tech demos are not real samples or slices of the full project. If game developers were to show you what their games actually look like some months beforehand (or even years, with how game dev works these days,) you'd be insulted at what they're trying to sell you. We expect Hollywood productions, polished presentations, working features, and some idea that the real thing is just around the corner. But, it's not. Tech doesn't exist until it gets made, and sometimes developers have to fake it until they make it.

What's frustrating is that PR has taken our hunger for technological marvels in games and used it against us. That Hellblade 2 teaser was cool enough as it was, and if you liked that first game and if you enjoyed this new atmosphere and if you dig this graphic style then you should get an Xbox. But instead, publishers have to promise that a demo is "in-engine" and is showcasing the power of a new platform and that it's on the future of engine technology, yet in this case and many others we can point to, that wasn't true.

It's obvious why publishers do this when we compare reactions to the Hellblade 2 teaser at the time to reactions of the Godfall trailer at the same time. Sure, Godfall what it was, but the teaser was close to the product you could buy just a few months later. If Ninja Theory had been under similar expectations to show their work as of 2019, they would shown this concept trailer and, I guess, a script?

It's just a bummer that it's still a thing. CG trailers are fine to sell a mood and invest emotional attachment to the product's direction and setting (though a lot of people hate CG trailers too, and the AC Shadow trailer was a recent grumble-point,) but I wish there was a better way to consider the state of the tech when it comes time to actually showing a game. Seems like there should be better options beyond lying about it and hiding it.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
I got used to that with TOTK, MP4 and Bayonetta 3, IMO.
Outliers, Bayo 3 hoy announced early because Nintendo needed whatever at Switch launch to drive sales, MP4 development had to be rebooted and Zelda... Nintendo always do so, I fully believe they do it in purpose to make people thirsty and desperate for new into... Unless you tell me Xbox and other devs are always in such situations to always announce stuff way too early
 

nial

Gold Member
Outliers, Bayo 3 hoy announced early because Nintendo needed whatever at Switch launch to drive sales, MP4 development had to be rebooted and Zelda... Nintendo always do so, I fully believe they do it in purpose to make people thirsty and desperate for new into... Unless you tell me Xbox and other devs are always in such situations to always announce stuff way too early
I was being petty, lol. I actually think Nintendo's strategy is a smart one, and Sony's been following suit too. Helldivers 2 was supposed to be released 4-6 months after its reveal.
 
Last edited:

Kataploom

Gold Member
I was being petty, lol. I actually think Nintendo's strategy is a smart one, and Sony's been following suit too. Helldivers 2 was supposed to be released 4-6 months after its reveal.
I hope everyone follows, it's ok to announce a have way early but make it exceptions, in actually surprised to know a game I new about in a trailer released lol
 
We’re talking about a SEQUEL, give me a break. There’s an entire first game to look at if you want to speculate what the sequel is going to be like. No one made a stink if a teaser of Uncharted 2 was revealed early, we already know what’s coming.

The practice does exist, but this one is the wrong example.
You using Uncharted 2 as an example is hilarious. Uncharted 1 was a solid game that scored well, but uncharted 2 was an otherworldly game, one of the best it's entire generation. It was a massive leap from 1 to 2. Everything we've seen from hellblade 2 doesn't indicate that at all. Maybe it is and surprises people but I'm extremely doubtful of that.
 
Top Bottom