10 Misleading Video Game Ads That Lied To Get Your Money

9. Destiny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyQK6kUdWQ What you were promised: An expansive, character-filled narrative with you journeying across the galaxy, racking up XP points and character abilities along the way. What you got: The barest husk of a final product. One mission type and three fairly small combat areas, all with zero story and flat voice acting. Thanks to an awesome investigation from Kotaku into exactly what happened before Destiny released, we now know the reason it was so terrible at launch is purely down to Bungie's executives deciding to can the game's direction only a year before release. In the years before launch, we were told each gun would "have its own story to tell" depending on what quest you'd embarked on to retrieve it, that the loot system would be fun, deep and rewarding, that the story and cast of characters would bring the entire thing to life like a more epic version of Halo... but none of these came true. The 'story' consisted of about three cutscenes where characters referred to events rather than talking about them ("I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain"), the gunplay was the only fun takeaway from the entire thing, and its listless feel contrasted sharply with an ad campaign that was loaded with quip-happy soldiers backed by Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLlvm2ercoU Nowadays Destiny is more back on track thanks to the awesome Taken King expansion (which consists of a ton of things the initial release was supposed to have), but honestly, the more you look back on the 2014 version, the more ridiculous it is Bungie ever thought it appropriate to release in the first place.
Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.