7. Dead Island
The Dead Island trailer is a tricky one. One hand, it is not representative of the game at all. We don't get any indications that the game will just be a rather banal first person, open world zombie game. On the other hand, it is very good. It is rare that an advertisement have such an emotional resonance, and on top of that, it is rarer still to see it in a game full of zombies. Chronicling the story of a young girl transition into a zombie, the trailer plays in reverse, and through the duration of the trailer, we see a family smashing apart through extreme circumstances. The trailer use a bunch of cinematic techniques to tell this story. Through reversing the footage during any point after the girl is bitten, having any time prior to her being bitten being played normally and then cutting them all together to tell a shattered narrative, the trailer uses a full spectrum of cinematic techniques to display its narrative. However, now looking back on it through the power of hindsight, it is obvious that the trailer has nothing to do with the gameplay. Despite the setting maybe, it is near impossible to discern anything about the game from this trailer. And the thing is that we knew it. We knew that this was going to have nothing to do with the game but that didn't stop us talking about film adaptions and the like when it hit. While still undeniably a great piece of short animation, this shows how these trailers that don't show any actual gameplay can be somewhat manipulative.
Patrick Dane
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Patrick Dane is someone who spends too much of his time looking at screens. Usually can be seen pretending he works as a film and game blogger, short film director, PA, 1st AD and scriptwriter. Known to frequent London screening rooms, expensive hotels, couches, Costa coffee and his bedroom. If found, could you please return to the internet.
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