10 Video Game Reveal Trailers Better Than The Final Release
It's all downhill from here.
Every publisher wants to make a big splash when revealing a new game. Being the first thing that players see, publishers and developers can often ride the hype of a great reveal trailer for years, coasting on its success to deliver a game that's guaranteed to be a hit regardless of whether the final product itself is actually any good.
However, it's no conspiracy that video games can change dramatically during development. With years being spent to craft a title that will hopefully sell millions of copies, there's plenty of amazing ideas that never find their way to the final release, either due to time, budget or creative reasons.
Unfortunately, this can lead to games that show amazing promise with a stellar reveal trailer being marginally different, and worse, when they come out.
Either changing too much or not being representative of what the promotional material suggested, there are some games over the years that couldn't hold a candle to the quality of their first trailers, completely squandering their own potential and leaving fans pining for the game they wanted to get, rather than the one they were actually lumped with.
10. Dead Island
The reveal for the original Dead Island gave the world one of the best video game trailers of all time. Chronicling the death of a vacationing family at the hands of a horde of zombies, the heartbreaking reveal plays out in reverse, starting from the now-iconic shot of the zombified face of a girl lying dead on the ground.
Unfortunately, none of the emotion or drama present in the stylistic trailer made its way over to the final release, with the original Dead Island coming nowhere close to capturing the intensity of its reveal.
In fact, the trailer misrepresented the game entirely, suggesting an experience that was a far cry away from the arcadey slapstick fun the first-person brawler focused on.
Still, it got people talking and helped make that first game a surprise success, even if the title itself wasn't able to live up to the promise of its cinematic trailer.