10 Video Games That Were Sold On Lies
3. Killzone 2
It’s hard to believe that anyone fell for this one, but back in 2005 we weren’t quite so savvy. Killzone 2’s reveal trailer at E3 was far too glossy to have been comprised of in-game footage, and later was revealed to be a “target render” - a video package designed to accurately portray what the finished product would look like. Assumedly, Guerrilla Games did not yet possess footage they deemed worthy of showing to the public.
This still happens nowadays. Star Wars Battlefront was sold on the basis of an ‘in-engine trailer’ that demonstrated what the game would look like, and generally how it would play. The difference is, most trailers of this kind are clearly watermarked as ‘NOT GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE’, or something to that effect.
Killzone 2 actually wound up looking fairly similar to its pre-render, mainly because animation quality and graphical fidelity improved a lot between 2005 and the time of the game’s release in 2008. The key difference is the play character’s first-person animations, which are just plain unnatural.