10 Video Games With The Biggest Downgrade From Reveal To Launch

E3 is always a magical time of year. At some point during the week-long event, we're guaranteed to see a brand new game shown off for the first time. It will look absolutely glorious with realistic lighting, dynamic weather, mind-blowing animations, and graphics that look so good and crisp, you'd think they weren't real.

And that's just the problem - they're not.

At this point in development, what's being shown off is more of a "vertical slice" of the full release. However, that slice gets polished to the nth degree, and the team can't recreate that for the entire game within the release window.

Now, to be fair to the developers, this issue usually doesn't come from a place of deception, but more the want to put together a demo or trailer for E3 that aims to represent the final product.

Should developers stop doing this? 100%. But you can't blame them for wanting to make the best possible version of the game they're creating. There's also the rare occasion where we can celebrate titles like God of War, Spider-Man or Red Dead Redemption 2 that end up looking even better than what we saw first.

With all that out of the way though, let's take a look at the worst offenders.

Anthem has been dragged across the coals for a lot of reasons since it launched, from a dearth of content to long loading screens, but graphics have not been one of the issues.

That is, until you go back to the E3 2017 reveal trailer.

Bioware showcased a bustling Fort Tarsis with incredible lighting and lots of NPCs. Those NPC's were moving around, talking to each other... living, essentially. In the final product, Fort Tarsis is a dull, uninspired hub area with a handful of NPC's that only spring to life when you hit a button to interact.

Then there's the open world; massive and jaw-droppingly gorgeous with giant AT-AT-like machines, hordes of creatures, striking landscapes, and vast underwater areas worth exploring. What we actually got was a good looking game with a less alive world, no active mechs, downsized landscapes, and no underwater areas worth talking about.

And that's not even taking into account things like animated load screens that were removed, more dynamic monsters, and a larger landmass. Anthem has a lot of gameplay issues that absolutely warrant the criticisms thrown at it, but that shouldn't mean its big graphical downgrade gets a pass.