It’s easy to get caught in the headlights. After all, E3 is out to impress you. Unexpected announcements, fancy presentations, the biggest triptych you’re ever likely to see – it’s all part of the most effective hype-machine in the world, running at full steam. It can be overwhelming, and that’s sort of the point.
Nowhere is this feeling more concentrated than the first time you see a new game in motion. Whether it’s a polished trailer or a beguiling demo, it can genuinely feel like you’re peering into the future. Sadly, for all this intense excitement, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. But it doesn’t appear until months or even years later, when the game is finally released. The finished article might look different to how you remember it. Sometimes entire sections of gameplay, which we’ve watched and re-watched over the months, salivated over, evaporate. What we end up playing feels diluted.
You're Just Too Good To Be True
There’s been scores of notable offenders, major and minor, over the years. Watch Dogs is the most recent, taking a lot of heat for the disparity between its E3 2012 debut and the game now in stores – a lot of which is really unfair in my opinion, but we’ll get to that in minute. And it’s by no means alone. There are many, many more: that infamous Killzone 2 debut, Motorstorm has never looked that good, Ryse: Son of Rome just last year, even Uncharted – one of the best looking series around – has looked prettier when it's turned up at E3.
Some consumers find the whole experience disappointing, while others experience more powerful emotions – they get angry, even outraged, as if some kind of promise has been broken or they’ve been intentionally duped.
The reaction is undeniable, clogging up hundreds message boards, but I think the more interesting question is whether such a violent response is justifiable. Should we really feel deceived? I’m not so convinced; I even suspect we’re part of the problem. So, with E3 2014 just around the corner, it’s important to understand what it is we’re actually being shown.
The End of the Beginning
That all said, we still need to address the disparity. Vertical slices seemingly promise an experience that doesn’t always materialise, even after years in production. Why is that?
Frankly, the truth isn’t all that sexy or scandalous, and I suspect that’s why it's so frequently overlooked. It can’t compete with the idea that we’ve been duped or are the victims of corporate propaganda. The reason for differences we see between an E3 demo and the final disc sold at retailers is much duller: it’s down to logistics. It’s really, really difficult to make triple-A games, and it’s nigh-on impossible to meet deadlines, manage budgets, and overcome bureaucracy without ever having to admit compromise. Hell, by the end, you might even be embracing it on a daily basis.
There are creative reasons, too. While the vertical slice might have the appearance of a finished game, remember that it's all just artifice. The game hasn't yet been made. In fact, the developers I spoke to regard the it as the beginning. One even went so far as to say, “It's really the first point in a AAA dev cycle where you get to see what the game will become.” Years of experimentation still need to take place before the final game comes together.
BioShock Infinite is a great example of a game that had a brilliantly strong, well-realised world and aesthetic, but didn’t know how to translate them into gameplay straight out of the gate. Early footage showed Elizabeth using her quantum powers in rather beautiful and elaborate ways – she ripped massive holes into alternate realities, even bringing horses momentarily back to life. In the final game, this was dramatically scaled back into something more practical – she could make turrets appear – and manageable. The idea is still preserved, but it’s been refined. The execution is different because the idea hadn’t yet been fully explored or tested.
“You don’t do a game, you redo it,” says Philippe Morin, who formerly worked on such triple-A titles as Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed and recently made Outlast. “It’s an iterative process… Sometimes, you strongly believe you’re gonna be able to make it work, but reality catches up and you have to settle for less than you promised.”
So in a year or two, if it turns out that you can’t close that car door in The Division, that’s okay. It was a nice idea.
Muy buen post.The reality behind all of this, as I’ve said, is much more mundane. Game production at this level is a Herculean task, demanding the coordination of large, increasingly international teams, working to an unrealistic deadline under the pressure of a weighty budget. Ambition will always bend the knee at some point, but – to steal a line – I think a person’s reach should always exceed their grasp. If you’re not aiming to do something that lies beyond your present capabilities, then why even bother?
I think we should feel angry and let down only when we see something that doesn’t look implausibly good. It’ll mean developers and publishers have given up and settled for what’s easy, for what’s feasible, and you know what, I have no real interest in playing that.
Algo de los que todos nos quejamos, nos muestran una cosa y al año cuando sale es otra totalmente distinta recontra recortada.
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