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butman · Jul 30, 2015

Gaf, I known is another thread about this awful marketing tactic that is used a lot last gen and actual one.

But i was thinking that most of Japanese devs (with very few exceptions) always show to us the game as it should be from day 1 otherwise as with western developers that lying to us in our faces.

Some examples:

JAPANESE DEVS:

Mario Kart 8 WIIU

Early:

Final:

Bloodborne

Early:

Final:

Memorable bullshot time

Metal Gear Solid 4

Early

Final

WESTERN DEVS:

Watch Dogs

Witcher 3

Killzone 2

Memorable honest time

The Last of Us

Early

Final

So. Apparently Japan is much more honest when it comes to making games. What do you think?

gogogow · Jul 30, 2015

You forgot Dark Souls 2 already?

Garrett Hawke · Jul 30, 2015

I don't think it's a cultural thing, I think it varies by studio. I mean before Bayo 2 came out we were getting down sampled bullshots.

Also wasn't that MGS4 stuff considered a downgrade?

RPGamer92 · Jul 30, 2015

The TLOU final pic looks better than the early one imo.

OnionPowder · Jul 30, 2015

Nintendo isn't innocent of this. What about Skyward Sword?

gogogow said:
You forgot Dark Souls 2 already?

Bingo

RPGamer92 said:
The TLOU final pic looks better than the early one imo.

That's why it was in the "honest section" they even went as far to make that ugly ass truck look way better in the final release

michalmarek77 · Jul 30, 2015

And what about DriveClub?

Looks far better now than in previews

Eusis · Jul 30, 2015

Man, we had press shots of Valkyrie Profile 2 at resolutions we could only wish we could play consoles at.

On the plus side all they need to do is clean up the HUD for a good HD release!

kurahador · Jul 30, 2015

#notalldevs

I mean, tri-ace was pretty notorious with their bullshots.

Servbot24 · Jul 30, 2015

gogogow said:
You forgot Dark Souls 2 already?

He said that there are exceptions. He didn't say he was out to list every single one of them.

patapuf · Jul 30, 2015

No, there's just fewer japanese devs that aim for high end graphics nowadays.

jackal27 · Jul 30, 2015

Garrett Hawke said:
I don't think it's a cultural thing, I think it varies by studio. I mean before Bayo 2 came out we were getting down sampled bullshots.

Also wasn't that MGS4 stuff considered a downgrade?

Yeah, I'd consider that a downgrade. Like you said, it varies from studio to studio, but yeah. I don't see many Japanese devs doing this for whatever reason.

Maybe because so many of their games are really focused on realism as the main selling point?

OnionPowder · Jul 30, 2015

Servbot24 said:
He said that there are exceptions. He didn't say he was out to list every single one of them.

I would say Dark Souls 2 was one of the worst ones. It even changed the way they said it would affect gameplay.

jackal27 said:
Yeah, I'd consider that a downgrade. Like you said, it varies from studio to studio, but yeah. I don't see many Japanese devs doing this for whatever reason.

Maybe because so many of their games are really focused on realism as the main selling point?

It was definitely a downgrade, but from what I remember it actually stemmed from a downgrade in the PS3 itself.

DeepEnigma · Jul 30, 2015

patapuf said:
No, there's just fewer japanese devs that aim for high end graphics nowadays.

I can agree with this.

gogogow · Jul 30, 2015

Garrett Hawke said:
I don't think it's a cultural thing, I think it varies by studio. I mean before Bayo 2 came out we were getting down sampled bullshots.

Also wasn't that MGS4 stuff considered a downgrade?

In the OP it falls under "memorable bullshot time".

Raging Spaniard · Jul 30, 2015

patapuf said:
No, there's just fewer japanese devs that aim for high end graphics nowadays.

That doesnt make any sense. If they arent aiming for high end graphics, then they would lie to you more in order to make their games look better via bullshots.

EDIT: also, some times bullshots are not on purpose. Your game may actually look like that 2 years before shipping but because of the complexity of the art style, framerate issues (overall performance) or lack of time to make everything look consistent, art gets downgraded.

sixteen-bit · Jul 30, 2015

Not Team Ninja, that's for sure.

Doczu · Jul 30, 2015

OnionPowder said:
Nintendo isn't innocent of this. What about Skyward Sword?

WAsn't it the case that only a higher res + AA was used for promo shots? All the assets and stuff were ingame. I can't think of how bad a 640x480 with no AA would look when streched on web pages and magazine pages.

Aaron D. · Jul 30, 2015

A lot of the Western shots in the OP were presented years before the games shipped.

Graphics are often scaled up and down in the interim between announcement and release. I think Western studios just tend to show game footage earlier in the dev process compared to their Eastern counterparts.

Droplet · Jul 30, 2015

What about SE's CGI trailers that they occasionally pass off as gameplay? Not exactly bullshots per se, but it's still pretty bad.

Bulzeeb · Jul 30, 2015

OnionPowder said:
Nintendo isn't innocent of this. What about Skyward Sword?

Bingo

That's why it was in the "honest section" they even went as far to make that ugly ass truck look way better in the final release

well, thats true but at least the game can actually look similar to that if you use dolphin

patapuf · Jul 30, 2015

Raging Spaniard said:
That doesnt make any sense. If they arent aiming for high end graphics, then they would lie to you more in order to make their games look better via bullshots.

Nah, if graphics aren't a selling point, you don't need to exagerate them.

There's expetions but the majority of "bullshot" and "downgrade" discussions that pop up involve games that are ambitious graphically.

VanWinkle · Jul 30, 2015

michalmarek77 said:
And what about DriveClub?

Looks far better now than in previews

I don't think OP is talking about pre-release build videos or whatever. He's talking about disingenuous screenshots. Driveclub had those, too, where their screenshots had perfect image quality.

DeepEnigma · Jul 30, 2015

patapuf said:
Nah, if graphics aren't a selling point, you don't need to exagerate them.

There's expetions but the majority of "bullshot" and "downgrade" discussions that pop up involve games that are ambitious graphically.

I didn't think you would have to explain that.

Earthpainting · Jul 30, 2015

I don't remember who it was, but I recall a few years ago there being a Japanese publisher that accidentally sent out a bunch of screenshots with their notes on top on how they were going to bullshot them. I want to say it was Capcom and a Resident Evil game, but Google can't seem to corroborate my memory.

patapuf said:
Nah, if graphics aren't a selling point, you don't need to exagerate them.

That seems the most logical to me, and I think that shows faith in your product.

TheSpoiler · Jul 30, 2015

I didn't know this, but Koei adds a bunch of effects not found in their games to the screenshots like CA, bloom, and a bunch more.

Droplet said:
What about SE's CGI trailers that they occasionally pass off as gameplay? Not exactly bullshots per se, but it's still pretty bad.

When have they done this? A CGI trailer is what it is - and most gamers understand the game isn't going to look like a pre-rendered movie, nor does SE try to pass it off like that'll happen.

Zophar · Jul 30, 2015

I don't think you can draw a line between east and west on this. Both are guilty of bullshotting, and both can be equally transparent, too. Even with your Witcher 3 example: CDPR put out tons of undoctored, direct-feed shots, and it was in fact the source of pre-release downgrade rumors.

1.21Gigawatts · Jul 30, 2015

Cherrypicking - The Thread.

Its an international phenomenon.

Peltz · Jul 30, 2015

Bullshots and national origin have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

TheJollyCorner · Jul 30, 2015

Not sure where the line is drawn between 'bullshots' and 'early builds', but Final Fantasy XIII had some discrepancies.

Easiest example I can find:

Media shot:

Final version:

Caronte · Jul 30, 2015

Final Fantasy XIII disagrees.

Edit: There we go.

Man · Jul 30, 2015

Outside of maybe Ubisoft I wouldn't say bullshots are that prevalent anymore.

Maybe on mobile.

klee123 · Jul 30, 2015

Dark Souls 2 is the biggest offender.

Final game looked nothing like the original trailers in terms of lighting.

dave is ok · Jul 30, 2015

Dark Souls 2 was so much worse than any of these

Raging Spaniard · Jul 30, 2015

patapuf said:
Nah, if graphics aren't a selling point, you don't need to exagerate them.

There's expetions but the majority of "bullshot" and "downgrade" discussions that pop up involve games that are ambitious graphically.

Thats not correct, pretty much every media shot gets touched up. Hell, those shots are taken by the marketing divisions that dont even work on the game. Youd be surprised just how much shit gets retouched on every single game media shot (color correction, painting an artifact out, painting a glitch out, some slight reframing for better composition, fixing one really bad jaggy edge, etc)

antitrop · Jul 30, 2015

Eusis said:
Man, we had press shots of Valkyrie Profile 2 at resolutions we could only wish we could play consoles at.

On the plus side all they need to do is clean up the HUD for a good HD release!

Valkyrie Profile 2 looks insane in PCSX2.

SweetJohnnyCage · Jul 30, 2015

Dark Souls II is one of the most popular culprits from Japan.

Caronte · Jul 30, 2015

TheSpoiler said:
When have they done this? A CGI trailer is what it is - and most gamers understand the game isn't going to look like a pre-rendered movie, nor does SE try to pass it off like that'll happen.

The first FFXIII trailer. Although that was more misleading gameplay rather than graphics.

Droplet · Jul 30, 2015

TheSpoiler said:
When have they done this? A CGI trailer is what it is - and most gamers understand the game isn't going to look like a pre-rendered movie, nor does SE try to pass it off like that'll happen.

I'm not talking about the CGI announcement trailers that they usually do, I'm talking more about them using CGI to show target renders.

For the most part they've been pretty transparent about it after the fact, but the KH3 announcement trailer and one of the early FFXIII trailers were basically passing off CGI as gameplay, even going so far as to add menus over some of the action. I do agree many people understood it was CGI and for the most part simply target renders, but it's not like the average viewer is necessarily going to know this.

Yudoken · Jul 30, 2015

What are you talking about, op?
Dark Souls 2 was one of the worst downgrades ever in gaming history.

First comparison

Second comparison

This was really, REALLY bad.
They especially lied about the pc version (sigh), they changed the screenshots on their steam page shortly before release.
Nobody sane believed that the final game would look like that on console but they screwed up the pc version too.

Muffdraul · Jul 30, 2015

Can we please finally fucking admit that Killzone 2 overall ended up looking better than the E3 2005 trailer of prerendered lies?

protomouse · Jul 30, 2015

Yes, because honor and shame are huge parts of their culture.

SerTapTap · Jul 30, 2015

I think the only relevant difference is Japan has more highly visible "smaller" studios, and smaller studios lie less than big ones.

patapuf · Jul 30, 2015

Raging Spaniard said:
Thats not correct, pretty much every media shot gets touched up. Hell, those shots are taken by the marketing divisions that dont even work on the game. Youd be surprised just how much shit gets retouched on every single game media shot (color correction, painting an artifact out, painting a glitch out, some slight reframing for better composition, fixing one really bad jaggy edge, etc)

I'm aware that we get very few completely undoctored shots of anything.

But the heavily doctored stuff, with effects that are missing in the end product, significantly higher asset quality across the board than you find in the acutal game, Different lighting solutions, way more AA(or just plain supersampling) ect. The stuff that acutally sparks controversy and makes people upset.

That's something you rarely see from a mid/low budget game. Worst case you get some Supersampling.

mao2 · Jul 30, 2015

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Early:

Final:

Beyond the Labyrinth

Early:

Final:

TheJollyCorner · Jul 30, 2015

Caronte said:
The first FFXIII trailer. Although that was more misleading gameplay rather than graphics.

To be fair, that E3 2006 trailer was pretty much just a proof of concept trailer and, to my understanding, aspects of that gameplay existed in the original PS2 build of XIII.
I don't even think full gameplay development started on the PS3 version of XIII until 2007.

It's a shame, though. I was convinced Lightning's 'gravity' tool would be a big part of the dynamic battles. Guess they just couldn't get it to work out, thus Sazh conveniently breaks it accidentally at the very beginning of the game.

Spuck-uk · Jul 30, 2015

Lol if you think developers have any input regarding marketing shots, regardless of which country they're in.

GIANKRATOS · Jul 30, 2015

Muffdraul said:
Can we please finally fucking admit that Killzone 2 overall ended up looking better than the E3 2005 trailer of prerendered lies?

I totally agree. Not on a technical standpoint for sure, but visually the final version was better overall imho

Leafhopper · Jul 30, 2015

Pretty sure both sides use bullshots.

Valkerionseven · Jul 30, 2015

mao2 said:
Star Ocean: The Last Hope

I see the removal of ridiculous amounts of bloom effects a good thing personally.

But no, certain Japanese devs roll with bullshots for as long as they can. People like Koei Tecmo do it to crazy amount especially for Dynasty Warriors. Intentionally blurring the outer areas of screenshots, adding colors and effects none of which will be present in the final game all to make the screens cleaner and more dynamic.

Sub_Level · Jul 30, 2015

MGS4 was very much a downgrade, at least for the character models (which were still good in the final product). The TGS reveal was said to be in engine or real time and there's even an old video of Kojima rotating the camera around Snake's model, but by the time TGS 2007 rolled around it became clear it was not going to be some amazing looking game. TGS 2005 and TGS 2007 are night and day.

Final Fantasy XIII didn't just have bullshots, it showed a gameplay trailer that was just a concept. Final game barely played anything like it.

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