thecosmicfly
Banned
This is a thread idea I've had for a long while now, but what with the big Triple E approaching and the recent Ubisoft downgrade thread discussion blowing up this seemed as good a time as any to make it.
It doesn't feel far fetched to say that, well, for a lot of the on stage demos and gameplay videos that get pumped out of E3, what gets shown in a majority of them rarely translates to what we play on release. There's definitely cases to be made about false advertising or being extremely misled for when pre-release demos are absolutely no where near representative of what the final game ends up being, and those arguments have been covered exhaustively (Hell, look up any Aliens: Colonial Marines comparison thread or video to see just how not to show off your game and ruin any goodwill with your fans).
However, I want to take a brief moment to emphasise that there are a number of understandable factors at play for why not every demo ends up being identical to the final build: obviously, the games are still in development and inevitably will have changes made to them, either for optimisation purposes or overall art/game design; some games require special demos made to avoid revealing spoilers or to demonstrate mechanics and concepts that would be spread out across an entire campaign; some are done for pacing issues or to keep embarrassing mistakes/bugs during the playthrough to a minimum, and so on so on. Just felt that needed to be said as people tend to over-zealously scrutinize and begin screaming downgrade at the sight of any sort of changes to a games build, even if it's something as basic as the lighting re-positioned.
That all being said, there do happen to be those rare times where what we see up on stage ends up being what we see and play at home. It's a strange feeling sitting at home with a game and thinking, "Huh, this level looks exactly like it did back at E3." There might be the odd enemy placement revision or HUD redesign that keeps it from being 1:1, but putting aside the urge to nitpick like a pedantic motherfucker for a moment, there are demos out there that remain relatively truthful to when they were first shown. So, I thought it would be interesting to start a discussion about examples where a game looked and played just like it did when you witnessed it being shown off during it's reveal or at a convention, and perhaps examine the small changes, if any, to see why those modifications would've been made.
To start off with, the one demo that always comes to mind for me is one during Sony's E3 Conference in 2009, for some shooter game called Uncharted 2.
Even to this day this is a hell of an impressive section on PS3. Outside of an added cutscene and the teensiest geometry adjustments, this sequence plays out precisely as it did on stage all those years ago. Sure, it's only a few minutes from the game, and it's a relatively simple linear path, but I still believe it's a truly impressive moment, more so considering that Naughty Dog had only finished it just in the nick of time for E3. And it's made all the more astounding that it ended up in the final package months later with no major changes.
fake edit: Bonus points to anyone who can find a game where the final game turned out better than the E3 presentation.
It doesn't feel far fetched to say that, well, for a lot of the on stage demos and gameplay videos that get pumped out of E3, what gets shown in a majority of them rarely translates to what we play on release. There's definitely cases to be made about false advertising or being extremely misled for when pre-release demos are absolutely no where near representative of what the final game ends up being, and those arguments have been covered exhaustively (Hell, look up any Aliens: Colonial Marines comparison thread or video to see just how not to show off your game and ruin any goodwill with your fans).
However, I want to take a brief moment to emphasise that there are a number of understandable factors at play for why not every demo ends up being identical to the final build: obviously, the games are still in development and inevitably will have changes made to them, either for optimisation purposes or overall art/game design; some games require special demos made to avoid revealing spoilers or to demonstrate mechanics and concepts that would be spread out across an entire campaign; some are done for pacing issues or to keep embarrassing mistakes/bugs during the playthrough to a minimum, and so on so on. Just felt that needed to be said as people tend to over-zealously scrutinize and begin screaming downgrade at the sight of any sort of changes to a games build, even if it's something as basic as the lighting re-positioned.
That all being said, there do happen to be those rare times where what we see up on stage ends up being what we see and play at home. It's a strange feeling sitting at home with a game and thinking, "Huh, this level looks exactly like it did back at E3." There might be the odd enemy placement revision or HUD redesign that keeps it from being 1:1, but putting aside the urge to nitpick like a pedantic motherfucker for a moment, there are demos out there that remain relatively truthful to when they were first shown. So, I thought it would be interesting to start a discussion about examples where a game looked and played just like it did when you witnessed it being shown off during it's reveal or at a convention, and perhaps examine the small changes, if any, to see why those modifications would've been made.
To start off with, the one demo that always comes to mind for me is one during Sony's E3 Conference in 2009, for some shooter game called Uncharted 2.
Even to this day this is a hell of an impressive section on PS3. Outside of an added cutscene and the teensiest geometry adjustments, this sequence plays out precisely as it did on stage all those years ago. Sure, it's only a few minutes from the game, and it's a relatively simple linear path, but I still believe it's a truly impressive moment, more so considering that Naughty Dog had only finished it just in the nick of time for E3. And it's made all the more astounding that it ended up in the final package months later with no major changes.
fake edit: Bonus points to anyone who can find a game where the final game turned out better than the E3 presentation.
