Commentary on politics and whatever else I want.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Game Trailers Are Getting More Brilliant

Maybe it's the growth of gaming conventions or just part of the gaming industry growing up, but game trailers have become some of the most stunning productions of any developer.
Bioshock Infinite:

The Bioshock series has always traded in politics. Infinite will be no different. Instead of dealing with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Infinite will grapple with American exceptionalism and xenophobia, as the ubiquitous nature of the American flags tells us. Furthermore, the trailer draws a line from the underwater environment of the first game to the city-in-the-sky setting of Infinite. We see a poster that tells us the citizens of this sky city are encouraged to engage in their own eugenics by discarding weak babies, as the Spartans did. Yet, the sinister nature of the city is not the implications of what we see, but the secrets, the men whose faces are always in shadow, always turned away from us.

InFamous 2:

Sucker Punch seems to be a pretty confident developer. How else do you explain their willingness to display every skin and surface in still frame, when they often look their worst? Granted it was all probably cleaned up for this trailer, but it's bold nonetheless. They trust their work, and they're not going to dress it up with a fight scene that couldn't potentially be in the game.

Resistance 3:

This is the creepiest game trailer since Crysis 2. It captures perfectly the Resistance series mix of past and future. It's like the Samurai Jack motif, but treated seriously. It combines the natural with the alien and the normal with the fantastic. It tells a story surprisingly well.

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