The Lofty Promises of Cinematic Trailers

Video Game Trailers Taken with a Grain of Salt

Beautiful graphics, delicately chosen camera angles, A-List voice acting, and the promise of something grand in scale. These are the things that go into many of the most anticipated game trailers of our generation. These epic displays of art are there to hype our senses into overdrive, just enough so that we're begging for the next batch of details. While on paper this sounds great, the reality is that many game trailers should be viewed and enjoyed from a distance. Lofty promises are always great, but it's always easier to be disappointed than surprised. When it comes to riding the hype train of a certain game, the impeccably witty college football analyst Lee Corso comes to mind with his trademark catch phrase: "Not so fast my friends."

Rockstar, you know, the guys behind some small games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Manhunt, are putting all of their eggs in one basket this spring. The trailer for the upcoming, and highly anticipated open world game "LA Noire," released this month and it's getting quite the buzz, and all for good reason if I might add. If the film LA Confidential had a video game attached to it...this would be it. The game follows the story of a Los Angeles detective trying to piece together a recent murder. The game has the flair of the 1950's era, where men in flannel suits and border hats litter the gritty streets of LA. While the look of old LA seems to be intact, it's the tech of the game displayed in the trailer that has everyone turning their heads.

Interrogations are a key element to LA Noire

Rockstar is teaming up with a small company called Team Bondi to create LA Noire. Team Bondi was started up by a man named Brendan McNamera, who was also the man behind the 2002 PS2 game "The Getaway." If you ever played Getaway, you'll know that story reigned over gameplay in that British caper, and that's the direction LA Noire seems to be taking. New motion capture technology is being implemented in the game that is expected to outperform current motion capture technology, ultimately rendering one-to-one facial recognition from actors. Nervous facial ticks, eyebrow movement, lip synching is expected to be unparalleled in LA Noire, and after watching the trailer, I would agree. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself....

More L.A. Noire Videos

Now you notice why the game is getting such hype, but here's my problem with it. We don't see any of the gameplay elements. What ultimately makes a game successful is its gameplay. Without it, well, there wouldn't be much of a reason to call it a video game. What we do know is that if Rockstar is behind this game, we can expect the usual open-world sandbox style found in games like GTA and Red Dead. However, at no point in the trailer does it show anything resembling shootouts, car chases, or even side missions. Not that they're not there, but I'm not going to hop on the bandwagon just yet until I see some hard physical evidence.

Lets explore this dull, repetitive, FF XIV world together!

I've learned the hard way you can't judge a book by it's cover, and it's happened over the course of video game history. Most recently, games like Final Fantasy XIII and XIV released lush, beautiful, and jaw dropping cinematic trailers that had RPG nerds worldwide changing their Japanese tailored undies. Once the games came out though, they were met with less than stellar reviews...especially XIV. Another overly hyped game...Fable. Since the very first game, director Peter Molyneux offered grand promises of his open world game that haven't quite lived up to their promises. Again, it was a game that was receiving plenty of media attention, but fans felt they were duped. Fable II and III were also touted with hefty promises, but also failed to live up to expectations.

Little did the police know they were dealing with a kid throwing a churrasco at the wall.

Despite my trepidation, I was deeply impressed with the tech behind the LA Noire trailer. The facial tweaks and gestures were unlike anything I've ever seen, even in some of the highest quality mo-cap games like Uncharted and Red Dead. It's almost as if you could feel the breath of these digital characters as they deliver their top-notch lines. From what I've read in Game Informer, the facial animations will prove to be a key element in the gameplay as you interrogate suspects and witnesses. As the detective, you'll have to determine whether a suspect is lying to you just by their body language and nonverbal communication. Eyes roll, facial twitches, sweat pouring, pitches in their voice...all these elements will help you get to the truth of the investigation, which offers a new and unique gaming concept we haven't seen before. How you go about the interrogations is a cause for concern, as gamers will be forced to choose between three different choices in their conversations, similar to what we've seen in games like Mass Effect. Hopefully, conversations will be more intuitive and less predictable than Mass Effect, but we'll see what happens.

It's blood.....Son of  a bitch!

There's a lot left to be heard in terms of the action moments of the game. While LA Noire does have the makings of a classic gaming experience, we still won't know how it controls until it releases sometime this spring. Rockstar usually has a great track record in delivering the finest action sandbox games in the market, but hopefully it doesn't play like a Grand Theft Auto in Cold War Los Angeles. I loved the experience to be had with Red Dead Redemption, but the game controlled way too similar to Grand Theft Auto IV. All I know is I won't be fooled again by a beautiful trailer until I see some cold, hard gameplay footage. Until then, I'll be doing my own detective work on LA Noire until the day it hits store shelves.

Open For Less Business

Open World Games Becoming Too Expansive?

Dude...Where do I go?

Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Fable, Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls, Grand Theft Auto, Borderlands. All of these games have one thing in common, and that's the creation of a sprawling, expansive environment for gamers to waste dozens of hours in. But...is there an inherent drawback to games like this? I recently found myself going through a second playthrough of Red Dead Redemption, and found that with minor differences in the way I approach certain environments, the game was essentially the same. That's not to say that makes Red Dead a bad game, but I started to notice that the foggy perception gamers have with an open world game isn't all it's cracked up to be.

What makes an open world or sandbox game work is it's environment. Without it, there's not much incentive for gamers to wander through it. Players can explore that extra canyon, or look to see what's under that bridge over yonder, or maybe even check out that campfire way in the distance. As great as this sounds, it's baffling to me that my want to explore something will leave me unrewarded most of the time. During my 2nd playthrough of Red Dead, I wandered into an abandoned mine shaft that was being inhabited by a local gang. With ease, I took out the inaccurate, gun-toting baddies with my trusty carbine repeater (I didn't even have to use my dead-eye). Hoping to be rewarded for my trials and tribulations, I was left the dank mine with nothing in my pocket. It was beyond frustrating to come to the realization that I wasted about a half hour exploring the wild west, only to come across a mildly lengthy enemy encounter which left me empty handed. It left me feeling like Rockstar (the developers of Red Dead) are laughing at me while they light their cigars with wads of burning cash.

So...I'll get that shiny orb when I kill you right?

I came to the realization that this happens in a lot of games. The last time I got as frustrated as my Red Dead encounter was when I played Elder Scrolls IV. Everyone talks about how that series is the game changer of open world exploration in video games, but again, I wandered into an old mage temple, only to have wasted about a half hour fighting random mob encounters and to leave empty handed. Before I get drowned by the number of ccomplaints fans of these games have, I will admit that there are some benefits to exploring certain environments. Gamers will eventually come across that ruined city that is housing that mystical, ultimate weapon, that can only be obtained by beating that rare, incredibly difficult boss character, but the effort in finding that location on your own can only be achieved by either A) a 13-year-old goofball who has no social activities other than when his World of Warcraft guild gets together, or B) somone who is getting paid to do it...which I totally condone. I want to be rewarded every time I take a stroll off the beaten path and explore something new, regardless of its difficulty. There's not much incentive for me to take out that gang ridden mine shaft for nothing when I can do the same thing by going along with the story campaign.

Even a game like Fallout 3, a critically acclaimed and all too fun game was also getting on my nerves because of its vastly large and menacing post-apocalyptic world. There are no vehicles in the game, which leaves traveling from lcoation to location a major chore and treacherous time waster. In your journey you'll come across a variety of enemy encounters (which are insanely brutal during your first playthrough) that are preventing you from reaching your next objective. With no easier way to explore the world, and the vicious enemies you'll undoubtedly come across WILL kill you, ultimately forcing you to double back and wander the world some more. It just seems childish and masochistic sometimes. Most sane gamers like myself tend to stick with the main storyline. Sure we may wander off the main path every once in a while, but it seems to pay off rarely when we do. Overall, we as gamers are becoming more enthralled by the propect of a good storyline, and it helps the pacing of a game the way the developers intended. Pacing is pivotal in any game, you never want your players doing one thing for too long, or too little. In giving players the choice to explore the environment themselves (without the aid of a strategy guide) they are unknowingly entering into their own gameplay experience, and it's a big gamble. I can only wander aimlessly for so long before my interest is no longer peaked.

Open world exploration done right. Now if only I could find that haystack.

Regardless of my gripes with certain open world games, they're still a blast to play once you know what you want out of it. The way I accomplish this....strategy guides and walkthroughs. Never be ashamed in using online guides or walkthroughs when necessary. Some gamers are into the whole aspect of discovering the vast, open world all by themselves, but to me, I play games to get immediate satisfaction, and I can't do that when I'm forced to spend 20 hours wandering a desert, only to find that the mystical weapon I was looking for is over on the other side of the world. It just seems like a cop out to me in order to get me to play longer. Instead, give us a reason to search the world. Tell us something like "Hey, if you search this area over here, there are some fetch quests you can do, or beat-up quests, or some gambling to partake in." To me, Assassin's Creed II perfected the open world genre because it labeled every type of activity you can do in the game. It gave me an incentive to explore the environment by forcing me to traverse all of Renaissance Italy by forcing me to discover lookout points so I can see what else I could do. I want to control my game, not the other way around.

Until more games handle their open world formula similar to Assassin's Creed or better, I leave the searching and wandering to the people who DO have time for that, and I'll find out later whether it's worth discovering. Most of the time I'd rather just go from point A to point B in order to get the story going and enjoy whatever gameplay elements are to come. Good or bad, open world games will be on the market for years to come, and I'll still play em. They're still a marvel to behold and enormous in scope, which is definitely  a testament to the talent found in most developers today. I just wish I could find the patience to handle the anti-climactic encounters.