Summary
Trailers for video games aredesigned to build excitement around a product, but they usually come out a year or two before the game is actually ready to play. As great as it is to see the next big title from your favorite developer, you should always take trailers with a grain of salt, because what you see is not always what you get.
Intentionally or not, some trailers feature content, characters, or mechanics that aren’t in the final product. Sometimes, developers need to remove elements to prevent their project from being delayed, while others intentionally change things to manipulate audience expectations. Here are some games that ended up being completely different from their trailers.
On the surface, Brutal Legend seemed like an awesome action-adventure game with an all-star cast including Jack Black, Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy from Motorhead. Everything from the soundtrack to the atmosphere felt perfectly curated towards metalheads and younger rock fans, but the actual gameplay was just as disappointing as watching your favorite band sell out.
Most of Brutal Legend’s marketing surroundedJack Black and the musicians in the game, so it was definitely surprising when people finally booted it up and discovered the gameplay was mostly built around real-time strategy. This aspect blindsided many and hurt the game’s reputation at first, though it still has many fans who consider it a cult classic.
Similar to Brutal Legend, We Happy Few was advertised as one thing but ended up being something completely different by the time it launched. Presented as a first-person action-adventure game in the same vein as Bioshock, Compulsion Games seemed to be filling a void with a colorful and violent adventure through a dystopian world, but the final product wasn’t close to fulfilling its promise.
Though We Happy Few does have a story and main characters, it’s mostly a stealth-survival game with roguelike elements woven throughout. From procedurally generated environments to a slew of bugs at launch, We Happy Few was almost immediately written off by people who eagerly waited for it after the announcement trailer.
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CD Projekt Red dropped the reveal trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2012, more than eight years before the game actually came out. The long road to the launch of the ambitious title was paved with promises of high-quality graphics and an immersive world full of endless possibilities, which was immediately shattered once players got their hands on it.
To say Cyberpunk 2077 was a bug-ridden disaster at launch would be an understatement. The quality of the game was so poor that PlayStation made the unprecedented decision to remove it from their physical and digital storefronts until CD Projekt Red fulfilled their promises to consumers. The developers eventuallyfixed Cyberpunk 2077 and turned it around tremendously, but the game will always be remembered for its misleading advertising.
No Man’s Sky had a lot of attention during its development, mostly for its ambition and the small size of the team working on it. From interviews on late-night talk shows to promising E3 trailers, it seemed like the game had the potential to shift the zeitgeist in a new direction. When it finally came out, the illusion was quickly broken as features highlighted through marketing weren’t there.
From the absence of multiplayer to the lack of variety between planets, No Man’s Sky was more than a disappointment when it came out - it felt like a lie. Something like this would normally destroy a game’s chances of redemption, but fortunately, the developers have continued to work on it to deliver everything they ever promised and more.
BioShock Infinite had an infamously rough development cycle that included rewrites and other last-minute changes. This made marketing for the title extremely difficult, and multiple trailers feature either gameplay or narrative elements that don’t appear in the actual game.
The trailers for BioShock Infinite depicted a larger world with more abilities to unlock and a wider variety of enemies to fight than there were in the final product. Unlike other games like Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky, which suffered from misleading audiences, BioShock Infinite still launched to phenomenal praise and is still considered to be a masterpiece despite its missing pieces.
Ubisoft closed its 2012 E3 show with a trailer for Watch Dogs that left audiences dazzled with its impressive graphics. From the lighting to the particle effects, Watch Dogs seemed to promise to take gaming visuals to the next level, but when it finally launched in 2014, players were quickly disappointed by its below-average fidelity.
To make matters worse, almost everything about the original Watch Dogs was generally underwhelming and felt like it was just following a blueprint drafted by successful open-world games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row. The Watch Dogs series evolved and eventually crafted its own identity with some interesting sequels, but it never shook off the bad smell of false advertising.
When a developer like Blizzard has a popular online multiplayer game like Overwatch, it’s hard to justify the existence of a sequel when it could just support the original with more content. The initial trailer for Overwatch 2 made a unique case for itself with a plethora of unique modes and gameplay mechanics, but most of it was scrapped before the game actually came out.
From hero-specific talent trees to story-based PvE missions, Overwatch 2 seemed like it would be a significant update compared to its predecessor, but when it finally came out, fans felt like it was a downgraded version of the game they loved. To make matters worse, the original Overwatch servers shut down the same day Overwatch 2 launched, so players couldn’t even return to it if they wanted to.
Unlike many of the other games on this list, the trailers for Metal Gear Solid 2 were intentionally misleading to subvert audience expectations. All the advertising, including demos and the cover art for the game, depicted Snake as the returning protagonist, but you only play as the iconic character during the prologue sequence beforestepping into the shoes of someone new for the rest of the journey.
This decision was incredibly divisive and angered a large portion of the fanbase. Not only was the new character, Raiden, completely different from the stoic Solid Snake, but fans felt genuinely manipulated by the false advertising and felt like they were tricked. The twist has been praised in retrospect for its boldness and how it sets up the rest of the series.
Like Metal Gear Solid 2, the trailers for The Last of Us Part 2 were intentionally misleading to hide one of the game’s biggest twists. While some commercials will show sequences out of order to fool audiences into thinking about one thing, others are specifically crafted to play with (and sometimes shatter) expectations.
One of the most infamous trailers for The Last of Us Part 2 alludes to a fan-favorite character joining Ellie on her revenge quest, but fans were distraught when that same character is brutally murdered during the game’s opening hours. The decision to dangle something shiny in front of audiences, just to take it away before they could enjoy it, was polarizing and is one of the major reasons The Last of Us Part 2 isn’t as universally beloved as its predecessor.
The cinematic trailer for Dead Island was released in 2011 and depicted a game that could’ve predated other emotionally gripping zombie stories like Telltale’s The Walking Dead or The Last of Us. It follows a family during an attack by the undead in their hotel room, but the presentation is what caught the public’s eye, from the somber music to the way the story is told in reverse.
Fans were excited to play a more realistic survival game with higher stakes than a generic “game over” screen, but when Dead Island finally came out, they quickly discovered that it was just another zombie game with a unique location. It’s still a fun game if you’re looking to mash some buttons and explore the island for collectibles, but the contrast between the trailer and the actual game is night and day.
