Blur...ring the lines between trailer and gameplay...

So one of my biggest problems with what we see when a game first gets announced is the trailer. Not because it doesn't look gorgeous, or it doesn't give enough plot (Watchdogs), but mostly because it isn't indicative of what the final product looks like.

I spoke on this topic on our 6/10 podcast (available at soundcloud.com/RobPotsy), as I was discussing EA and I was applauding them for every game they showed at E3 2014 was either on the Ignite or Frostbite engines, and the footage was all in game.

Bioware, an EA studio since Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite developers. I play every game they make, am normally enamored by them, and will typically get a second play through in. However, up until Dragon Age Inquisition, they always used BLUR studio to develop their trailers. As gorgeous as they were, they never allowed you to see what you would be playing, and often times, I'd be disappointed by what the visuals ultimately would be after seeing such beautiful footage to get my appetite whetted. Dragon Age Inquisition changed this from it's on screen debut, short ng off Frostbite 3 in all of it's glory and showing two things: the first was that Bioware was doing the trailers themselves and the second was that they trusted the visual integrity of Frostbite enough to not spend the money on BLUR.

Don't get me wrong, I watched a 7 minute sizzle trailer from BLUR that showed what the studio was capable of, and would throw money at them to develop a 2 hour Mass Effect MOVIE so that it was done right...they are THAT good. I just don't want to think a game looks like their work, only to find out it looks like World Of Warcraft.

The engines are powerful enough. When you see Kojima's trailer for The Phantom Pain, it's all from the FOX engine. Battlefield, Call of Duty, and all of EAs games now shown from the in game footage...yet, for some reason, Batman, Halo and countless others are still animated trailers from outside sources.

Trust your source material, folks...it's what made us all trust Naughty Dog so much. Give us gameplay from the first real trailer going forward, we deserve it...and so does the hard work of the folks working on it.