News: Death is No Excuse Full Length Trailer

[LZachariah]

Hrmm... I'm actually surprised at how disappointed I am at this trailer; to me, it's basically a complete miss. Yes, it's beautiful, and portrays CGI renditions of the Planetside 2 art very well, however, it does a number of things that, to me, are so damaging, they outweigh any benefit from the legitimate beauty and detail of the trailer's images.

1. The trailer focuses almost exclusively on one single Light Assault NC soldier. If some hacker had gotten their hands on the file of this video, and the ONLY hack that they performed was changing the game's title at the end from "Planetside 2" to "Planetside 2: Jetpack Trooper," it would have absolutely looked like the trailer was advertising a single player game where you played the SPECIFIC person being showcased in the video.

2. There was HEAVY misrepresentation and under-representation in the trailer. The TR were literally portrayed as the faceless enemies whom you mow down on your way to a boss battle. The Vanu were only shown at the end, and to someone who didn't know anything about the game, the Vanu would probably appear to be the "big bad guys" who were more dangerous (or who outranked) the cannon-fodder Terrans. Little to no effort was put in to show the amazing variety of classes and weapons that this groundbreakingly-awesome game has to offer. The trailer was 3.5 minutes long; it only takes THREE SECONDS to show a Heavy Assault Vanu level his Lancer cannon at a prowler and annihilate it with an energy bolt. Snapshots like that would have been MORE than enough to show the breadth of diversity in this game.

I worry that the level of this trailer's misrepresentation will actually hurt how the game is perceived or received. Will it be a defining factor? I highly doubt it; this game is going to change MMO's and FPS's forever. However, it was SUCH a powerful chance to IGNITE the powderkeg of hype that has been building since E3, and it was sorely missed. And even after all of my concerns and grievances, in the end, this issue is small. The game itself will prove to everyone how amazing it is, and I believe that it will skyrocket into wild approval just like WoW did around a decade ago. I am sorry that I believe this trailer will obstruct that journey toward fame and recognition, rather than hasten it.

Ah well. In the end, I'm not too worried. And I can't wait to get in there :-)

~Zachariah