Dead Island Trailer
As someone who doesn't have any kids, and has at times been known as a heartless monster, I found this trailer pretty sad. 80% of this is due to the music (which I love -- it's by Giles Lamb if you wanted to know) but the rest of the clip is still neatly put together.
I know it's got a lot of hype right now so you've probably already seen it, but I'll leave it here anyway.
The only problem now is that it's gonna be hard for the game (and the recently announced movie version) to live up to these standards. The game itself, in all likelihood, will be nothing like the trailer unless they somehow make it an emotional zombie survival-horror... and I fear for the film, whose rights have been bought by the producer of cinematic gems like Wolfman and the Mummy (in his defence, he also produced Hard Target). I can't imagine they'd play the theme music throughout for 2 hours. This trailer worked so well as a compact piece because of the melancholic score and the reverse chronology. It's almost like a stand-alone short film. A full-length movie would probably drag it out and give it unnecessary back-story that ruins the effect the trailer had. Like what they did to 1408.
It's not even about the child getting killed. The same thing happens in the Dawn of the Dead remake (I haven't seen the original) where a little girl gets turned and starts attacking her parents. I didn't feel anything. (See? Heartless.) There's a moral brigade out there claiming the trailer uses cheap tactics of killing kids to generate an emotional response, but really, this is nothing new. Film and television have been doing it for years. Characters dying in stories? Slow orchestral music? Such cheats! This might be a less than common way of promoting a video game, especially a zombie FPS, but what a step forward for the gaming industry.
I know it's got a lot of hype right now so you've probably already seen it, but I'll leave it here anyway.
Click to viewThe only problem now is that it's gonna be hard for the game (and the recently announced movie version) to live up to these standards. The game itself, in all likelihood, will be nothing like the trailer unless they somehow make it an emotional zombie survival-horror... and I fear for the film, whose rights have been bought by the producer of cinematic gems like Wolfman and the Mummy (in his defence, he also produced Hard Target). I can't imagine they'd play the theme music throughout for 2 hours. This trailer worked so well as a compact piece because of the melancholic score and the reverse chronology. It's almost like a stand-alone short film. A full-length movie would probably drag it out and give it unnecessary back-story that ruins the effect the trailer had. Like what they did to 1408.
It's not even about the child getting killed. The same thing happens in the Dawn of the Dead remake (I haven't seen the original) where a little girl gets turned and starts attacking her parents. I didn't feel anything. (See? Heartless.) There's a moral brigade out there claiming the trailer uses cheap tactics of killing kids to generate an emotional response, but really, this is nothing new. Film and television have been doing it for years. Characters dying in stories? Slow orchestral music? Such cheats! This might be a less than common way of promoting a video game, especially a zombie FPS, but what a step forward for the gaming industry.