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What makes a good game video/trailer?

TuismTuism
edited in General
Just saw Klei's trailer for their game Incognita, and thought it was a fantastic mix of gameplay and cinematics.



We've been talking about this here and there, and I feel that we really should be focusing more on making a good video - even better, on a budget.

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(can we figure out if we can make youtube embeds easier? Some formats like the above example doesn't work, and it's copypasta format...)

Comments

  • ThaumaturgeThaumaturge
    edited
    Some time ago we had a thread about how to describe one's game, if I recall correctly, and one of the points that I think that it recommended be touched on early in the description was describing "the fantasy" that your game is depicting; I think that those (rather cool) cutscene elements, especially spliced into actual gameplay, are an expression of that: they're depicting the fantasy behind the game. It's rather clever and well-executed, I do believe.

    On a side-note, we're talking here about making a good video and doing so on a budget; a related matter might be making cutscenes on a budget. One way of achieving this that I'm rather in favour of is using still (or minimally-animated) "graphic novel"-style cutscenes, as seen in Maker's Eden on this forum and games like Thief and Gray Matter, I believe.
  • raxterraxter
    edited
    wow so keen for this game! *drools* ...


    ... oh right! good videos! I loved how the cinematic blended with the gameplay, being logically consistent with each other (guy runs down hall, cut to cutscene with guy running down hall etc)... obviously a lot of in-game footage is cheap and effective and sells the game more honestly than any cinematic could.

    As an interesting note I timed the animated cutscenes, there was only 20-25 seconds of it compared to the 40-45 seconds of gameplay (rest was preamble, etc), just really well placed in between gameplay. I donno, I'm not good at these things but the 20 s of cinematic made the video probably an order of magnitude more engaging, sounds like a good return to me (disclaimer: I have no idea what I am doing)
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