+1 I'd written up almost this exact response (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, August 31, 2017, 16:35 (2423 days ago) @ Xenos

I really don't think many people are going to buy it based off the humorous tone and then be upset that the game's tone doesn't match. In fact, as evidenced by most best selling FPS, most people don't buy FPS games for tone/story, they buy them for gameplay.

I have no idea what the percentages are, but personally speaking, I don't buy any game based on marketing because videogame marketing is often so flagrantly dishonest that it is virtually useless.

I mean, I expect an ad to try and make the product look good. That's obvious. But effective marketing does need to be somewhat honest about the nature of the product being sold. People like to know what they're getting for their money. You don't promote a horror movie by releasing trailers that make it look like a romance.

I was talking to a friend at Ubisoft about this very issue back when SplinterCell Blacklist came out. The trailers made it look like an explosion-filled high octane action game, when the game itself was very much NOT that. I said to him "this is just going to do a disservice to the game and to anyone who buys it based on this trailer".

Then I would say this trailer did a fine job since Destiny is a great action game. Like I said, gameplay is what most people buy an fps off of, not story.

From that angle, I think you're absolutely right. I just don't think it's safe or right to make assumptions like "people don't care about the story or tone, so we don't need to worry about portraying it accurately". Luke S and Mark N have specifically talked about how much effort Bungie has put into creating a compelling story that players will care about this time around. To have a trailer come along and say "nah, that doesn't really matter" is disappointing to me.

The other thing I always stress whenever these discussions about trailers come up is that these decisions matter because companies put so much time, thought, and money into marketing that you can learn a lot about their priorities from how they choose to market their game. This is something Joe Staten talked about a fair bit on one of the old Bungie Podcasts, regarding the ODST reveal trailer. So when I look at how Destiny 2 is being marketed (the trailers, specifically) I see some severe disconnects. I suspect (but can't prove) that we're seeing some marketing that was primarily handled by Activision (the reveal trailer and the Live Action trailer), and some that had more direct involvement from Bungie (the more traditional space-opera in-engine trailers).

If I'm right about that, then there's a fascinating "inside baseball" element to this whole thing. We can see what Bungie is excited about through their trailers, and then we can see what Activision is excited about/thinks gamers will like through their trailers.