Monday, February 21, 2011

Dead Island Trailer

Well, the Dead Island trailer is tearing up the internet, and rightfully so. It's a genuine work of art and what it accomplishes in only three minutes is nothing short of miraculous. I have to admit that by the time I got to the end of the trailer I had the wind taken out of me.

Now, based solely on that trailer, a game which has by all appearances been in development Hell for four years has been given new life. What's ironic is that as a general rule trailers have very little to do with the actual game or movie they're advertising. Observers who think that this may herald some new found maturity in gaming are probably wrong. The game developer is Techland in Poland, the studio which produced the trailer is Axis Animation in Scotland. Pity the poor Poles who now have to come up with a game worthy of the hype and their own trailer. There's a more than even chance that the game itself will suck and the only thing people will remember about it in five years is that trailer.

That makes the recent rumors of Hollywood interest even more ironic. If some producer in California is really interested in an adaptation they should bypass Techland and find out who created the trailer at Axis--in other words, don't talk to the game guys, talk to the people that make movies instead. Consider that Axis also did the wonderful opening animation for Mass Effect 2 and that nothing in the rest game was as eerily beautiful as the 60 seconds which opened it.