It’s become common wisdom by this point- you shouldn’t trust video game trailers to be accurate representations of the final product. All too often, we’ve been fooled by trailers, and in more ways than one. Some have exaggerated the visual prowess of their games, others have fooled people into thinking a game will be entirely different from what it’s actually like, while others have highlighted parts that turn out to be quite de-emphasized in the actual game.
In this feature, we’re going to take a look at what we feel have been ten of the most misleading trailers for video games in the last few years. Let’s jump right in.
METAL GEAR SOLID 2
Hideo Kojima has been known to play his fans like a damn fiddle, but no incident illustrates that fact as perfectly as the trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The final game was excellent, undoubtedly, and in terms of visuals and gameplay features, the trailer was actually a pretty accurate representation- that said, it also very cleverly made fans believe that Solid Snake was going to be the main protagonist once again- and really, up until that point, fans had no reason to believe otherwise. The footage that was shown was entirely from the Tanker incident, and it was only after the game launched that people realized that that was only the game’s prologue, and you spend the rest of your time playing as newcomer Raiden.
