Why Do Game Trailers Look So Much Better Than the Actual Game?

Ever sit down to watch a trailer for the latest video game, only to find yourself out of the chair and dancing with excitement by the end of it? “The graphics look so good, and did you see that explosion? It was like I was actually there!”

Unfortunately, over the past few years we’ve been taught that expectations rarely meet up with reality in the world of game trailers. But why is that? How do developers make a game look so good for three minutes at a time, only to have them fall flat once the full game makes it onto shelves?

“In-Game” vs. “In-Engine” vs. CGI Trailers

In 2005, the Killzone 2 trailer debuted at E3, featuring graphics unlike anything anyone had ever seen before (console or otherwise). The animations and character models so fluid they looked like they were ripped straight from a computer-generated movie. Used as advertising fodder to show off the increased graphical capabilities of the PS3, the trailer was posted and reposted by every gaming news outlet in the country, and heralded as the launching point for “gaming’s second renaissance”.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the press to dissect the trailer bit by bit. As more actual in-game screenshots leaked out over the next few months, journalists and gamers alike started to wonder if the trailer they were shown at E3 was really telling the whole story. Turns out Guerilla (the developers of Killzone) had used a technique known as “in-engine rendering”, which allowed the developers to add in extra lighting element, new animations, or other alterations to clean up the final product.

There are a few different ways game developers can create a trailer. Full CGI trailers, like the Overwatch trailer above, are made completely separate from the game engine. These usually include Pixar-esque cinematics that involve characters in the story fighting some kind of battle or having a lot of dialogue. Even though CGI trailers are a divisive promotional tool in the gaming community, they’re also commonly accepted as part of the advertising blitz necessary to get a game to sell by the time it’s on shelves.

“In-engine” trailers, like that Killzone trailer in 2005 (or the Total War: Warhammer trailer above), are a bit different. When you make an in-engine trailer, it works similarly to the pre-rendered CGI model, except that the 3D artists are animating characters using only the game’s engine to create a static cutscene. You may also see these referred to as “pre-rendered” trailers.