CCP released the Incarna trailer last week, and if you haven’t seen it:
I know I frequently call out CCP when they do something that I think deserves criticism. Fairness requires me to say this, then:
I love this trailer.
It shows relatively realistic gameplay with an evident focus on nullsec, though in reality the emotions and tactics and whatnot could apply to any area of space. The player interactions seem fairly realistic. And despite the name, the trailer doesn’t seem expansion-focused. It focuses on EVE Online, where Incarna is part of that, and that doesn’t even show up until the last few seconds. The core narrative focuses on spaceships, followed by an avatar to emphasize the connection between the player and his avatar.
Yes, some folks nitpick tiny details (e.g. “who flies Gallente lolololol”, “melodramatic actor”), but in general CCP did the right thing in first focusing on a popular ship for fairly new PVP pilots, the Taranis, and then working from there for a fairly consistent visual look by using other ships that used the same design language. Ergo, lots of Gallente ships. And CCP doesn’t generally use live actors, so I look at this like a first effort.
Could CCP have done something better? Sure, I suppose so. Anybody can always make improvements given unlimited time. But this seems pretty good to me. Past trailers have shown a bunch of stuff that we can’t do in-game (cf. Tyrannis and Future Vision), or a bunch of overblown UI elements that we never see (cf. Dominion), or an unrealistic portrayal of player interactions (cf. Butterfly Effect). They avoided those mistakes this time around.
This is the sort of thing that draws in new players who want to fly Internet spaceships, not play Spaceship Barbie.
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