The latest trailer for Capcom’s Dark Void probably won’t make much sense to anyone who doesn’t already know what the game’s supposed to be about.
I have to admit that Capcom’s jetpack action game Dark Void has been mostly slipping under my personal radar, which is a shame because jetpacks are awesome. All I know about the game is that it is apparently dark and there may or may not be one or more void involved, that the main character uses a jetpack and fights, uh, people. Things – Watchers, apparently. Oh, and Brad Pitt will be in the movie.
Well okay, reading through those newsposts tells me more about the game then I knew before, but that’s not the point – the point is that I probably knew more about the game than your average Gamer Joe, and the recently-unveiled Cinematic Trailer seen here still kind of confused me.
Perhaps I shouldn’t say that the trailer “confused me.” Rather, if I didn’t know better it would feel like the trailer is advertising two completely different games. On the one hand, a pair of flight jockeys piloting a 1950s-era airplane crash on a tropical island – sounds like a plot to me. But then there are robots, and the guy has a suit of armor that would seem to fit perfectly in Mass Effect, and he’s flying through the sky with a jetpack (see, I knew there was a jetpack!) and attacking UFOs. Furthermore, while the environment does in fact look rather cool, it’s actually rather well-lit and I don’t see so much as a single void anywhere.
I’m usually all in favor of simplicity in game advertisement, and not every trailer needs a Don LaFontaine-style voiceover narrating every single plot point. But if this is how Capcom is going to market the game to people who don’t know the story to begin with, don’t you think it would be a bit helpful to, y’know, actually try and offer some context for the damn thing?
