The Biggest Double Standard This Gen Exposed

To fully appreciate the point of this story, you'll either have to relive the four years of nit-picking you had to endure, or jog your memory to about three years ago and remember promises that weren't kept.  The double standard I am talking about is the way Killzone is being raked over the coals for it's trailer although it in almost every way surpassed the trailer and Halo 3 for showing an arguably equally as detailed and impressive trailer for Halo 3, but not being kept to it's standard of quality despite being told that the quality of Halo 3 would also match it's highest quality trailer, but Halo 3 did not nearly match it's quality in any way.

The reason I'm saying this is the biggest double standard is because these two games are probably the two that are the most well known FPS for each respective console. Halo 3 with it's legions of followers and console-saving reputation, and Killzone with it's unbelievable trailer flagshipping Sony's exclusive titles this gen.

I decided to bring up the points because I'm probably one of the few who will admit to both loving both Killzone and Halo. I'm also probably the only PS3 owner who will say Halo 1 was better than Killzone 1, so I'm not looking to knock either game or either franchise, but to again expose the bias in the corporate media. If you can't tell, I can't stand the corporate media's utter lack of professionalism, but I digress.

The Killzone scenario I'll do last, because it's known, and I don't want to waste time on it.

So the first franchise I would like to cover is probably one of my all time favorites, Halo.

In 2006, Halo was shown at the tail end of E3 with incredible footage that was said to be in-game by Bill Gates, and confirmed by Peter Moore's nodding head (shown @ 1:17:40):

http://www.gamespot.com/video/6149780

but the very next year, Halo 3's trailer didn't even look half as good as the trailer:

http://www.spike.com/video/halo-3-e3-2007/2873826

You'd think the media would've been all over that, but critics were rather silent. Odd, since the media had a two whole years of practice to (rightly) rip on Kilzone 2's trailer being fake. Perhaps it wasn't so obvious... or was it?

To further the comparison, here's an image from the trailer:

http://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/digitalAssets/14483_Halo3Body.jpg

Versus

http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Halo3/Screenshots/H3_E307_Chief01.jpg

which I got from Bungie's site directly to convey the point about The Chief from 2006 to 2007.

Even my four favorite Halo 3 pics show the stark differences between the trailer and final game:

(my favorite trailer pic of the chief)
http://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/digitalAssets/14483_Halo3Body.jpg

(my favorite Halo 3 in-game pic: looks the most real, like an overcast day. Hopefully not a bullshot)
http://buttonmashing.com/wp-content/uploads/halo3-hands.jpg

(my favorite trailer pic of the background)
http://ployer.com/archives/2007/04/27/Halo3.jpg

(my favoirte pic from the multiplayer Beta)
http://punchbutton.beloblog.com/archives/images/0507/halo%203.jpg

Because of that, when the bubble shield commercial came out:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/halo3ad.JPG

who doubted that the footage shown in that commercial wasn't in-game?

Again, I'm not trying to take Halo 3 "down a peg" at all; it's just to show how Halo 3 was given a pass for over-promising and under-delivering whereas Killzone 2 exceeds it's trailer in almost every way, but gets torn-down for very minor issues.


The second part of the story all goes back to the 2005 E3 trailer where they showed incredible footage of Killzone2, you know the one:

http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/748475/killzone-next-gen/videos/killzone_081005.html

Anyways, everyone called Bull-scat on the trailer being real (and they were right to do so in this instance), but the game (as we know so far) did right by the trailer:

http://media.psu.com/media/Killzone2_final_intro.mov

to the point that the side-by-side using (now) older footage shows that Killzone 2 exceeds the trailer in almost every way shot by shot:

http://talkplaystation.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/killzone2-e3-vs-now.jpg


Yet this game is so picked-apart by the media and the "media" (read: glorified bloggers) that we learned about the industry term for a widely-used technique called the "bullshot" from Killzone's image tweaking incident:

http://cdn1.gamepro.com/article_img/gamepro/156868-1-1.jpg


The curious thing is that simple things like this can be brought up just as quickly and easily as looking through the information, but for some reason, it becomes too hard for "reporters" nowadays if they can't copy and paste it.