EA Games uploaded a “reveal” trailer for Star Wars: Squadrons this morning and it’s yet another in a long line of disappointing CGI teaser trailers. For years in the gaming industry, publishers have revealed first looks at their upcoming games with trailers that show literally nothing about said game. This happened last week with the PS5 reveal event and was famously lampooned earlier this year with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla’s misleading “gameplay” trailer.
While this trend has been going on for as long as video games have been mass marketable, the most infamous of these has to be the E3 reveal for Killzone 2 back in 2005. Claimed to be footage running on an actual PS3 unit, the trailer was a load of garbage meant to hype up a game that no one knew anything about. It was certainly pretty and at least attempted to recreate gameplay, but it was the most egregious in a line of deceptive marketing that publishers began to lean heavily into.
Ever since that trailer, most big-budget games have been revealed to the public with sizzle reels that show off concepts rather than gameplay. Gameplay isn’t always the most important thing for a trailer (a good story can be a compelling reason to pick up a game), but it certainly would be nice to know how a game will play when it is being unveiled to the world.
In the case of Star Wars: Squadrons, we only know details about the game because of EA saying so after the trailer. The actual footage showed off exactly nothing that was in-game or even representative of the final title. Was it a space flight sim? Will it have microtransactions? How in-depth is the campaign?
Speaking to GameSpot, EA clarified all of that. There’s cross-play multiplayer, a single-player portion, and there will not be any microtransactions. Those are all things that could have been included in today’s trailer, but doing so isn’t how you hype up people! You’ve got to lead with vague glimpses of spacecraft that maybe resemble classic Star Wars ships! Prey on that nostalgia!
I don’t bring this all up to deflate excitement around Squadrons. For all I know, the game is going to be really solid. EA shouldn’t have revealed it with a lame trailer, though. That’s just doing a disservice to the team at EA Motive that are busting their asses to create a new Star Wars experience.
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