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Jan 31, 2024

Xbox Promises No Full CG Trailers For ‘Fable’ And Others At Its Showcase

Redfall We are less than a week away from Xbox’s big showcase on June 11, where

Redfall

We are less than a week away from Xbox's big showcase on June 11, where we know Starfield will be featured heavily (it effectively has its own show) and Microsoft is teasing things like Fable finally arriving. In any case, it can't be much worse than Sony's recent showcase, full of multiplatform games and followed by a delay of The Last of Us Factions.

Xbox seems to have learned from past mistakes from both them and Sony and other publishers. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has promised that there will be no pure CG trailers in the show, and whatever is onscreen will be labeled so you know what it is:

We have generally speaking seen a decline in CG-only trailers over time, as fans have tired of them showing off a "concept" for a game without showing what the game will actually look like. A big culprit of this was Redfall with its hugely flashy CG trailer that did not explain the game, and was not remotely representative of its deeply underwhelming final product. So, Microsoft isn't going to do that again.

Something made using "in-engine footage" can still not necessarily be representative of the game, but it's better than full CG spots. However, as Diablo 4 has recently showed, you can still use CG cutscenes in your game to great effect, demonstrated by the beginning and ending of that game.

So, that means we should at the very least be getting more Starfield gameplay and some in-engine stuff from Fable, where that engine is Forzatech, the thing that makes those cars and tracks look so pretty. Extremely curious to see how that looks when translated into this genre.

Other promises? Everything shown here is not necessarily going to be released in the next 12 months, so they can feature previews of anticipated games (like Fable) that are not necessarily coming out very soon. Greenberg also promises no movie trailers (a shot at Sony who showed a random Gran Turismo trailer during their showcase) and no TV trailers (nothing from the second season of the Halo TV show, thankfully, which perhaps Microsoft is pretending no longer exists).

As for what else will be shown at the show, given that Microsoft itself essentially revealed that Fable would be there, I am more wondering about what they’re not talking about, and keeping a secret until the showcase. There have been a bunch of fake leaks about what's coming, but it does seem destined to be better than Sony's show in this not-E3 era of the summer.

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