Sony's Biggest Con – The Fake Trailers of E3 2005

Table of Contents

• Sony's Biggest Con – The Fake Trailers of E3 2005
• We do the impossible right away. Miracles take four years

We do the impossible right away. Miracles take four years

Evolution Studios did not pick up the gauntlet. Motorstorm debuted shortly after the PS3's launch (and in Europe, it was one of the launch titles for that console). Although it was phenomenal by 2007 standards, the quality of the visuals was nothing compared to what Sony had shown two years earlier. Meanwhile, Guerilla Games Studio decided to fight back.

Motorstorm was a great and beautiful game - but it failed to meet the ridiculously high bar.

Years later, Angie Smets, who was hired as Guerilla's executive producer, described how studio members reacted to the presentation of their trailer at the conference:

At the time of its presentation, Killzone 2 was in the early stages of the development. Furthermore, the project was originally conceived with the PlayStation 2 in mind, and the decision to change the target platform was made shortly after. The team had just received a devkit of this console and had barely started learning how to write games for it. And suddenly, the whole world began to expect unreal things. Despite its bad starting position, Guerilla made it a point of honor to fulfill the promise that had been made.

The studio was pressured not only by players but also by Sony, for whom E3 2005 was the beginning of the series of failures. Microsoft was getting bolder and the situation for the previously confident Japanese was starting to get ugly. The company needed a miracle and Killzone 2 could have been one. The corporation was therefore ready to provide Guerilla with all possible technical and financial support, and also authorized the hiring of additional staff to meet the expectations.

ORIGINS OF GUERILLA GAMES STUDIO

When Guerilla Games was in the spotlight due to the trailer of Killzone 2 it was not associated with outstanding quality. The team was founded in Amsterdam in 2000 as Lost Boys Games, only to change its name three years later to the one that still exists today. Lost Boys co-created games completely forgotten by history for Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance – such as Dizzy's Candy Quest or Rhino Rumble.

Guerilla hadn't created anything significant up until 2004. Then, they released Shellshock: Nam' 67 and the first Killzone prepared for Sony. Shellshock was not well-received (ratings on Metacritic range from 50 to 58%, depending on the platform). Killzone did better, collecting mostly sevens from the professional press. But that wasn't enough – the sky-high expectations before the release turned the game from the "slayer of Halo" into a disappointment to many players. However, Sony was pleased with this collaboration, as it not only gave the green light to Killzone's sequel (and the spin-off Liberation for PSP), but bought out Guerilla Games studio in 2005.

For two years, Guerilla restrained from any public announcements. By keeping their contacts with the media to a minimum, the developers began to try to make what the trailer promised. None of the staff initially thought this would become a reality. In 2007 the effects of the process were shown first behind closed doors of The Game Developers Conference, and then publicly at E3. The new trailer of Killzone 2 failed to reach the visual level of a target rendering from two years before, but it turned out to be closer to it than anyone expected.

The game was amazing and visually stunning. And if anyone had any doubt that fraud had been committed again, a playable demo released to journalists a few months later completely dispelled them. When placed against the wall, Guerilla performed a number of technological wonders – during the development of the game, experimental methods of caching data, generating light effects, or using molecular effects were used or even invented. As a result, PlayStation 3 offered an image that had previously seemed unattainable for the console.

Although showing Killzone 2 again to the world was a success, work was still far from complete. The sympathy of the players was restored, but the pressure was still enormous – the game was, after all, not just meant to look nice, but above all to be an engaging experience. This required several more months of work.

And waiting for it eventually paid off. Killzone 2 debuted in late February 2009, almost four years after the infamous 2005 E3 conference. And delighted everyone. Over the months following E3 2007, Guerilla managed to further enhance the visuals and get even closer to target rendering. At the time of its release, this game was unquestionably the prettiest game on the market, stunning not only with amazing technical refinement but also with great artistic style. The dirty and gloomy world was memorable and created a unique atmosphere.

More importantly, the game was also very good in terms of its gameplay. The story of the dramatic invasion of Planet Helghan provided about 10 hours of powerful, bloody gameplay in the best style, complemented by a very well-executed multiplayer mode. Guerilla Games Studio, whose greatest achievement was the creation of a mediocre game, managed to emerge victorious from the duel with sky-high expectations and gave players one of the best games of the seventh generation. It also helped Sony level the odds for the PS3 against the dominant Xbox 360.

Also today, Killzone 2 has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of its setting.

Welcome to the major league

After this success, Guerilla Games was promoted to the premier league of game developers. In two years, it produced Killzone 3, which was even prettier and used the Sony 3D and PlayStation Move. Still, the game proved to be a fairly safe sequel. Then the studio slipped a bit with its "adequate" Killzone: Shadow Fall – the PlayStation 4 launch title. Thankfully the phenomenal Horizon Zero Dawn released four years later made everyone quickly forget about this minor blunder.

After the success of Horizon, Guerilla Games is unlikely to return to Killzone's universe any time soon.

The lie Sony told everyone in 2005 was certainly not the decisive factor of the 7th generation console "battle" outcome, but it did hinge the confidence of gamers and pushed them towards Microsoft and, later, Nintendo as well. The subsequent mistakes made by Sony have only cemented the perception among audiences that the company was resting on its laurels and PlayStation may no longer be the best possible choice. Killzone 2 helped to rebuild that trust. In the end, Sony managed to catch up with Microsoft, but it took many years (finished at a loss). Both companies had to acknowledge the superiority of Nintendo, whose Wii, despite its late launch and poor "guts," was the seventh generation's best-selling console.

One ill-advised sentence (or deliberate deception-depending on what you prefer to believe) ultimately produced a better game than we had the right to expect. It promoted a middle-class development studio to the premier league and caused a lot of trouble for a powerful corporation. Quite a lot, but it was also quite a lie. Happily, Sony has learned a valuable lesson from this whole situation and has never tried to convince gamers that prerendered videos are actual pieces of gameplay footage ever since.