Part 25: Intermission 5. Concept art and promo material
Intermission 5A gallery of weird, lazy and lies.
So, if you make a video game and want to advertise for it, what do you do? You show art, pictures and trailer footage. And you also put some effort into it. Silver Style did that but they weren't too keen on the effort part as you will see.
Videos
Let's start with the official trailer.
This contains minor spoilers, but who really cares?
This is actually competently made and pretty neat. What's interesting is that it uses the first release of the game and therefore the old models and item pictures. The later graphic update really helped. Also, to their credit, they refrained from showing things that would end up being cut. They probably knew already what had to be canned.
On some French site I was able to find animation promos.
Carrying people.
Character action sequence.
A lot of this was cut and looks way smoother in the video, than in the game.
Climbing a wall.
Riding a motorcycle.
Why was this cut you jerks?! Also that is one bitching helmet.
Pictures
Oh boy...
Let's start out with concept art.
This is a pretty cool pencil scetch. And a big lie.
Pencil and colored version. It's kind of a lie as no armor in the first release looked that cool.
Face-art progression. I don't recall who the first guy is, but the second Agnes face looks dang creepy.
Also you may understand now, why I said that red plastic cup's drawing was so close.
Concepts for in-game objects. We will see that Balista in the last leg of the game.
The first one is a concept for a squaddie which ended up different in the game. The second one is a concept for a bandit.
His headband reads "No risk no fun".
The first one is a concept for Carmen, you will understand a bit later. The second one however...man, we'll see a lot from this pair.
I like to call this the trio of lies&lazy. There is no boat, TOW missles and no Abrahams in this game. Also the photoshop on the colored background is really obvious.
With the tone set, let's move on to the promo art.
Two versions of the same. Again it's kind of a lie due to the armors.
It's the Native American again, and that's much closer to his actual look.
Iggy Pop says hello.
It's the pair again and that background seems familiar.
That's where it's from. Also it is used in the manual.
A drawn version of our pair. I like how the third person was drawn in the laziest pose possible.
They just removed the third person and turned the image into a cool Wallpaper. But it's also kind of a lie as the game is not as cool as that picture makes it out to be.
This is the pinnacle of lazy. Just look at it! I mean it's kind of funny but in a lame way. And so fucking lazy. Argh..
They also made some promos for a handful of squaddies.
The art-style is pretty weird. So at first I thought they were made by a fan, but we already saw the concept sketch for Carmen. I think these are bad.
And lastly wallpapers, with lies.
Lie. They have to keep taunting us with that boat.
Lie. Flying vehicles were cut. I mentioned somewhere that the first release had the "Helicopter" driving talent which was quickly patched out.
Truth. We have that pickup. But the background and title is re-used.
Truth. We will get that buggy later. But see that Mg on top? Another thing we can't ever use.
SO. LAZY.
After seeing all this, you may understand why I mentioned the dev's being lazy at several points. The way they handled their art does tell you something about the company. And with that, the fucked up release is also placed in another light. I really don't want to unrightfully attack anyone involved but I got kind of angry when collecting the material. I knew they were a bit lazy from before but that "artwork" really broke the camels back.
Also, remember when Winamp was a thing?
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Authors Note: There won't be an update this weekend, I'm sorry! I just didn't have time to record and process gamefootage. I need my only free day to unwind and stay sane and will proably be a bit damaged on Sunday. So I can't say if I can record on that day. In the worst case the next update will hit after next Wednesday, I would assume.