Elemental - The Trailer

SPELLSSS SPELLS ... bad hitting animation DRAGON OH THERE IS A DRAGON YOU SURE GOT ME I HAVE TO BUY IT NOW 

Stardock's marketing scheme at work  

The trailer is actually new, which is sorta a bummer :/ It could be a little better, for sure, but :shrug: it's not too bad and it's not like it's going to be shown on TV or anything. 

Yeah, I would have loved to give that trailer more...well...love.    But every hour that we put into that sort of thing is currently coming straight off the game's development (we're not big enough to have a full time video guy doing these sorts of things) so I'd rather save the kick-assery for post Gold and have a better game for you guys on the 24th 

So, while on the subject, what would be your DREAM Elemental trailer?

What trailer, where? 

You could probably have the fans make you guys one that's a bit better. The dream vid? It's more on the game, you had elements there, the casual music is a good intro and should have had a more dramatic up beat (IE climax) to the end, getting the player excited. Some would say add all the interfacing and while interesting that can turn people off as well. My dream intro...

1. Opening scene as you have the game coming , name, keypoints flashed on the screen.

2. Zoom in to see the heroes then with text short blurbs like you had with Explore, Adventure... show a quest popup then the heroes go into combat.

3. Zoom out from that combat to full zoom out map view showing the tatics of the game. "Tactics, Explore, Diplomacy and more..."

4. Zoom back in to city view and show buildings being placed, fast foward.. see the town up close in action as it expands.

5. Then show a ton of combat, IE start simple ,work up to the nice spells, dragon at the end.

fin.

Thou it's more easy to imagin then to implement, sadly I would do this but time for me as you guys is short. But you asked , so there you go. Maybe again a fan that has a bit of time can do something. Has to be good thou, not some half baked you tube video

If I find time I will surely try thou.

Yeah, where the hell is this trailer?

Follow up,

come to think of it you have allot of the elements in that vid allready, just add some city stuff, a bit more on x4, the combat and showing mass armies definitly liked that, if I didn't pre-order allready that there would have had me at least look at it. So really it only needs a bit more polish and a bit more info and I think what you would have would be what I would make.

https://www.elementalgame.com/launchtrailer

So how did you guys have to pay for the Lord of the Rings sound track ? 

But seriously, if all of the music in-game is to that caliber I'll be happy to keep winamp off.

I didn't think it was bad.  It was mediocre, but I appreciate BoogleBac's perspective and would rather have a mediocre trailer and a great game.

Hey Boogiebac!

When weighing the option of polish or a high energy trailer. 

I'll go with polish, cause taking time off of that isn't as important.

Now, that said... 

If your working on the revamp for the trailer, I would recommend you add in a narrator who can help build the tension, (preferably with a good narration voice) as well as using that music you've got access to.

For building up the tension I would use Battle1MG.mp3, then transition into the Battle1BG.mp3 and then see about blending in the AtWar1_BG.mp3. starting around 42 seconds. That's got a good energy building feel. Though you could start the whole thing off with the Title Main.mp3. And then fade into the others.

Just some ideas.. 

---

One other note, when watching the video the first time for some reason the volume set's itself at the lowest setting and if you click on full screen after changing it back max volume, (In Chrome) it reduces to the lowest possible setting. Which messes with the way the video comes across.

DREAM Elemental trailer? Ahahahaha  Pure anime, Boogie. Some introductory scenes about ELemental before the Titans and then their arrival. Some more scenes about the Titan's dominion and the human uprising (don't forget the "KADABOOM!" event!!!). Next would be two different Sovereigns (one for the Kingdoms and the other for the Empires) exploring a bit of the devastated world and how they start founding their new dominions. The last part would show how those dominions grow, adventurers investigate ruins and fight monsters, armies march into enemy cities... and finally the two Sovereigns clash in epic magical duel. Musical track would have choruses.

You asked for my DREAM Elemental trailer so don't complain because my dream isn't possible.

Boogie, how time-consuming is it to produce one of those?  I mean how many on the staff and how long does it usually take?  10 guys over the course of a week?  5 over the course of a few days? 15 in over a month? 

Game trailers never seem to do much for me so it is hard for me to judge them.  In the past I've picked up a game based on the trailer and later wanted to throw the game away and call the company dirty names.  Some of the best games I have played have no trailers at all.  So, I think all I really want out of a game trailer is something that shows a bit of honesty and clearly defines what the game is about. I think that is why it was a good idea to have Impulse TV- like I mentioned earlier I want to see a bit of game play and a basic summary of what the game is about; with games like Elemental that is pretty damned hard to do in under a minute or two (or how ever long the trailer was).

I recall that Egosoft held a contest for fans to produce a trailer for the X3TC 2.0 expansion.  Perhaps Stadock should do that too (post-release, of course)?  I like the new trailer, but it might be fun to have a trailer contest that could tie-in with the whole Elemental Army idea for points and prizes. 

BTW:  Once the game is released, what will become of the Elemental Army?  I would be cool if it continued to tie into the game in a metaverse fashion.

Anyways, I'm going to try and squeeze more time in for a super-awesome trailer once the game is out, but for now it's back to the debugger

Well then, you and Mason are officially awesome.  Dang, I keep forgetting what kind of time crunch you guys are on.  Well done.  17 friggin' hours?  Daaaaang.

This pretty much sums up my own dream trailer. An anime style trailer imo would lend itself well to Elemental. Though the production costs of such a thing is probably breathtaking..

I liked the trailer actually.

One nit that I would like to pick - when Elemental faded in at the end of the vid, the "corner-gems" around the "E" and the "L" were not colored. Seems like that must have been an oversight. If it was a style choice, my bad.

i liked the trailer,  but i wish ppl would look past the graphic's and realize there is a real work of art here.

i have all kind's of game's with pretty shiny graphic's but they are all sitting on my desk collecting dust because i want more then just eye candy and i know this game  will get me back into gaming again.

can't wait till release day

I thought the trailer was fantastic!  It makes me want Elemental all the more! What's there to apologize for? Crikey its a trailer! 

Moreover, the trailer was sent to your email BEFORE RELEASE (how many devs do THAT these days?) AND THE GAME IS GOING TO BE RELEASED ON TIME!!!!

I don't require fancy eye-candy to appreciate what is the soul of a beautiful beautiful game, even if it didn't look great, which it does. (The Dragon was awesome!!!) 

When has Stardock turned out a crappy game and when have they not supported whatever they made?

Galciv?  Excellent.  Galciv 2?  Even better.  Sins? Tremendous  Etc, Etc.  Anything with Brad Wardell's name on it is going to be epic.  They are the MASTERS of Turn Based Stretegy.

There is obviously some serious strategy under the hood in Elemental and THAT is what I really want to see....Turn Based STRATEGY!  The trailer makes that clear in spades.  I WANT MORE!!!!!!  I WANT MY MTV!!!!!

[The Next Turn Beckons, Sire] OMG! I'm having a gaming orgasmic moment here!!!  I... can't....wait....until....August....24th!!

  :karma:

Oh for the love of Mike.

Look at your post.  You would be bouncing off walls in anticipation of Elemental if the trailer were a static image of a turd on a plate.  What I'm getting at is that the trailer isn't going to convince people who weren't going to buy the game anyway.

I want Elemental to be a huge success.  I want Civ V to be "the other 4x game released in 2010."  This trailer won't get us there.

The purpose of the trailer is to make a good first impression for people who know nothing or little about the game. It needs to be evaluated cold and dispassionately rather than evaluated by those of us who are familiar with the basic concepts through the beta testing phase.

It is a very important marketing tool and is likely to be the 'flagship' video for the game.

So given these requirements and looking at it 'wearing the shoes' of someone who doesn't know much about the game then I don't think it establishes the right marketing tone for new potential players.

Specifically:

1. Music and sound is too weak and soft. Needs drama.
2. Narrator would be good.
3. Background metal-rock texture is intrusive at the expense of the graphics.
4. When things happen there should be some camera shake. Eg. During battle scene etc.
5. Should be loud SFX during battle scene.
6. The choice of battle scene looks a little funny in two parts. a. It looks like a guy comes along and slaps a stack only to be pummelled in return. And b. The spider getting hit would be much better as a death scene so there aren't unanswered questions.
7. A small statement at the start of the piece that the animation was taken entirely from in-game would help establish credentials. So many trailers are purpose-built and so are unbelievable.

Being dispassionate and given that the game is launching close to CivV I think that the trailers do need to be compared - yes, I know that the budgets are entirely different, but...

The CivV trailer also uses some in-game graphics and clearly differentiates itself in terms of game-play changes and the promise of what you can expect.

Given that Elemental is largely a strategy-based RPG I think there needs to be more promise and more drama.

Perhaps more along the outline of:

1. Make your hero
2. Build your empire
3. Raise your armies
4. Plan your strategies
5. Conquer through strength, guile and magic
6. Every game is different
7. The world is fully deformable through powerful magic
8. Fully and easily moddable
9. Launch 24 Aug

Thank you.  All donations accepted.

lol i'm still trying to picture a static image of a turd on a plate

Some great ideas here for sure, again the trailer wasn't bad, but wasn't awwww striking as well. With some time and love it can be something dramatic that would get people on the first view. Again many of us knowing what the game is and pre-ordered, it really matters not. It again (as another pointed out) is ment to show those that have "no clue" the game is even coming out. I have seen plenty of post latly going... "holy crap, there is another stardock game on the way? Sweet!" along those lines , even my friends (till I told them ) didn't know. but as my buddy told me , "eh the trailer looks ok and all , but how is the game? That trailer doesn't show much" thats from a guy that has no clue about the game.

So in the end, the question came from someone that had no idea of the game "looks ok, but what's it about" Needless to say, that pretty much tells me and probably the devs that in fact, ops! Not exactly what was intended with the trailer. Thou it's a dam good start, don't take me wrong, at least my buddy wanted to know more.