The Halo 4 Launch Trailer: Do We Really Need ‘Live Action’ Trailers?

I don't know how I feel about live action trailers. While they're certainly movie-like and sometimes even well-directed, they're exactly nothing like playing a game, or even watching one.

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I don’t know how I feel about live action trailers. While they’re certainly movie-like and sometimes even well-directed, they’re exactly nothing like playing a game, or even watching one.

Halo 4‘s new trailer is like this, a mix of real people doing things against green-screens as clearly computer-generated imagery gives everything a typically counterfeit feel. It’s weird seeing actual actors playing characters we’ve come to know in a series that’s still world’s away from doing more than crude visual approximations of human beings.

That said, the parts where Master Chief is in full-on Master Chief garb are handled well enough, though we’ve already seen these villains plenty — the ones that look like they’re wearing Gears of War COG-logo masks when they splay their face-plates.

Also: Over half the trailer is flashback to John-117’s pre-Master Chief days. Is that the takeaway? That Halo 4 is going to spend a bunch of time walking us through the hero’s origin story?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDdYjlTJZXY]

My only nitpick (and it’s just because I’ve been half-reading, half-scanning Eric Nylund’s Halo: The Fall of Reach): Isn’t the kid version of John-117 supposed to have freckles?

MORE: Hands On with Halo 4: Maybe New Blood Isn’t So Bad