A Look At Previous Trailers In The Series

In order to get a good idea of what my trailer should be like I want to look at the trailers that have been made before in the Doom and Duke Nukem series.

Back when Doom, Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D were released there were no dedicated game trailers. The games were released as shareware and so the idea was you could download the first set of levels (a bit like an extended demo) and play them for free. If you liked the game you could buy the remaining levels for a price.

There are no official trailers for these games so therefore I will have to look at the newer versions of  the games, ie Doom 3 and Duke Nukem Forever.

First up, Doom 3.

The first part of the trailer actually involves the setup of how the demons infiltrated and got into the base in the first place. The trailer is trying to tell a story at this point so this may be something I need to look into. Backing track seems classical at first, sombre and then just some backing light sound effects and in-game sounds.

Following on from the "story" part there are various elements of gameplay footage involving the more action orientated and scripted set pieces of the game. The backing music changes to a more dance heavy track to indicate the more frenetic action taking place. There are pauses in the music in places when a slower scripted part is happening so we can properly hear the in-game sounds.

It ends with the game name, publishers, developers and upcoming release information.


Next, Duke Nukem Forever.

Again, the first part of the trailer tells the story of what has been happening since the original games and then how the alien invasion started.

This is followed up by in-game action footage, again with a dance heavy track. It also features periodic breaks in the dance track to allow us to focus on the some of the in-game scripted events and the sound effects from that part.

It ends with the Duke Nukem Forever logo, developer and publisher information and release date information.


I'm actually quite surprised how similar the two are in overview and style. Both start off with a bit detailing the story up till now. Then you get in-game action sequences with a dance backing track. This is interspersed with bits of the game where the backing track fades out and we just hear the in-game sound effects. They end with the same type of information on a black screen.

This gives me a pretty solid base as to what I need to try to include in my trailer. Both of these trailers were well over 2 minutes long so I will need to condense mine quite a bit but I obviously need 2 main sections:-

1. A bit at the beginning telling the story up till now.
2. In-game action sequences with dance track

Lastly the the game info and release date needs to be displayed.

I'll make sure to incorporate these things into my trailer.