Trailers

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There have been two trailers for Oni: the unofficial, "banned" 1998 trailer and the official 1999 trailer, with which more fans are familiar.

1998

Bungie fans noted the similarity between this Oni art and the cover of issue 4 of the Ghost in the Shell manga.
Still frames from the trailer can be see HERE.

The 1998 trailer debuted at E3 in May 1998 so it was known as the "E3 trailer" for a while. Now we call it the 1998 trailer to differentiate it from the 1999 trailer which also came out at E3. At the time this trailer was made, Oni had only been in development for a year. There was probably no actual gameplay footage that the team felt was decent enough, so this CG trailer was produced by the two character artists for the game, Alex Okita and Chris Hughes, as well as environmental artist Steve Abeyta, who created the animations. Abeyta revealed on the forum, "It was my first try at animating since I was hired on as an environment artist." His skills would improve amazingly by the time Oni was released.

The trailer, however, did not fare as well. Alex Seropian was rather displeased that the Bungie West team had taken it upon themselves, as a satellite studio, to advertise the game with their own self-released trailer before any in-engine footage was available or the feature set was locked down, and asked game journalists to cease hosting it (as Harry and Hamish attested). It was quickly taken down from many parts of the early Web.

Notable elements:

  • This was a trailer for the pre-Hardy Oni; the story originally had Konoko as a cyborg before Hardy LeBel was brought in as Story & Design Lead.
  • Konoko still had markings under her eyes1998 trailer 30.png which at the time denoted a cyborg, not an SLD (they also had the unfortunate effect of making her eyes look huge when shown too quickly or from a distance).
  • Many complex melee moves utilized by Konoko were never implemented into the game, although one such move1998 trailer 38.png made it into the game as the Running Lariat.
  • Various pre-Lorraine concept art can be seen flashing across the screen.
  • An older "Oni" logo1998 trailer 96.png was being used at this time.

Resources

Versions
180x120 (MOV, 11.5 MB, original QuickTime streaming video)
176x118 (AVI, 4.5 MB, DivX compressed)
320x214 (AVI, 7 MB, DivX compressed)

The first seconds of the original video will appear corrupted due to missing keyframe data. The last two have the corrupt frames fixed, but the image quality is not as sharp due to resizing and/or recompression.

Soundtrack
Known as "Trailer" or "Oni Trailer"
Available on the promotional CD

Frame-by-frame breakdown

  • This is copied from here. Since so little was known at the time about Oni, and Oni itself was yet to be revamped, this is more interesting for historical purposes than it is informative.
  • I deliberately didn't edit the text. Konoko being called Kokono and Koko... datz kewt :) --geyser
  • Corresponding frames from the trailer are now linked behind the writer's words. --Iritscen

1999

1999 trailer logo.jpg
Still frames from the trailer can be see HERE.

The 1999 trailer debuted at E3 in May 1999 so it was also referred to as the "E3 trailer" at times. For clarity, we call it the 1999 trailer to differentiate it from the 1998 E3 trailer.

Resources

  • The original video file is HERE (MOV, 320x180, 46.8 MB).
  • It's been uploaded to YouTube HERE.
  • The soundtrack, known as "Konoko Chase", is available in higher quality on the promotional CD.
  • The font used for the taglines ("a dark future", etc.) is Agency FB (bold condensed).
    • (The closest mainstream font family is Metropol -> Press Gothic -> Soft Press; Agency has taller ascenders for 'b', 'f', 'd', etc.)
  • The meaning of the "matrix code" visible during the taglines is examined on the Oni matrix page.

Features

Much of this content and functionality was not found in the final product which shipped in 2001. For instance:

  • Level design: Downgraded for performance reasons.
  • Lightmapping: Replaced by vertex lighting for same reason.
  • Iron Demon: Scrapped due to time constraints.
  • Animated computer screens: Did we mention performance reasons yet?
  • Different-looking Muro: "Friendly rivalry" between character designers.

The cut features and changed/removed pre-beta content are detailed in Pre-beta features and Pre-beta content.