Trailers

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

1998

File:1998 trailer splash.jpg

Bungie fans noted the similarity between this Oni art and THIS Ghost in the Shell manga cover.

Still frames uploaded from the trailer can be see HERE.

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 main artists for the game, Alex Okita and Chris Hughes, as well as Steve Abeyta. Abeyta revealed in an Oni Central Forum thread that "[i]t 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. It was quickly taken down from many parts of the early Web.

Notable elements:

• This was a trailer for the pre-Hardy Oni; as documented here, the story originally had Konoko as a cyborg before LeBel was brought in as Story & Design Lead.
• As seen around 45 seconds in, Konoko still markings under her eyes which, in the final game, would denote an SLD (they also had the unfortunate effect of making her eyes look huge when shown too quickly).
• Many complex melee moves are utilized by Konoko that were never implemented into the game, although at least one such move actually was used: the Lariat (at 0:58).
• Various pre-Lorraine concept art can be seen flashing across the screen.
• An older "Oni" logo was being used at this time, as seen at 0:10.

Resources

Versions

180x120 (MOV, 11.5 MB, streams with QT)

176x118 (AVI, 4.5 MB, DivX compressed)

320x214 (AVI, 7 MB, DivX compressed)

For the first one, the first seconds are corrupt.

The last two have the corrupt frames fixed, but the image quality is maybe not as sharp due to resizing and compression.

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 :)
• Notes from me are in bold italics geyser
• I'd love it if people made the snapshots the guy is talking about... or I'll have to do that myself at some point :(

          

Post by Forrest Cameranesi, June 19, 1998

Interesting things, as I flip through that Oni trailer frame-by-frame:

In the very beginning, there's a woman (Kokono?) who is apparently naked, but with mechanical areas on her. And she's dangling from some wires or rope. The first thing that occurred to me when I saw this was that she was a cyborg.

First off, the name "Oni". I heard somewhere that this is a Chinese (Japanese?) deity. In the end of Infinity, it is revealed that the Player is "Destiny" (I doubt that's his name), implying that he has some cosmic signifigance, a god of sorts.

See the What's New section (May 29, 1998) for details on the Japanese name "Oni". [helpful Hamish]

Speculation is rife about Bungie West's new game revealed at E3. A 3D "full-contact" fighting game, codenamed "Oni". Allegedly the main character is female. Lara Croft on steroids? The word "Oni" is in fact taken from Japanese culture.

• The Japanese Oni appears in legends, children's stories and proverbs as a horned, fearsome being and is usually translated into English as "demon", "devil" or "ogre", but, in fact, the Oni's true nature is much more complex and ambivalent. The Oni has two conflicting faces, the demonic face of the "destroyer" and the godlike, beneficent face of the "protector".
• There is a well-known Japanese saying: "Oni ni kana-bo" translated literally as "Oni with an iron rod".

A case of "Ingue Ferroque" perhaps? ;-)

• For more information on the origin of Oni, see here
• Although the Marathon level is called "Ingue Ferroque", the actual Latin phrase is "igne ferroque".

After the scene where her silhouette is sliding across a city skyline, there's some fly-through of a big green techo-sphere with a spinning logo (the Oni logo). Upon closer inspection, you can see number and letters flying across the screen, in the same shade of green and very translucent so it's hard to tell.

During the entire movie is a little Bungie logo in the bottom-right corner (just a watermark, probably).

After that green scene above, as she's running across rooftops, there's the slanted two-ring symbol fading in and out and the rings alternating red and black. As she jump across a beam and the camera flies through it, you can see there are also word around it (as you already pointed out). Also, as it fades from one view to another you can see the words as well (I think this is the shot you posted on your page).

Yup. [helpful Hamish]

At the end of the rooftops scene, she jumps off (and how many humans do you know who casually jump off rooftops like that?).

Shortly after the rooftop scene, right after she jumps down the stairs and kicks that guy, there's what appears to be a computer aiming device from a view over Kokono's shoulder. This might just be part of the game, or maybe not.

Right after that, as she's standing by some rail, there's another symbol superimposed, but this time one I don't recognise. It looks almost like an eye.

Every now and then the screen goes pure white for one frame, and you can easily see the Bungie logo there. The first time this happens is right as she lands from her jump off the rail.

In the ensuing fight scene, there's a little bluish symbol flashing in the bottom-right corner. Also, how can a little girl like that beat (and more impressively, throw) such huge beefy guys like that? More evidence toward the cyborg theory.

In the second part of that scene, after another white flash, you can see yellow Marathon logos on the wall opposite the camera. Also, the blue symbol changes to some multi-colored bar array. Odd.

In these next few fight scenes, you can see that the armed guys attacking her have "TCTF" on their uniforms. Our wonder woman also has TCTF on the front of her outfit. Why is one group attacking a member of itself?

At one point in the second fight scene, as she flips over over guy, a red Marathon-like symbol flashes over the screen.

As the troopers come through the garage door in fight scene three, there's a box and a quarter-circle in the bottom right. That looks vaguely familiar, but I can't recally where from (It's as if from an old dream... ;] )

Immediately after that, a flashing line drawing of what could either be a cyborg or any generic heavily-armored guy slides across the screen. And toward the end of that, some white-ish, pixelated, super-dude is seen kicking ass. Hrm, I wonder...

After that, Kokono runs up some stairs, and then some more guys come in through some doors. Superimposed over this is another symbol.

A ways into that scene, there's one a view past two troopers just standing there, with one kneeling. The kneeler fires a weapon, and a sketch of a wormhole/whirlpool thing appears where the projectilve would have hit the camera. Then another white flash, but this one's different. As the flash hits, the whirlpool thing shows through it. Nothing shows through any of the other ones.

Then there's a brief showing of a sketch of a leg with some ammo twirled around it. The sketch slides down and we can see further. It's our supergirl! She looks buff. But she's got bed-head.

In the next mini-scene, as the camera orbits around some box (on a rooftop?), there's a ghost-like figure sneaking around. As the camera orbits further, we can see that the "box" is actually a building, and that figure was twice as tall! Or maybe it was just a superimposed image.

Next is a fly-through of a wireframe building. Probably just to show the level in full, unrendered glory. But as the camera sweeps around, that little whirlpool appears in the bottom-left corner again, a white flash, and then it fades to the same view, but fully rendered this time, with a sketch of somethingorother imposed over that.

More wireframe fly-throughs, which then fade to a solid view again. A white flash. Hey, there's that whirlpool again! But this time, you can see it a little clearer. It's not a whirlpool, it's some kind of machine with a glowing light in the center. The above-mentioned "marathon-like" symbol and the one that looked vaguely familiar to me, I now see to be symbols of this machine. There's something above it, rotating, though I can't tell what. The view fades to some troopers attacking our heroine (sp?), and the machine dissappears. (you cna barely make out some Marathon symbols on the stack of boxes she jumps behind).

In this next fight scene you can clearly see Marathon symbols on the boxes. That's just too suspicious for me, why would they put Marathon symbols on the boxes FPO when they could just use a flat surface, some generic symbol, or the Oni symbol as seen at the beginning?

As Koko jumps off a stack of boxes, there's a red machine-like symbol in the top-right. I think this might be the same machine. It must play some important role.

Next, there's some troopers firing guns, and Kokono's image translucently imposed over the scene, like a ghost. Is there some symbolism to this, or just a cool effect?

Then, there's another superimposition of a sketch of Koko, or someone who looks like her. And then another one...

More guns firing...

Kokono shoots the camera....

THE END

1999

Still frames uploaded from the trailer can be see HERE.

The 1999 trailer debuted at E3 in May 1999 so it was known as the "E3 trailer" for a while. Now we call it the 1999 trailer to differentiate it from the 1998 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 HERE.

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, "better-looking" Muro: Artistic differences between character designers

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