I appreciate the amount of detail they put into making this look like cel animation. Each frame of animation on characters have a slight offset shadow for example, which is a micro detail most people aren’t even going to notice until they read this comment and then check again, but it really sells the effect well. Cel animation looked like that due to the photographing process. Combined with the simpler color palette, it really made me appreciate the animation more than I usually would.
I mean, this is most likely still computer-assisted animation, of course. I highly doubt they would spend the time and many hours actually making an authentic cel animated trailer. But to all the people that said I was wrong when I said computer-assisted anime didn’t have to look so different from cel animation, this is a good example of what I was talking about.
The Halo TV show was bad because they told a story that was different from the story in the game. The live action Cowboy Bebop was bad because they told a story that was different from the story in the anime. The Silent Hill movies were bad because they told stories that were different from the stories in the games. The Witcher TV show… You get the point I think.
There are many reasons a show fails, and ignoring/disrespecting the source material is one of them. Adapting the content of a game into a movie does not mean it will automatically fail. The problem is that the filmmakers often ignore the source material, or deviate too greatly from the game’s content, likely because they try to add their own spin on it instead of presenting what is already handed to them on a silver platter. In fact, I cannot recall any movie based on a video game that accurately adapted the story of the game without making major changes. Except maybe the Japanese film “Yakuza: Like A Dragon” from 2007, which accurately portrayed events and characters from the game but was held back a lot by Japans at the time immature live action film production quality. Even then, the film still deviated from the source material. Its not that movies based on games cannot exist without changes, they absolutely can. Its just that nobody has done it yet, and I keep hoping the film writers can just swallow their pride and make something accurate to the source material without adding their own changes on top.
Edgerunners worked well because even though the story was different from what was in the game, it still respected the original source material of both the CDPR game and the original TTRPG. Trigger is a good studio because they are passionate and often show immense respect for outside IPs they contract with.