The Last Night gets new trailer and the creator apologises for old tweets
Still looks gorgeous
The Last Night [official site] was revealed at Microsoft's conference yesterday. It looked great, but that first trailer was focused on showing how the game's world looked more than how it played. Now there's a second "gameplay" trailer of sorts which... Mostly focuses on how the world looks, rather than how it plays. It is longer however, and it does give a better sense of how you move through the game's stunning pixel art cyberpunk spaces. You can watch it below.
Perhaps more importantly though, the game's appearance at the PC Gaming Show gave creative director Tim Soret the chance to address the anger attracted by some of his old tweets.
This is B-roll more than an actual reflection of playing the game and it leaves plenty left unanswered about what you do in those spaces, what control you have over the character, and a lot more. It's a shame that they didn't take the opportunity to show the game's story, for example, which is in part powered by the Ink engine developed by 80 Days' developers.
It's particularly a shame they didn't show the story more in light of concerns raised last night. I wrote this all up earlier today if you want all the background, but to briefly recap: three years ago Tim Soret tweeted comments which were pro-GamerGate, anti-feminist, and which suggested that The Last Night reflected these worldviews. Those tweets resurfaced naturally after The Last Night trailer was first aired. During the PC Gaming Show however, Soret addressed them directly: "I am embarrassed by some tweets I made in the past. I want to apologize for those. They do not in any way represent who I am today, or what The Last Night is about." Then host Day9 then quickly moved things along.
It's anyone's guess whether that apology is sincere or whether it's driven by a need to end the growing controversy now that his game is growing in notoriety. I'm going to choose to believe the former, however: people can change and people need to be allowed to be wrong and then change.
Whether that apology is enough to make you want to buy the game one day is a different matter entirely. I'll continue to reserve judgement until we've seen much more of it and had the chance to try it out.