Look, there is no question that the Too Human demo at E3 2006 showed poorly. Whatever the reasons were that pushed it that way, it should not have been shown. EGM and 1up did the proper thing by critiquing what they saw. However, though Dennis Dyack may have come across as foolish because he wanted to abolish all previews (before a game was complete), I respected him for standing this ground.

Then he went and gave an extensive preview to IGN:

Dyack, just weeks after his now infamous argument with Mark Macdonald on the EGM Live Podcast, goes and does a full preview with IGN, their competitors. I understand that there are probably plenty of other forces at work, and that he may not have had that much say in giving this exclusive to IGN, but this seems incredibly hypocritical of him.

Too Human shows well and the preview does the game great justice. It made at least one more editor on our site decide that it was worthy of a pre-order, because there is an awesome preview of Too Human out there. I think this pretty much proves why previews exist.

I think the lesson to be learned from all of this is that previews, even negative ones, are not always a bad thing. If Too Human had showed amazingly at E3 2006 it would have got a great preview/review in the magazine and then it would have come out and been amazing and sold on its own merit. The shitty preview and all the press that has come since is going to work out in favor of the franchise. People are going to want to see how it is coming along and watch previews so that they can see how shitty it is. But, as the IGN preview shows, it is not shitty at all. People will then spread the hype about how good the game looks and how much it has come along since E3 2006.

Previews are a necessary part of the industry. They help build community hype for a product. Let’s hope we no longer have to hear anymore about aborting previews from the industry.

Chufmoney