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One stunning video highlights the difference between video game ads and reality

Advertisements exist to make the products they represent look as good as possible. Everyone knows that, of course, and nobody expects a fast food cheeseburger to look as good in your hands as it does in a TV commercial.

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Still, it's at least a little disappointing to see video games look significantly worse when they come out than they did when they were first shown. Here are some recent examples:

This excellent video from YouTube user CrowbCat has been making the rounds for the past few days because it shows what a handful of prominent games looked like when they were first shown (at the game industry's big annual show, "E3") against what they looked like when they came out. They're all games from Ubisoft, the company behind smash hits like "Assassin's Creed" and the Tom Clancy line of games ("Rainbow Six," "Splinter Cell," etc.).

As you can see, each of those games looks pretty different from E3 to release, and they weren't lateral moves. "Watch Dogs," an action game about hacking set in a recreation of Chicago, looked way better at E3, as wind blew litter across the virtual pavement and the people in coffee shops and dance clubs looked and acted much more lively.

the division e3
"The Division" looked pretty different when it actually came out. CrowbCat/YouTube

The same goes for "The Division," an online shooter set in a version of midtown Manhattan that was ravaged by a deadly virus. The pre-release footage looks incredible, as there's an astounding amount of detail lining everything from abandoned cars to apartment buildings. By comparison, the version of the game you can actually buy is a good deal less shiny-looking, but it still looks nice.

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Again, this isn't surprising or even necessarily bad. Game development is tougher than we'll ever know, and ambition usually gives way to compromise over time. All of the games in that video still looked great when they came out!

But with E3 2016 starting next week, it's important to keep in mind that if something looks too good to be true, that might actually be the case.

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