I am starting this thread as a place to throw all the bullshots you can think of over the years, and likely ones that we're seeing more recently (and the inevitable bullshots we will get @ E3).

Bullshots are pics/videos of games that are not what the final product will be like, usually intentionally run/rendered on high end PCs due to wanting to make the product super exciting or hype-worthy. Sometimes it can be also attributable to incompetence.

This isn't a console-war thread either, pretty much platform has seen bullshots over the years, and they're VERY common with new console launches timeframes.

A famous past example was Killzone 2 2005 Target Render trailer. While the end results were admirable in many ways, we never saw the full quality of that 2005 trailer achieved in the end product.

More recently you have the 'Downgradaton' with Watch Dogs from 2012. Another target render with quality set unreasonably high, and the end product falling short of that even on $4,000 PC rigs. And of course, Forza, Alien : Colonial Marines, Dark Souls 2, so on and so forth.

I can definitely guarantee that we're not through with Bullshots and downgrades, it's just the nature of the industry these days. What's next, and what are some others you've noticed.

I'm laying a huge bet that the Quantum Break footage is basically BS (in terms of what players will actually get on XB1 consoles). A dead giveaway in many cases is the use of language. Whenever you hear phrases like 'in engine', or 'on X console hardware', it's sneaky ways of covering their butts. 'X console hardware' can mean a high end PC dev kit that happens to have the console branding for the dev purposes. And 'in engine', great, another meaningless term entirely. 'In-engine' on a $5,000+ PC perhaps. I have little doubt that at least another example lies somewhere in the Sony lineup as well. Like I said, it's annoyingly common.

Hahaha related : http://www.computerandvideogames.com/401232/blog/smells-like-bullshots-9-notoriously-polished-screenshots/

Hahaha : The Getaway PS2 was hilarious!

There is a thread on Gaf where they create bullshots. Pretty easy actually. Take the PC version, put everything on Ultra, render it at 4K or more (it doesn't matter if you get only 1 or 2 fps) and then simply downscale the screenshots in an image editor applying some nice resizing filters. Add some flares and image editing magic here and there and you got your bullshot.

Of course, WD wasn't only that. All the nice clothing physics were gone too. It's a great game, but they should start to be honest about it. Uncharted 3 was full of bullshots too, even if the final game looked great. God of War 3 was one of the honest ones, since the initial trailers where actually worse than the final game. Right now, I simply ignore screenshots and wait for let's play videos.

About KZ2, despite the renders, the final game actually looks better with superior animations and lightning, even with worse textures than the render.

hah that Getaway pic looks like a game with photorealistic pre-rendered backgrounds

I'll try to find some, I remember Gears of War bullshots and recent DriveClub bullshots.

Worse lie ever: Intel demos their newest integrated GPU, supposelly playing F1 2013 at high settings at realtime. But it was actually a video and someone acidentally toucbed the mouse...

Clearly no one can be that hot..

The weirdest thing is, those are screens from pre-rendered cutscenes from a render farm, I still don't understand why did they change it. They explained it was supposed to look more dirty and realistic in the bus, but it looks flat out worse.

lol nice one :D