At this point, seeing this kind of extremely high production value animation used to enact this kind of fantasy scene instantly makes me think of hackneyed backstory and plot focus-group optimized to death to appeal to slightly dull 14-year-olds. You don't throw out that sort of development budget to try out something with even a hint of narrative experimentalness, and you can always rely on there being kids with disposable income who haven't yet been saturated with cliches to the point of fatigue.
"This looks very well done, it's probably bad" is a strange heuristic to have.
"This looks very well done, it's probably bad" is a strange heuristic to have.
It's the same for Hollywood movies, isn't it?
When the producers want to focus your attention on how expensive and uniquely complicated a game or movie production was, that's a sign that the actual content was a secondary concern.
I see what you're saying, but the target audience here is the game development community. The animation was clearly designed to show various capabilities: indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, outdoor scenes, interiors with various materials, fluids, etc. etc. As with movies, it's still up to the team to use the tool to create a worthwhile experience.
"This looks very well done, it's probably bad" is a strange heuristic to have.