Live-action trailers are more often than not the preserve of developers in a position to call up Gustavo Fring after Breaking Bad and make him a competitive offer. But indie Mike Bithell broke the trend in marketing Thomas Was Alone, and has done the same for his non-lethal stealth game, Volume.
Entitled ‘We’ve got your back’, this trailer is a promotional video for a fictional AI corp in Bithell’s near-future Robin Hood story. Unsurprisingly, there’s something amiss.
Canny use of stock footage, this: punctuated with glitches and accompanied by elevator music that occasionally falls just a half-step out of tune, those cheesy smiles to camera seem to linger just a little too long.
The sense is that a mask is slipping – and that Volume will deal in darkly funny sci-fi.
Volume stars a petty thief named Robert Locksley who discovers a device – the Volume of the title – used to train rebels for a military coup attempt. Instead, he decides he’s going to simulate robberies against future England’s 1%, and broadcast them over the internet as criminal Let’s Plays.
Locksley is played, fittingly enough, by famed Youtuber Charlie McDonnell – and joined by past Bithell collaborator Danny Wallace, who plays the “Microsoft Office paperclip as military training program”.
Sounds like a compelling starting point for a top-down Metal Gear love letter, doesn’t it?