If that trailer is at all representative of the actual gameplay, then I don't see this game appealing to many people at all. The graphics and gameplay are awful. Gameplay looks way too chaotic and lacking in any kind of depth. And the graphics... don't think much needs to be said.
No matter what it says about being actual gameplay footage or whatever, we literally know nothing from the trailer about what the gameplay will be like. At most, we learnt what the gameplay graphics will look like, and tbh the idea that those graphics are particularly bad just tells me that people have grown vastly too picky about graphics, to the detriment of gaming.
What's too ridiculous to take seriously is your argument that mechanics aren't really that important, but it's the proper nouns that matter.
I don't think anyone can honestly, and truthfully, argue that a game like DragonStrike and Blood&Magic give the D&D experience just because they take place in a D&D world. The mechanics very in some way from edition to edition, true, but they all stay true to the core chassis (4e was the only one that made the biggest change by going to AEDU, but even then the core mechanics were the same). Trying to dismiss the major difference between a flight simulator and a turn based RPG because "1e had some different mechanics as 4e" is a false equivalency of epic proportion. I'm pretty sure you do know that it's more than just a "distinction without a difference" between a game like Baldur's Gate and DragonStrike.
I'm not arguing that they aren't technically D&D games. I'm arguing that that's all they are, in name only, and the difference matters. Just like putting a Ferrari kit on a Fiero doesn't make it anything like a Ferrari, despite the same logo and name.
If I’m doing the same things I’d be doing in a dnd adventure, with the same sorts of abilities, in a dnd world, how does “it’s not turn based” make it not a dnd game?
And I don’t care about “technically”. I’m not going to use semantics to dance around the difference between “doesn’t feel like a dnd game” and “isn't a dnd game”. That’s the “distinction without a difference” I was talking about.
And yes, a game where you play a dnd dragon (chromatic or metallic, with corresponding breath weapons, etc) in a first person flight simulator and burn towns and collect tribute and fight other dragons, in a dnd world, is a dnd game.
As is a survival game set in Xen’drik where you play an Eberron race but don’t have a PC class because it’s a “normal person surviving in the dangerous dnd wilderness” game.
Or any number of other types of games.
Not every dnd game needs to play like neverwinter nights.
A was one of the games that many hold as one of the D&D games from the past that they really enjoyed.
