Expectation Vs. Reality in Dead by Daylight 

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I think All Things Wicked is the only time the community loves the chapter even tho they expected something different

Blight Expectations: werewolf Reality: mutant drug addict

I was so hyped about Legions release😭 It was a big disappointment I felt the first time with a killer’s abilities…

Imagine if Legions ability was more like the knights, summoning the other members maybe like having them appear from out of a slash in the air from the knife

No ending :( no "okay bye" or "gooooooodbye"

I thought The Unknown was going to drop w a crawl Mode. I honestly feel like it could be a part of his kit without changing anything major. Doesn’t even need to gain undetectable status

My biggest disappointment was Yui. How dare she not run from the killer on a motorcycle? 0/10 😪

Still to this day i remember the Legion trailer and the over year long hate of the legions 😂 Not what anyone was expecting

I feel like the addition of Chucky and xeno helped the idea of a crawling killer.

at 11:04 the Nea on the third slot IMMEDIATELY dc'd after seeing you were playing merchant lol(thought this was funny)

Technically you can play all the legions if i am not mistaken just look at the blighted skin

Even with seeing unknown not creepily crawling across the floor like a spider every now and then he’s still terrifiying watching his joints bend like a car jack as he chases you.

I get why people want a mimic killer and were disappointed by both Legion and the Unknown, but we all need to accept the fact that because Dead by Daylight is how it is, we won’t get a mimic killer because if we did, it would be mostly useless at low ranks and completely useless at mid to high ranks. The only way we’d ever get a mimic killer is if the “mimic” aspect is only a minor part of its power. If BHVR made a power completely based on a survivor mimicry ability, people would be disappointed by how useless it would be.

Merchant honestly had 3 chances to impress the community but failed in every way. The marketing was misleading to most, thinking it would be a cyborg or something. Then came the actual design, which was very campy that didn't have a creepy factor at all. Then, the power that terrorized dbd for 6 months. No wonder the community still hates her.

I think unknown only crawls when he wants to attack with the intent to kill. Like in his mori and the lobby screen. We as the players and developers are the entity, and the unknown hates the entity, so he crawls after us cause he's mad we brought him out of his world and put him in the trials for our entertainment

I feel like in terms of the unknown they did tease to us his character trait of using fake voices. So people once again thought it would be a mimic type character. In fact, behavior on Twitter even had to say that it wasn't going to be a skinwalker or use any native American lore. There was no hint in the teaser to the fact that it uses a grenade launcher to make fake versions of itself although in terms of character design, they did not get out of the park by giving us one of the scariest characters that behavior has ever made

2:15 ermmm ackshually, all 4 members are technically present when wearing the blighted outfit

In the case of Legion, I never understood why people thought a killer pretending to be a survivor as a power would've ever worked in a game where comms can already be a major advantage

If you look back to some of the teasers, you can notice that the skull merchant and the singularity were teased together.

I still cannot believe the Legion isn’t the fastest base-speed killer in the game. I figured if the power was gonna be underpowered, that at least you’d be granted 120% movement speed

DBD players when The Unknown doesn’t have the mimic power that everybody completely made up: 🤯

My theory for the legion back in the day was that all four members were gonna be used in a trial. Now many years later, seeing the knight in the game. I just hope there's a mod our there one day that'll replace knight with all the legion crew with different sound effects and stuff.

I like Skull Merchant's concept a lot, I feel like her teasers really did misrepresent her. It would have been genuinely way better if they went with the same approach they went with the unknown. Just a quick idea, posting bloody and ripped manga pages showcasing the drones in action on Twitter, building up the actual killer with blog posts about how rich CEOs are going missing with no traces left behind, to eventually post the teaser trailer and have it be from the perspective of a CEO who is actively getting hunted by Merchant. I think I would get shivers if the teaser dropped and it's a man running through the woods, exhausted, with a claw trap latched onto his shoulder, running from someone he can't even see as strobe lights blind him and sirens blare from the trees, quickly adjusting the camera's view as suddenly, the same drone from the manga pages behavior posted a few weeks ago flies by, and he gets jumped from behind, ending the teaser. It still would be pretty disappointing but it would be a lot less disappointing at least.

Tbh I like Skull Merchant’s slasher esque design way more than the idea of her being some futuristic scifi thing. I was relieved to see that she was a combination of scifi and slasher instead of straight up scifi like singularity.

I would say skull merchant is still flopped completely but legion has definitely grown on most people despite a very annoying power and unknwon isn’t really disappointing just different to what we thought and I think he’s prob one of the best designed characters apart from hook UVX hits

I think Legion should have a mix of abilities: 1. Keep the Sprint/Vault mechanics. 2. Allow Legion to walk and while walking, completely suppress their terror radius. (I know this is a weird take, but the idea of a Killer walking at the speed of a Survivor would absolutely throw me off.) 3. Allow Legion to hide the knife and suppress any glow effects from the skins they might have equipped.

I think most of the dbd community just needs to stop building hype for their own ideas to the point where they are 100% certain it will be that way. Like you can theorize and have an idea what you think the chapter will be like but at least keep it around 65% confidence. Any higher and you will end up with disappointment. Basically just don’t take your ideas too far.

Your conclusion is exactly what the magic of DBD is about. Dissecting every leak and being engaged in the mystery of what's to come is part of the fun. Unknown still had fantastic teasers and his default look could just be the body of the boy in the tent. He has so much room for cosmetic creativity like Dredge! There are little things to take away from each Legion member. Skull Merchant has people discussing and thinking and those are good things. Disappointment is a part of life but there's so much more to life than that. Well done. ❤

This is a really well articulated and well thought out video. Nice one Movs 👌

In my opinio, the issue with Legion is that you could literally re-write the entire aspect of them being 4 teens and make it just Frank and nothing would really be lost, the entire reasoning behind it was for cosmetics. Skull merchant could've at least been monstrous in some way, some of the killers are changed by the entity, why not make the skull merchant a cyborg in some way? Lastly the unknown crawling could be seen as the gloves coming off and done playing with it's food, it uses it to eat survivors in it's mori and it could just prefer walking to be more human like.

I’ve grown quite accustomed to your Soundtrack, it is very calming and enjoyable to hear in all your videos ❤️

I would love to have a killer actually having a deceiving aspect. Like picture this. The killer has a kind of "survivor cloak" meaning they start the trial in 3rd person (so the 1st person movement is hidden aswell) looking like one of the players in game. When they actually want to attack they have an a little longer "transition" animation where they either transform into a morphing-monster or maybe just put on a mask and get a weapon or something, while slowly zooming into 1st person. From then on out they are clearly recognizable as the killer and are in chase. Later they can change again into one of the survivors in trial. Keeping the players constantly on their toes and a little distrusting towards other survivors.

I only started playing DBD in 2021 but the first time I ran into someone playing Julie they were running Tinkerer and when she walked up to me in that red flannel jacket I thought she was a survivor skin I'd never seen before until she stabbed me.

can't believe you didn't mention the All-kill chapter teaser for the trickster where people thought because the music rewinded, people thought trickster would have some time manipulation based power wasn't there a misconception about Plague too?

Surprised DBD hasn't made a doppelganger type killer yet, they could try to license John Carpenter's The Thing, it would be great!

I personally think The Unknown crawling in the teasers was it's natural instinct. Maybe it does crawl but is trying to walk like a human. Just like it using the zipper on the tent or it using a fire axe and wearing clothes. It's trying to mimic a human but during its Mori it goes back to its instincts because it crawls and uses its tendrils from its back.

Since I don't play the game most of my experience with the legion and the skull merchant were from videos that were mostly negative talks about how awful the gameplay was and less about the lore and teasers until I would read it on the wiki. But with how you explain it in context to teasers and fan reactions your approach to lore in general it's a really interesting video essay. So I want to ask, with your knowledge now what would you of added to the teasers of these killers to make fan expectations closer to reality or as a way of giving the fans more info without full on spoiling it? I'm thinking maybe with Legion you have a video like at 3:15 where you have a chase scene with the survivors running away with their knowledge of killers is that they vault slow and have to break pallets but then they look back and stare in horror as you see the legion casually vaulting windows and pallets before lunging at the survivors, doing a quick in and out switch of all the legion members then a cut to black. This allows people to see that "oh crap this guy is fast and agile" but doesn't fully reveal the power With Skull Merchant you have her at her desk working on her gadgets with quick cuts that look like manga panels but around the end she gets a notification on her laptop/phone with a message that says "I have a job for you", you then have a shot of her putting on her mask and start up her weapon/drone. I feel like this sort of addresses the issue of not seeing what she looks likes while also having that sci-fi/technology thriller feel. I think unknown is fine since his entire character is based on being wierd as hell, and also he does crawl in his mori and has other creepy animations from him just existing. But I'm obviously no expert in lore like Azhymovs is so I could be stupid, wrong, and stupid Anyway love the video, hope to hear someone elses thoughts

There was that one time the Ghost face's teaser showed a hardware store and a cashier guy, but then came with no map or survivor

I honestly reckon it’s not too late to get a crawling unknown, I really hope they make him crawl it’s so much more unnerving

I never really looked at it, but you can see in legion trailer, he’s running as fast as a survivor and fast vaulting just like his power, so it shows his power to be fair.

Maybe this is a hot take, but I honestly do not like the argument that the Unknown’s gameplay didn’t live up to the expectations set by the teasers. I couldn’t disagree more. People were upset that it wasn’t a creature that could disguise itself as survivors, because everyone just assumed it would be a sk*nwalker. But I think what it actually is is a lot creepier. It’s something that isn’t human, that’s taken the skin of a human and is wearing it. From the way that it opens itself up to expose the tentacles underneath, it’s pretty clear to me that that’s its true form. It *is* still a shapeshifter, just not in the way that people thought, and it doesn’t shapeshift during a trial. We will probably see its shapeshifting, skin-stealing attributes in future skins. I bet the launch skin will be the female victim’s voice we can hear layered over the male voice when it talks in-game. Every skin will probably be a different victim. This thing that has no discernible appearance, but steals the appearances of others to find more victims (and disguise its monstrous form) is straight up nightmare fuel.

i can imagine that The Unknown could have originally had a power that involved crawling since that's a huge creepy factor for a lot of people, but they might not have been able to get the ability balance right and decided to scrap it. either way i like that the power we have now incentivizes the killer to stay out of sight, i think it's a neat way of encouraging immersive play-style through game mechanics

oim disappointed to not see mentioned is trickster. i don't know what i expected from a Kpop-star killer but it wasn't a man aggressively throwing knives at me

Unknown also crawls during his(?) mori. So it does come up in-game as well, not just in the lobby.

"Sometimes even sooner than you might think..." WHAT DO YOU KNOW? O_O (joking aside, all valid points and a good assessment of the delicate balance involved in providing trailers and teasers to a wide userbase)

Skull merchant's design priorities: 1: Ass 2: Ass 3: Skulls 4: Ass 5: Drones Yeah, I was disappointed from day 1. It was a "sex sells" DLC, not a "good content sells" one.

that split personality idea was something i wanted for legion when i was new to the game ngl lmao

These days I feel like if they reworked legon with a passive similar to zombies that nemis has. But you can teleport to any legion member walking around similar to the unknown.

Great video Azhy

i started to took the speculations like a theory and not a fact I remember when Plague sounds were more characteristics from a Mummy (sounds that later were scrapped apparently) and when in the interviews, devs clarify that this killer was the oldest in the realm, obviously the Mummy theory was almost a fact, but ended to be a Babylonian priestess, and people were a bit disappointed for the map that was a reissued of red forest with a temple, instead of a desert with a temple. Later happened the same with Slinger, teaser came and people thought Pinhead, Prisoner or Werewolf, Blight was speculated to be a Dr Jekyll or Werewolf, Twins people thought was going to be a Wendigo. Most of this were accepted (except Twins) without issue, Blight maybe for the problems in the PTB but it was later fixed, compared to Twins. Cenobite whole speculation, also devs really played with both fandoms, i never believed about the bunny in crotus. But the letter they chose also quote a phrase from FnaF, but later with the teaser it was obviously that it was Hellraiser and it was fixed the reception, fnaf fans weren't happy, survivors weren't happy about Pinhead's power and later the NFTs issue For me Unknown is fine, sure i really wanted a crawling creature, but at least he is scary, amazing, and a new kind of creepypasta, not like Skully who really was the most dissapointing chapter

Now that I look back on it I have no idea where people got that it shapeshifted into people or otherwise disguised as them. Though I do have my own perceptions, like I thought they were gonna be on all fours more, which is disappointing to see that he isn't but hes a cool take on a projectile character.

Do you think by any chance you could do an update on the timeline for DBD on when survivors and killers were taken by the entity or are you gonna do that sometime later?

I feel I should mention, the Unknown does crawl in his Mori too. So he has two moments when he crawls; the brief moment in the lobby and his Mori.

LOVE the commentary videos like this ❤❤❤

The unknown looks like how people imagine it so it makes sense, the skins it will get will be wild

I want to see what they could do with an animal killer, like some animal experimented on that gains a human level intellect and wants revenge on humans for experimenting on it.

I remember oringally had a I thought of a cyborg or robot created by engineer only to go bad because of misunderstood in Tools in Torments, before getting a waifu. Alteast we have The amazing Singularity.

Trickster's teaser was also a point where there was a lot of speculation that turned out to be nothing like what we expected.

Man i remember when i was theorizing on Legion's teaser that they have multiple personalities and the addons( tapes) you choose to change the personality, but then we get a bunch of teenagers with some parkour skills

the crawling is in the mori tho cuz he goes on all fours and crawls to u

While I was caught off guard by the power for unknown I still like unknown and it’s backstory and abilities even though it isn’t the crawling killer people wanted it could possibly be a step towards that it’s got animations where it crawls and I think that shows that it could eventually happen

I agree. Very confused by the Unknown teaser trailer. Camping out in the woods & a scary creature gets to you. But then, we get a movie theatre & a twisted cheerleader Unknown. 😂

Wait quick question is the entity universal I think it is but I’m not sure and if so do you think we’ll ever get a superhero killer and since the entity can take away powers it could work right?

I feel like the reason he wasn't going to crawl is because it's just not fun to play against something you can't see mostly It's why chucky can be such a pain since even when you'd normally see a killer, you can't

I do think not giving the unknown some kind of creepy crawly scuttle was a missed opportunity, even if it would’ve been similar to chunky and xeno

i had an idea for a video, you could do one to which music you think the killers would listen to outside of the realm

The Legon really seemed like a mask that could possess humans (with the gameplay swaping itself and survivors via telaporting) and not "it looks human"

The unknown's situation could be easily fixed; just add a second ability like the Demogorgon, where instead of Shred it crawls.

Yeah I still think it would have been way cooler if the other members of the legion weren't real and were just split personalities of one person

Another reason people got pressed about Legions trailer was because at the time, a lot of people were asking for a killer that could morph into a survivor, and the trailer kinda mislead a lot of people into believing that they were actually doing it

The first teaser for Legion was that there was 4 of them. This was entirely cosmetic, nothing to do with actual gameplay. Ofc we were disappointed when it was just 1 per trial, that is defo misrepresentation. When teasing a new killer, idgaf about their cosmetics or lore - I care about their gameplay. Why would the first teaser show lore/cosmetics but give no indication on the gameplay other than the fact that they're human?

I expected Oni's power to step out in front of a motercycle on a highway but the final product was nothing like i expected!!

they could do something with a killer, like they did in a moba a few years ago, where one person does the movement and one person uses the power and attacks. would be interesting, even tough to memish I guess😅

I feel like Artist could be added to this list. The disappointment wasn’t as bad with her as it was with these other killers but I remember when she first got teased, everyone assumed her power would interact with the entity’s crows all over the map but she just ended up using a crow-aesthetic for her model and projectiles.

I remember how people thought that skull merchant was gonna be an cyborg robot like killer because of the teasers

When i first saw the unknown i thought it was gonna be an analogue horror

All things wicked isn’t bad but when I saw the teasers and then the design my mind didn’t go to “ah yes Grenade Launcher”

I’ve always thought unknown is like a creature from inside the dredge since the dredge Mori doesn’t confirm a kill it just absorbs them and I’ve always thought maybe it absorbs them and creatures of unknown origin are inside it and those creatures kill the survivors.

Skull Merchant was the character O hated the most. I would've prefered to play or verse a Nurse or Blight. After her final rework, I started enjoying her. Both as a killer and a survivor. 80% of the time I play survivor and I got to the point where, if I am playing killer and I have no killer specific ritual or challenge to do, I would naturally gravitate towards her.

I wish Legion was more like the purge movies. I wonder if they could expand on the zombies that Nemesis uses & the followers that the Knight summons to have alot of minor threats that feel like they could come from everywhere moving about the level.

it would be hard to do, but it would be cool if you could send like a bot of one of the other legion members to chase the survivors while you were busy, but to be fair that’s kind of just knight

Im still cool with the unknown power but I really was hoping for another crawl power of sorts

On the legion, their walking animations were very similar to the OLD survivor walking animations, if you take a look you'll see, and from a distance they actually did look like survivors

The only thing I found weird with the Legion was that the power just didn’t fit the whole being a group. I mean I get it from a teenager channelling their anger part but just seemed like the idea of these four being kidnapped together lead to more interesting possibilities. What we got could of been fine with just one of them being brought. Personally if this was what they wanted to do for the power they could of given each member a very slight variation on it to lean into the group of four. Like when one of them activates it they get the normal effect but gems are highlighters, another causes surviours to scream … Or the power could of been similar to what we have with the Twins with switching and have all four on the map (personally I would of liked to seen varying speeds and other stats between them too lol) but only one ‘active’ at a time So for me it was less feeling mislead (never really expected an ability to mimic truthfully) and more disappointed that what was focused on was less interesting

I wasn't even aware of the game when The Legion came out, yet after I discovered the game in 2020, I still felt that same disappointment everyone did about The Legion. A bunch of edgy teens who run fast and can stab you? Really feels underwhelming considering they already had characters who could teleport through walls and ones who could put death traps on people's heads.

To me, my impressions for tools of torment were the opposite from every else. During the teasers, I thought it was a cyborg type killer and I didnt really care much. Sure it was cool, but it's not really my kind of character so I brushed it off. Then we finally saw who the killer was and I immediately fell in love XD

What if the unknown hunts and kills people based on what they fear, the camper feared a 4 legged crawling cryptid, but the survivors more so fear a killer that tried to take the look of the survivor and is here to slash them (since they have to deal with this over and over without any exception)

I’m so glad that Unknown doesn’t crawl in-game beside the mori. We have Alien and chucky who are low-profile killers and look how that aged. People don’t even like them and neither do I lmao 😂

I think it's ridiculous how much the community convinced itself the unknown was a mimic killer just because it poorly imitated human speech in a teaser. And really, it didn't even mimic any speech. It just had a really distorted voice.

3:50 Dude, same here. Especially since some survivor skins have masks.

No "byeeeeeeee" or "goooooood bye" in the end, sad ;

THANK YOU SO MUCH for actually looking into the whole "Legion was misrepresented" thing. I've heard SO MANY people parrot the idea that the trailer came before people actually knew what the power is, but that wasn't the case. I also don't remember too many people feeling disappointed for that reason at the time, more so just because the power was easily exploitable. Much love Edit: Grammar

The crawling we see in the footage IS in fact the lobby animation just fyi

The guy at 1:40 described Twins ability ith The Knights mori lmao!!!

Im glad Legion wasnt a mimic killer, the frenzy is so much fun to use, especially landing a full chain

The deathslinger’s teaser had different speculations than the power. The chain attached to his gun 100% looked like a chain holding something back rather than pulling something in. Nobody assumed it was a guy with a gun and instead thought it was an animal of some sort

Glad someone finally told the truth about the legion and it being the community’s fault per usual not bhvr’s

I love the new killer I don’t play the game a lot but I really like the lore and him having little lore bc that’s his character feels so good lord wise

another good video from my goat AZHYMOVS