The trailer is clearly following a protagonist who contains two thirds of the world's known supply of awesome and one third of the world's known supply of stupid as he, and a group of his highly-expendable cohorts who make Star Trek redshirts look long-lived by comparison decide to take on a whole field full of killer robots. They won't be using cover to do so, but will rather be relying on high speeds and sheer machismo from armor-mounted jet packs.
The beta will be open to current Planetside players first, then inactive players, then finally, most anyone else who opts in until they reach their limit, so anyone interested has at least some shot of getting in on this.
While admittedly, it looks pretty sharp, this isn't a gameplay trailer. Some have suggested that any trailer that doesn't show gameplay is one to be taken with a grain of salt, and there's nothing wrong with a little healthy skepticism. Just what the end result will be is anybody's guess, though figuring it's at least something like the original Planetside shouldn't be too far off the mark.
Still, Sony certainly could use some big winners--it hasn't been a good year or so for Sony--and Planetside 2 may well mark just the winner it needs. Only time will tell if that's the case, of course, but it's not a bad bet, especially if the beta testers start calling it a good thing.
