[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Ilikegreenfire]

The problem with the 'grain of salt' thing is this: most of the complaints, the vast majority of them, are with technical issues. Dead-eye stares, meme-worthy animations, lip-sync issues, etc. And not only does this Access Trial consist of review code, its also 'day 1 patch' code.

These things aren't 'first few hours of the game' issues, they are engine/developer-level issues. Sara Ryder isn't going to magically develop better facial animations at the 10 hour mark. Cora isn't going to stop walking like a robot.

One of their top guys said they're discussing how much to address in future patches but I seriously doubt that they're going to be able to fix this stuff, and certainly not in time to stop the damage from being done. People are going to google this game and see the memes and 'LOL THESE ANIMATIONS' videos as much as the actual game.

And the sad part is, Andromeda seems like a good game based on the 9 hours or so I've spent with it - certainly better as a whole, so far, than these animation/character issues. But there's no 'grain of salt' to be had here. It is clear they don't have the strength of talent, relative to their engine/tech, working on character art and animation that they've had in the past. Compare ME2's Miranda, or Jacob/Zaeed to any human in Andromeda and you'll see that.

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The problem with this argument is that Bioware openly boasted that all their characters, even the presets, are based on headscans of real life people.

Ya there head scans but they are all running on (the same?) similar rigs, they cant mocap 18 faces for all of ryders lines, even if they could you can still tweek them fucking up animations again. If they forced you to play as a single gendered ryder with a single face like Geralt i would be worried, but it two different types of rpgs I doubt Bioware will ever go with a one single cannon appearance main character, they do self insert rpgs, not ones where you play as a character with a set appearence.

Like i said i didn't have a problem with the facial animations, especially my custom ryder's, it still a massive step up over custom me 3 Sheps. Scott Cora Liam Alec Suvi all are quite good, the only badish ones i have seen are Foster Addson, but that could also be her horrid makeup and face design. Almost everyone freaking out over facial animations keeps bringing her and the little gif of her up. This inst witcher 3 with a few quality mocaped characters, there are tons of fluff human faces that are put on to rigs.

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Except they did use performance capture. In response to criticism of the facial animation seen in trailers, Bioware confirmed this:
snip.

They may have got the face modles to go through a range of facial motions, but no way the mocaped every word or syllable or had all the presets mocapped separately as I doubt they even had the default face actors do the mocapping, it was probably someone else entirely. Yes they are new to the engine, this is the first Me game run on it, its not going to look the best, but bioware games have never been cinematic rpgs like the witcher, they are about self inserts and customization. Like midway between Fallout and the witcher/uncharted

[Mirishka]

Ya there head scans but they are all running on (the same?) similar rigs, they cant mocap 18 faces for all of ryders lines, even if they could you can still tweek them fucking up animations again. If they forced you to play as a single gendered ryder with a single face like Geralt i would be worried, but it two different types of rpgs I doubt Bioware will ever go with a one single cannon appearance main character, they do self insert rpgs, not ones where you play as a character with a set appearence.

Like i said i didn't have a problem with the facial animations, especially my custom ryder's, it still a massive step up over custom me 3 Sheps. Scott Cora Liam Alec Suvi all are quite good, the only badish ones i have seen are Foster Addson, but that could also be her horrid makeup and face design. Almost everyone freaking out over facial animations keeps bringing her and the little gif of her up. This inst witcher 3 with a few quality mocaped characters, there are tons of fluff human faces that are put on to rigs.

Oh I agree that there are people blowing it out of proportion (as many generally do on the internet) - and I realize that I risk sounding like one of the people tearing them down, or the game. I'm not - I've already bought and paid for the game ($100 edition no less) because I love Bioware and I especially love Mass Effect. Even if reviews come out and deem the game a huge fail, I'd still give it a chance.

But what you need to understand is, a lot of people play these games primarily for the characters and story. So when there are serious shortcomings with one (or both) of those things, people are going to speak up.

It may not be a big deal to you, but that doesn't mean other people shouldn't care or have an opinion on it.

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They may have got the face modles to go through a range of facial motions, but no way the mocaped every word or syllable or had all the presets mocapped separately as I doubt they even had the default face actors do the mocapping, it was probably someone else entirely. Yes they are new to the engine, this is the first Me game run on it, its not going to look the best, but bioware games have never been cinematic rpgs like the witcher, they are about self inserts and customization. Like midway between Fallout and the witcher/uncharted

No offense but when a Bioware employee factually states that they are using performance capture, that kinda > your random speculation. "It was probably someone else" "I doubt" etc has no weight here.

Like I said, its fine if you don't think its a big deal. But that doesn't mean something's wrong with the people who do.

[Deleted]

I mean bioware has always been about the story, their animations have never been a main selling point, as far back as the Kotr days, Me 1-3 have some pretty scary ass things going on not even including bugs. Its also harder to animate faces when they can be coustomized and arn't pre rendered, i'm looking at you CDPR

So why does their story in recent games suck as well?
And if the problem with bad animations is the customisation of the PC, why do the NPCs, who do have pre-set faces, have horrible animations too?

If this was their first game where they wanted to create realistic faces and expressions I'd understand, but it's not. They haven't learned anything from DA:I and they certainly won't learn anything from ME:A.
Maybe they shouldn't tackle projects they don't have the skill for.

[Andonais]

The no quick save and saving during missions just took off a point or two for me such a silly thing to do.

[Lahis]

Imagine a "Kettified" version of a Krogan........ now that's the shit that ought to give nightmares to most people.

I think that's exactly what the launch trailer has at 0:53 and 0:54. Split cuts, but let's pause the video. This creature is first seen floating in a test tube. It looks to have bioarmor like the Kett, but has overall shape and profile of a Krogan.

Took a screenshot from the trailer.

[Uselessrouge]

multiplayer crashing all the time... for anyone else?


pc is good enough , got a gtx 1070 and 16k ram... but it just freezes and crashes in multiplayer managed to finish 1 out of 4 games with a friend

[Derah]

7 more days........

/twitch

[Smitzelplix]

So why does their story in recent games suck as well?
And if the problem with bad animations is the customisation of the PC, why do the NPCs, who do have pre-set faces, have horrible animations too?

If this was their first game where they wanted to create realistic faces and expressions I'd understand, but it's not. They haven't learned anything from DA:I and they certainly won't learn anything from ME:A.
Maybe they shouldn't tackle projects they don't have the skill for.

The story sucking is subjective you know. Some people don't like the stories of the newer games, but some other people do. I enjoyed Inquisition quite a bit and I know I'm not the only one.

[Deleted]

I think i also created a rather nice looking fem ryder with the preset 5 head:
http://imgur.com/a/TZoUL

She honestly looks like an edgy petulant teenager, and every female Ryder so far has looked like this. I'd more expect her to snap pictures of her food/coffee and share it with her basic bitch friends, than drive the future of humanity.

Fem Shep was a badass woman who took care of business. That's the type of female protagonist I can empathize with in a space exploration/survival RPG.

[Lorianus]

She honestly looks like an edgy petulant teenager, and every female Ryder so far has looked like this. I'd more expect her to snap pictures of her food/coffee and share it with her basic bitch friends, than drive the future of humanity.

Fem Shep was a badass woman who took care of business. That's the type of female protagonist I can empathize with in a space exploration/survival RPG.

Well shes supposed to be 22 ingame while shepard was in her 30's.

[Deleted]

Well shes supposed to be 22 ingame while shepard was in her 30's.

And the dialogue seems to be written by 21 year old Instagram socialites, so it might actually be intention design.

Which makes it even worse.

[Derah]

I think i also created a rather nice looking fem ryder with the preset 5 head:
http://imgur.com/a/TZoUL

Wow, she looks pretty good. What's the name of your Ryder? Because you can upload your character for other people to download on their game (That's their equivalent of the face-code).

[Lorianus]

Wow, she looks pretty good. What's the name of your Ryder? Because you can upload your character for other people to download on their game (That's their equivalent of the face-code).

Can you elaborate on this a bit i know that it said upload character data on creation but when i try to access the import feature or the Mass Effect Archives via the browser it doesnt work for me ? or am i missing something.

[Lahis]

Wow, she looks pretty good. What's the name of your Ryder? Because you can upload your character for other people to download on their game (That's their equivalent of the face-code).

Wait, the faces are only listed by the names of the characters?

[Deleted]

The story sucking is subjective you know. Some people don't like the stories of the newer games, but some other people do. I enjoyed Inquisition quite a bit and I know I'm not the only one.

The story of DA:I was a mess from a writing stand point, it had no structure, you were thrown into the conflict, did some unnecessary side stuff and then you fought a villain that had almost zero build up. And to make things worse, the actual villain was then revealed in a DLC that was almost completely disconnected from the main game and which featured even more unnecessary shit.
People liking it doesn't change the fact that it was a badly written game and it was neither their first nor last bad one.

[Sencha]

How is the multiplayer aspect of the game? Not very interested in single player games.

[Mirishka]

The story sucking is subjective you know. Some people don't like the stories of the newer games, but some other people do. I enjoyed Inquisition quite a bit and I know I'm not the only one.

I loved Inquisition. Yeah, some of the side quests leaned a little too far into 'MMO fetch' territory but the game as a whole was excellent IMO.

[Tankitbetter]

How is the multiplayer aspect of the game? Not very interested in single player games.

If you're looking for MP only, ME:A isn't really for you. ME:A has fun multiplayer from the 3ish hours I played of it but it's basically horde mode with a few objectives thrown in. There's a lot of variety in builds and weapons and stuff but it won't be enough to interest someone who is only looking for that.

[Smitzelplix]

The story of DA:I was a mess from a writing stand point, it had no structure, you were thrown into the conflict, did some unnecessary side stuff and then you fought a villain that had almost zero build up. And to make things worse, the actual villain was then revealed in a DLC that was almost completely disconnected from the main game and which featured even more unnecessary shit.
People liking it doesn't change the fact that it was a badly written game and it was neither their first nor last bad one.

Calling it badly written is still an opinion, just saying. I didn't think it was badly written.

[Tankitbetter]

People liking it doesn't change the fact that it was a badly written game and it was neither their first nor last bad one.

So, only your opinion on the story matters. Got it.