[Megathread] Mass Effect Andromeda

[Sunseeker]

Personally I disagree with this. The HD textures that some Skyrim race/character mods use are nice, but the meshes themselves are still lacking sorely in regards to geometry and animation. In that regard Skyrim wasn't cutting edge in 2011, much less 2017.

It's really unfortunate I think that neither DAI nor MEA are mod-friendly. There's a lot of room for adding stuff. I don't like that Bethesda sort of relies on the modding community to "clean up" their games post-launch, but I'm less concerned about that than I am about games being locked down for eternity. I get not allowing modding right away, but ya know when the game's been out of a few years, give us some tools and let us play around on our own.

[Mirishka]

Was particularly taking a shot at the game this thread is formed on that came out last month >.>

Aye, I understood that. I just felt like it was kind of a stretch to suggest Skyrim has better faces than Andromeda.



You're entitled to your opinion, of course. I'm just explaining mine.

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It's really unfortunate I think that neither DAI nor MEA are mod-friendly. There's a lot of room for adding stuff. I don't like that Bethesda sort of relies on the modding community to "clean up" their games post-launch, but I'm less concerned about that than I am about games being locked down for eternity. I get not allowing modding right away, but ya know when the game's been out of a few years, give us some tools and let us play around on our own.

Aye, Frostbite is a terrible engine for modding, which sucks. I love modding Bethesda games, I'd kill for more games to have that flexibility.

[I Push Buttons]

Aye, I understood that. I just felt like it was kind of a stretch to suggest Skyrim has better faces than Andromeda.

[IMG]https://i.imgbox.com/gCuJ8Pd9.jpg[IMG]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. I'm just explaining mine.

Andromeda is pretty far from impressive with regard to meshes and animations...

The animations are self-explanatory and garbage... But the meshes...

Apart from members of your crew (excluding Lexi), every alien in the game shares the same face mesh with similar aliens.

So every single Asari in the game, including Dr. Lexi, have the exact same head and face mesh. Every single Turian shares the same head and face mesh (only difference is sex). Every single Angaran shares the same head and face mesh (only difference is sex). Every single Krogan shares the same head and face mesh (only difference is sex)... And then the crown jewel, every single Salarian, male or female, is the exact same model... Kett as well, you would think they would put at least minor variations in for the cutscenes, but nah, you will see ten Kett standing next to the Archon and every single one of them will be identical like this is some PS2 game.

Really cutting edge stuff.

Humans at least have some variation, but outside of a few important characters, those variations go about as far as the shit tier character customization allows, since almost all are made using that piece of shit.

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Syrim's meshes may have been low poly, but at characters actually looked different from each other... The only time you would see repeats was on randomly generated people... And even then you would be hard pressed to recognize them unless going out of your way to do so.

Compared to Andromeda... Where, take the Asari Ark for example, you have cutscenes with three or four Asari in them and every single one of them have the exact same face. Its silly.

[Jastall]

Mods are the one thing making Bethesda games even bearable to me. Yeah, you ''can do whatever you want'', but what does it matter if almost none of it is interesting or acknowledged by the game? Give me a solid semi-open world game filled with interesting content like New Vegas over a randomly-generated sandbox that doesn't give a fuck about creating something good because it knows modders will do its job for it.

Skyrim was a bit better than standard Bethesda titles, to be fair, so I did enjoy that one. But Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4? These games are nigh unplayable to me without heavy modding, so I just didn't bother for very long. Especially Oblivion and its ridiculously terrible level scaling.

[rhorle]

Syrim's meshes may have been low poly, but at characters actually looked different from each other... The only time you would see repeats was on randomly generated people... And even then you would be hard pressed to recognize them unless going out of your way to do so.

Compared to Andromeda... Where, take the Asari Ark for example, you have cutscenes with three or four Asari in them and every single one of them have the exact same face. Its silly.

http://kotaku.com/5833906/twenty-dif...skyrims-races/

Skyrim isn't much better. The faces used are not vastly different if you actually care to do an unbiased comparison. You have to go out of your way to notice faces of all non-important NPC's in Andromeda. It just isn't something you remember and look for casually. And I know you are lying if you say you've noticed every single npc's face. Because who walks up to every npc, orient the camera, and then take a mental picture, and compare it to every other.

If you have that kind of brain power you are wasting it discussing faces in games.

[I Push Buttons]

http://kotaku.com/5833906/twenty-dif...skyrims-races/

Skyrim isn't much better. The faces used are not vastly different if you actually care to do an unbiased comparison. You have to go out of your way to notice faces of all non-important NPC's in Andromeda. It just isn't something you remember and look for casually. And I know you are lying if you say you've noticed every single npc's face. Because who walks up to every npc, orient the camera, and then take a mental picture, and compare it to every other.

If you have that kind of brain power you are wasting it discussing faces in games.

Are we playing the same game friend?

What the fuck are you on about...? You spend literally dozens of hours standing around in conversations with people... Where you do absolutely nothing but look at their faces.

[rhorle]

Are we playing the same game friend?

What the fuck are you on about...? You spend literally dozens of hours standing around in conversations with people... Where you do absolutely nothing but look at
their faces.

The only time you would see repeats was on randomly generated people... And even then you would be hard pressed to recognize them unless going out of your way to do so.

You don't have conversations with all of the randomly generated people in Andromeda. You are making the claim that Skyrim is different then Andromeda even for the "randomly generated background npc's". So its clear we are not playing the same game if you having actual conversations with all of those people.

Also there wouldn't be all of the mods that change generic npc (or even named npc) faces if they were awesome as is. Plenty of them are generic.

[I Push Buttons]

The only time you would see repeats was on randomly generated people... And even then you would be hard pressed to recognize them unless going out of your way to do so.

You don't have conversations with all of the randomly generated people in Andromeda. You are making the claim that Skyrim is different then Andromeda even for the "randomly generated background npc's". So its clear we are not playing the same game if you having actual conversations with all of those people.

Also there wouldn't be all of the mods that change generic npc (or even named npc) faces if they were awesome as is. Plenty of them are generic.

Once again, what? The above quote was with regard to Skyrim.

Skyrim:
Virtually every single named character in game (hundreds of them) has a unique face. You linked some thing about there being 20 heads per race... Yeah, 20 default heads... There were dozens of noses, dozens of eyes, dozens of mouths, dozens of hair styles for potentially thousands of combinations just with the features, then they could all be adjusted in dozens of ways further for each feature...

Andromeda:
Ten people on your ship, (the eleventh doesn't), a couple central HUMAN characters like your family, the captain of the Hyperion, the Hyperion's doctor, Madison, the guy in charge of the outpost on Eos, etc... Have a unique face.

Every other alien besides your squad share the same faces, whether side characters or central character, all the same face. And every other human besides the central characters have one of the 16 or however many default faces.

So what the hell are you talking about it being hard to notice? It doesn't take a a lot of effort to notice that they all are exactly the same. I am not talking about random people standing around either, even though they all have the same faces too... I am talking about all of the side quest conversation and such, and even the main quests with regard to aliens.

[Mirishka]

Are we playing the same game friend?

What the fuck are you on about...? You spend literally dozens of hours standing around in conversations with people... Where you do absolutely nothing but look at their faces.

You probably shouldn't take people disagreeing with you so personally.

Neither game is 'cutting edge' in regards to its characters. Hell, I consider Dragon Age Inquistion to be a notch or 2 above ME:A in that regard. Characters had a distinct sense of looking at each other, and there weren't that many meme-worthy moments from the animations.

But for all the variety you claim Skyrim has, there's plenty of 'same face same voice' characters in that as well. I noticed it in 2011, and I noticed it last year when I played the Remastered edition.

[I Push Buttons]

You probably shouldn't take people disagreeing with you so personally.

Neither game is 'cutting edge' in regards to its characters. Hell, I consider Dragon Age Inquistion to be a notch or 2 above ME:A in that regard. Characters had a distinct sense of looking at each other, and there weren't that many meme-worthy moments from the animations.

But for all the variety you claim Skyrim has, there's plenty of 'same face same voice' characters in that as well. I noticed it in 2011, and I noticed it last year when I played the Remastered edition.

I didn't take someone disagreeing with me personally, I took them accusing me of being biased because I didn't agree with them personally.

And Skyrim never had "same face" to this level.



They all have literally the same face...

[Mirishka]

For the record, I agree that the Asari in Andromeda are inexcusably same-face.

But my point was never that Andromeda had more varied faces, or even that it was 'cutting edge'. Simply that faces in Skyrim, modded or not, are not superior in my opinion. Mind you, I'm referring to technical aspects - mesh detail, animation systems, etc.

[Adam Jensen]

What part of "Sniper Rifle Skirmish" do people not understand? We had one Salarian Infil with a Vanq, who prefered his Scorpion. A Krogan and a Human Biotic, one with a shotgun and don't know what the Biotic was, but it wasn't a sniper rifle. I'm the only one who's capable of actually killing things fast enough to not get killed, so I'm running around, killing all the things, reviving all the teammates.

Like come on, my Isharay is doing 50% more damage, and your other weapons are doing 50% less damage.



Ended up losing anyways because I got caught by an Ascendant.

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I didn't take someone disagreeing with me personally, I took them accusing me of being biased because I didn't agree with them personally.

And Skyrim never had "same face" to this level.



They all have literally the same face...

That's just the Asari though. Humans have diverse faces. Not sure why they couldn't just take the human faces slap some blue paint on them and stick them on an Asari head.

Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying, but still, it just screams laziness and is yet another piece of evidence that ME:A would have been better off delayed a few months.

"But Q1!!!" Shut up Mr. Executive. You'd make more money in the long term by not pissing your fanbase off.

[Mirishka]

What part of "Sniper Rifle Skirmish" do people not understand? We had one Salarian Infil with a Vanq, who prefered his Scorpion. A Krogan and a Human Biotic, one with a shotgun and don't know what the Biotic was, but it wasn't a sniper rifle. I'm the only one who's capable of actually killing things fast enough to not get killed, so I'm running around, killing all the things, reviving all the teammates.

Like come on, my Isharay is doing 50% more damage, and your other weapons are doing 50% less damage.



Ended up losing anyways because I got caught by an Ascendant.

#ApexProblems

Amirite?

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That's just the Asari though. Humans have diverse faces. Not sure why they couldn't just take the human faces slap some blue paint on them and stick them on an Asari head.

Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying, but still, it just screams laziness and is yet another piece of evidence that ME:A would have been better off delayed a few months.

"But Q1!!!" Shut up Mr. Executive. You'd make more money in the long term by not pissing your fanbase off.

Asari head meshes have totally different UV mapping from the human models, so that wouldn't have worked on the mesh or texture level.

I'm surprised they didn't incorporate some kind of 'randomizer' tool to slightly alter each major Asari's face. I understand them not caring about the non-name Asari wandering around, but there's 9 or 10 'important' ones who could have reeeeally used unique faces.

[I Push Buttons]

That's just the Asari though.

Its not just the Asari, its every alien species.

[Sunseeker]

That's just the Asari though. Humans have diverse faces. Not sure why they couldn't just take the human faces slap some blue paint on them and stick them on an Asari head.

Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying, but still, it just screams laziness and is yet another piece of evidence that ME:A would have been better off delayed a few months.

"But Q1!!!" Shut up Mr. Executive. You'd make more money in the long term by not pissing your fanbase off.

Right, it doesn't take a screaming amout of effort to adjust a face....unless you didn't build any face adjustment tools for non-humans at all.

The Asari stick out as the worst because they're the nearest to human, so we notice the similarities easier.

As for why you can't just stick funny head things on a human face model, it's because even subtle adjustments to the brow, cheeks and chin will adjust the way the funny head things are positioned and it's actually less work to design a fully morphable head than it is to constantly adjust the "hat" to fit every face.

[Mirishka]

Right, it doesn't take a screaming amout of effort to adjust a face....unless you didn't build any face adjustment tools for non-humans at all.

The Asari stick out as the worst because they're the nearest to human, so we notice the similarities easier.

As for why you can't just stick funny head things on a human face model, it's because even subtle adjustments to the brow, cheeks and chin will adjust the way the funny head things are positioned and it's actually less work to design a fully morphable head than it is to constantly adjust the "hat" to fit every face.

In the case of the Mass Effect games, the heads are handled completely differently for Asari vs. humans. In ME1-3, the Asari have a single UV/texture set for the head (with only the eyes/lashes being separate) where as humans have a 'scalp' mesh that includes the teeth, along with a separate mesh for the face itself. Each with their own UV map/textures. The eyes and eyelashes are separate objects with their own textures, as they are for the Asari.

In Andromeda, the humans finally have a merged head/scalp mesh and texture set, but the UV arrangement is still significantly different from Asari (obviously, since humans have ears and Asari have the head tendrils and such) - leaving them pretty non-interchangeable.

I learned all this because most of my modding in recent years has been Mass Effect-related, though I've only scratched the surface of working with Andromeda stuff.

[rhorle]

I was just browsing Amazon and when looking at other books the Nexus Uprising book was suggested and Sara Ryder is the Narrator of the audible version of the book. The same voice actor, Fryda Wolff, is the same one the picked to do the audio reading of the book. To bad they didn't do combo of both Scott and Sara. Kind of cool.

https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_by...=relevancerank

I just wish the kindle version was cheaper (or if audio versions in general were cheaper. Its nice how amazon gives discounts if you own kindle versions but still they are expensive. The more popular books are even way more expensive then they out to be even with the higher over head costs of audio)

[mickybrighteyes]

Aye, I understood that. I just felt like it was kind of a stretch to suggest Skyrim has better faces than Andromeda.

I dunno >.> let them modders loose and watch magic happen

[Kaelwryn]

I dunno >.> let them modders loose and watch magic happen

And you could probably say the same about Andromeda if modding was easy to do, so that's kind of a moot point don't you think?

[Mirishka]

I dunno >.> let them modders loose and watch magic happen

I could wrap glorious 4k textures and normal maps over Skyrim's meshes until I was blue in the face, but at the end of the day you're putting a shiny coat of paint on a dated, low-fidelity model with 2d, alpha-channeled teeth and outdated facial animation tech (facemorphs).

All the up-close, ENB-enhanced, altered-FOV screenshots in the world don't change those things.