Mass Effect: Andromeda Drops Denuvo

[Megalith]

Denuvo has been quietly removed from Mass Effect: Andromeda after Patch 1.09, which was only believed to have improved stability, facial animations, and myriad bug fixes. There have supposedly been cases in the past where developers reinstated such DRM in a future patch, but EA has basically given up on the game and franchise...

We don’t know whether this was intentional or not. After all, we’ve seen developers rolling out patches without the inclusion of the Denuvo anti-tamper tech and then re-applying it via a new update. But anyway, right now, the 1.9 version of Mass Effect: Andromeda is not powered by the Denuvo anti-tamper tech (though the game is still protected by Origin). Mass Effect: Andromeda joins a number of games for which the developers/publishers have removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech once their games got cracked. These include Doom, Hitman, RiME, and Homefront: The Revolution.

 

[Jim Kim]

The pirates have moved on.

 

[Shmee]

It makes sense though. You just need it for the first month or so since that is where you make like 80% of your sales, and then after that it is just too much work keeping up with it.

 

[cageymaru]

It makes sense though. You just need it for the first month or so since that is where you make like 80% of your sales, and then after that it is just too much work keeping up with it.

I think this isn't the case as the Steam Summer sales have proven that people love a great deal on a game. The early adopters are there to beta test for the frugal gamers. With everything having gone digital, you only need to make one good copy of a game and then distribute it. If you sell it for $120, $60, $45, $30, $20, $15, or $9.99 it is all profit. Before you made a game and then ran around trying to get it pressed onto discs, negotiate for prime floor space in retail stores, etc. With that said, if you tick off the early adopters with too many bugs and an unplayable game then you will stagnate sales for the entire life of the product due to there being way too many options for a gamer to choose from.

 

[oldmanbal]

That's racist.

 

[Hisshadow]

unless this makes the game into an mmo like star citizen.. i really dont care...

 

[Flogger23m]

unless this makes the game into an mmo like star citizen.. i really dont care...

Yay, another cookie cutter MMO. Just what we need. A game known for a strong SP narrative and campaign becoming an MMO? Choke yourself back to WoW.

 

[RayderR6]

"Denuvo anti-tamper tech"

If someone hasn't seen it yet, I would like to present a catch phrase for Denuvo...

"Denuvo - the anti-tamper hamper"

do you think it could catch on before Denuvo completely disappears

 

[Exavior]

Never having played any mass effect game and it being on sale for half price I have been debating if I should get it just to see if it is as horrible as people claim it is.

 

[STR]

Never having played any mass effect game and it being on sale for half price I have been debating if I should get it just to see if it is as horrible as people claim it is.

I'd grab the original trilogy first. Even without DLC, it's a solid 150+ hours of gameplay for $15 on Amazon.

 

[Merc1138]

It makes sense though. You just need it for the first month or so since that is where you make like 80% of your sales, and then after that it is just too much work keeping up with it.

That makes sense from one perspective, but at the same time with Denuvo getting cracked in a week or less it's largely irrelevant other than the fact that it causes problems for paying customers at that point.

Of course this is ME:A so it's not like there aren't tons of other issues, but my point is that justification for the use of denuvo made sense before it started getting cracked so quickly.

 

[MrSteel74]

Never having played any mass effect game and it being on sale for half price I have been debating if I should get it just to see if it is as horrible as people claim it is.

Is Andromeda as good as the original trilogy no but It is not nearly as bad as people claim, I'm betting most the people that comment on it have never played it 1st hand and are just parroting what others have said or what they've read or saw on youtube. I ran into 2 small reoccurring bugs a total of about a dozen times in the game but nothing that lasted more than say 5 to 10 seconds when they did pop up and I put 80 hours in the game doing just about everything you can do.

 

[Term-X]

Is Andromeda as good as the original trilogy no but It is not nearly as bad as people claim, I'm betting most the people that comment on it have never played it 1st hand and are just parroting what others have said or what they've read or saw on youtube. I ran into 2 small reoccurring bugs a total of about a dozen times in the game but nothing that lasted more than say 5 to 10 seconds when they did pop up and I put 80 hours in the game doing just about everything you can do.

What about the animations, particularly the facial animations? There were a ton of videos on that so it's not necessarily about what I heard but what I saw. That completely ruins the most important thing about Mass Effect for me and that is atmosphere.

 

[__hollywood|meow]

game is a legitimate mess anyway. who cares? i could go on for an hour about how screwy the dev cycle was. it was sloppily coded/written, poorly managed, & rushed out by the publisher to boot.

 

[STR]

What about the animations, particularly the facial animations? There were a ton of videos on that so it's not necessarily about what I heard but what I saw. That completely ruins the most important thing about Mass Effect for me and that is atmosphere.

Overblown. Fixed already too.

 

[__hollywood|meow]

nope...they made a few minor adjustments in the most severe examples/cutscenes (noot noot lips for instance), & where they couldnt actually fix it...they simply removed the characters closeups from the cutscene in question.

the new patch didnt improve the C3PO body animations at all, & it doesnt entirely address the weird uncanny-valley-tier facial gurning. completely independent of whether or not the game is fun to play, or has a solid story, or watever...its really jarring to watch. still.

 

[Burticus]

The wonky facial stuff has been fixed already.

 

[STR]

nope...they made a few minor adjustments in the most severe examples/cutscenes (noot noot lips for instance), & where they couldnt actually fix it...they simply removed the characters closeups from the cutscene in question.

the new patch didnt improve the C3PO body animations at all, & it doesnt entirely address the weird uncanny-valley-tier facial gurning. completely independent of whether or not the game is fun to play, or has a solid story, or watever...its really jarring to watch. still.

OG Trilogy had (and still has) more than one wonky bit of animation. Lip sync problems (including missing lip movement), wacky body language. Any game with 20,000 lines of dialogue will have issues like this, because the scale is so large that >90% of it is done algorithmically and not by hand. It's not just a Bioware issue. I'm working my way through the Deus Ex HR/MD games and I've seen smoother movements from Parkinson's patients.

Andromeda's problem is that its worst animation issues were in the first 2 hours of the game. That, and people seem to like slagging it. I've seen more than one person here complain about the one trans character that you don't even have to talk to, that is buried in with a bunch of other NPCs in one colony and only brings the subject up if you dig into it. One minor character you have to seek out and dig into and suddenly it's "OMG SJWs in my face with their agenda!"

Not that ME:A doesn't have a pile of valid criticisms too. Mostly related to the large amounts of filler in between a handful of good missions. Large, mostly empty worlds. Repetitive fetch quests. Leveling balance issues. Basically, a lot of the same problems found in a lot of open world games. But that's not most of the criticism (even in this thread). Instead it's mostly harping on animation, the few bugs, and politics.

 

[Jim Kim]

Never having played any mass effect game and it being on sale for half price I have been debating if I should get it just to see if it is as horrible as people claim it is.

Skip 1, play 2 and if you likey go back and play 1 and 3. Life is better out of order.

 

[MrSteel74]

What about the animations, particularly the facial animations? There were a ton of videos on that so it's not necessarily about what I heard but what I saw. That completely ruins the most important thing about Mass Effect for me and that is atmosphere.

While there were some wonky animations here and there I hardly called them immersion breaking especially considering 75% of your interactions are with aliens and you can't tell if there is something wrong with the facial animations. Patch I think 1.6 did fix the human ones some but I was near the end of the game at that point so it made no difference to me.

 

[Exavior]

Given all the hate here I decided to go ahead and buy the game.

Skip 1, play 2 and if you likey go back and play 1 and 3. Life is better out of order.

But if I do that I can't carry my player through all the way and have my ending match all my choices then.... oh wait

I actually have 2 on the PC as it was one of the free origin games one month, never touched it as I didn't want to jump into the middle of a series like that.

 

[Derangel]

OG Trilogy had (and still has) more than one wonky bit of animation. Lip sync problems (including missing lip movement), wacky body language. Any game with 20,000 lines of dialogue will have issues like this, because the scale is so large that >90% of it is done algorithmically and not by hand. It's not just a Bioware issue. I'm working my way through the Deus Ex HR/MD games and I've seen smoother movements from Parkinson's patients.

Andromeda's problem is that its worst animation issues were in the first 2 hours of the game. That, and people seem to like slagging it. I've seen more than one person here complain about the one trans character that you don't even have to talk to, that is buried in with a bunch of other NPCs in one colony and only brings the subject up if you dig into it. One minor character you have to seek out and dig into and suddenly it's "OMG SJWs in my face with their agenda!"

Not that ME:A doesn't have a pile of valid criticisms too. Mostly related to the large amounts of filler in between a handful of good missions. Large, mostly empty worlds. Repetitive fetch quests. Leveling balance issues. Basically, a lot of the same problems found in a lot of open world games. But that's not most of the criticism (even in this thread). Instead it's mostly harping on animation, the few bugs, and politics.

I feel like the animation issues of ME: A are more apparent partly due to the game looking so much better and cleaner. The kind of ugly character models of the trilogy, combined with various UE3 bugs that we got used to over the course of the last decade kind of hid a lot of the wonkyness of it. The animation issues of Frostbite 3 games are a lot more obvious and in your face. The lack of idle animations didn't help either.

 

[Nenu]

I either dont get any animation issues or dont care.
Its not bothered me enough to remember.

 

[draksia]

I either dont get any animation issues or dont care.
Its not bothered me enough to remember.

It didn't really bother me at all either.

I am kinda sad it didn't get the loved it deserved it really wasn't a bad game at all, I am very much going to miss the obviously setup Quarian DLC.

 

[Exavior]

It didn't really bother me at all either.

I am kinda sad it didn't get the loved it deserved it really wasn't a bad game at all, I am very much going to miss the obviously setup Quarian DLC.

The rumors of the DLC being all shit canned where not true. So they might still come out with it.

 

[__hollywood|meow]

The wonky facial stuff has been fixed already.

i literally just said that 1.09 patch did not fix it & explained how

OG Trilogy had (and still has) more than one wonky bit of animation. Lip sync problems (including missing lip movement), wacky body language. I'm working my way through the Deus Ex HR/MD games and I've seen smoother movements from Parkinson's patients.

yeah, the first game had some legitimately bad animation, & yet its nothing like this game. its not deus ex style "stilted" movement or simple open/close mouths. its garrys-mod-tier flailing, noot noot lips where peoples faces turn into jelly, & bizarre gurning smiles. this latest patch does not fix any of this. its a band-aid on a bullet wound.

my criticism isnt based upon politics, although it seems thats where your impulse to defend it is rooted. if this was half the game DXHR was, i could forgive a bit of unpolished presentation...but it isnt. its gameplay is alright at best & the story is lackluster. doesnt measure up at all by any metric. im aware that the story gets fleshed out, & subsequently improved a bit, by completing the thousand mind-numbingly boring sidequests...but i dont feel like running the same exact rehashed mission premise over & over again.

the bare stark fact of the matter is that this dev team was created to help the original ME team with DLC...& when actually technically competent, inspired, & creative people were in charge...everything went fine, more or less. then this dev attempted to make a hugely ambitious AAA title by themselves & dithered for years.

the only reason the game has a half decent story is because they brought the original ME writer to be creative director a year & a half before release (when like half the dev team left, wonder why). the only reason this game is playable at all is because other bioware dev studios were brought in to help them out of the hole they dug.

i could easily go on about how the replacement hires focused more on strange political agendas than doing their jobs properly as well, but thats hardly the scope of my complaints.

 

[Flogger23m]

I found Deus Ex Mankind Divided animations to be much more distracting than ME:A's overall. The syncing was so off at times it was as if the audio was playing a second or two before/after the animation occurred, and some of the odd twitches made no sense for the situation. Jensen was better but still looked off every now and then. ME:A isn't perfect still but not enough to ruin the experience. Of all games I'm not sure why these two had bad animations as they really needed it.

 

[STR]

I feel like the animation issues of ME: A are more apparent partly due to the game looking so much better and cleaner. The kind of ugly character models of the trilogy, combined with various UE3 bugs that we got used to over the course of the last decade kind of hid a lot of the wonkyness of it. The animation issues of Frostbite 3 games are a lot more obvious and in your face. The lack of idle animations didn't help either.

Ugly character models? Sure the body textures are distractingly low-res (especially ME3), but I think the models themselves hold up well enough. Okay, maybe not the rando human NPCs or custom PCs with PotatoSkin(TM). Also, AFAIK they never fixed that issue in ME1 where Garrus' face would never show at full rez. IIRC, to fix you had to unpack all the assets and replace his face tex with one without mip-maps. Still, minor issue. I'd never counsel someone against ME1 because of a minor issue like that.

For the same reason, I'd never tell someone to stay away from ME:A or Deus Ex. It's an occasionally funny/distracting issue that doesn't affect core game play. It's a result of games worlds getting so big and in-depth that we have to rely on occasionally quirky algorithms to animate unimportant scenes. This tradeoff enables bigger games, or more manpower to be focused on important sequences. The net result is greater immersion.

The rumors of the DLC being all shit canned where not true. So they might still come out with it.

I know it's all rumors and hearsay, but I have a feeling it's true.

i literally just said that 1.09 patch did not fix it & explained how



yeah, the first game had some legitimately bad animation, & yet its nothing like this game. its not deus ex style "stilted" movement or simple open/close mouths. its garrys-mod-tier flailing, noot noot lips where peoples faces turn into jelly, & bizarre gurning smiles. this latest patch does not fix any of this. its a band-aid on a bullet wound.

my criticism isnt based upon politics, although it seems thats where your impulse to defend it is rooted. if this was half the game DXHR was, i could forgive a bit of unpolished presentation...but it isnt. its gameplay is alright at best & the story is lackluster. doesnt measure up at all by any metric. im aware that the story gets fleshed out, & subsequently improved a bit, by completing the thousand mind-numbingly boring sidequests...but i dont feel like running the same exact rehashed mission premise over & over again.

the bare stark fact of the matter is that this dev team was created to help the original ME team with DLC...& when actually technically competent, inspired, & creative people were in charge...everything went fine, more or less. then this dev attempted to make a hugely ambitious AAA title by themselves & dithered for years.

the only reason the game has a half decent story is because they brought the original ME writer to be creative director a year & a half before release (when like half the dev team left, wonder why). the only reason this game is playable at all is because other bioware dev studios were brought in to help them out of the hole they dug.

i could easily go on about how the replacement hires focused more on strange political agendas than doing their jobs properly as well, but thats hardly the scope of my complaints.

Swing and a miss on all pitches. Lemme explain it to you like you're 5:

Valid criticisms:

• Content to filler ratio
• Balance issues
• Story
• Gameplay mechanics

In short, the core experiences of a game.

Invalid criticisms (meaning, not valid at all, which means one is not any more or less invalid than the others)

• Animations
• Politics
• Internal EA stuff (including who developed it) unless you can back your BS up with more than hearsay.

Also, I wasn't talking about Human Revolution (which had subpar but not out of the ordinary animation for a game in 2011). I'm referring to Mankind Divided which came out 11 months ago with roughly the same level of wonkiness.

Basically, my actual main point is "your whole argument is terrible".

 

[__hollywood|meow]

i mentioned DXHR because it had an excellent story from writing to execution to pacing. the animations in DXHR & DXMD were both pretty poor. youre not listening to wat im saying. my argument is that you havent made an argument, just asserted that the game is fine by watever standards youve set for yourself, & condemned anyone who disagrees. well, try refuting anything ive put forth...

now, i literally criticized all of those things on your odd list, valid & invalid alike. you saying "im wrong" without explaining why when im providing explanations myself doesnt fly.

nothing i said about EAs mismanagement of the game is hearsay. its documented fact that you can investigate on your own from recent & past interviews, as well as biowares history itself. bioware montreal lost half the dev team halfway through andromedas development because quite frankly it was as messy as a soup sandwich & they had no experience making a full-fledged game on their own.

the leaked alpha build from 2014 looked remarkably better than wat was released, from lighting & textures/normal/specular maps all the way down the the framerate of the animations themselves (which literally look like peoples limbs are pulled around on puppet strings). again, the only reason the game has any story at all is because the main writer of ME was brought in to save the project as creative director. the only reason the game is playable right now is because the other bioware studios had to step in to help bioware montreal.

 

[M76]

Valid criticisms:

• Content to filler ratio
• Balance issues
• Story
• Gameplay mechanics

In short, the core experiences of a game.

Invalid criticisms (meaning, not valid at all, which means one is not any more or less invalid than the others)

• Animations
• Politics
• Internal EA stuff (including who developed it) unless you can back your BS up with more than hearsay.

Why would you separate those out? The politics that's mixed into the game, and the animations are just as worthy of criticism.. There were animation problems only not as bad as they were made out to be. Politics is also a problem I don't want the same bullshit mixed in with my entertainment that I'm tired of hearing IRL anyway. The prequel novel is the most obvious example of the political agenda. The internal ea stuff is just irrelevant nobody would care about that if there was nothing else to criticize.

On the other hand, neither of the four things you listed as valid are that bad. Yes the game can be criticized on those account but definitely not more than for the politics.

 

[Exavior]

8.5 hours into the game, got my first outpost up and running and explored the planet some trying to get all sidequest finished up that I could.... I am not seeing anything wrong with animations. At least nothing extreme damning of the game. I noticed a single glitch where a person's head jerked like they were looking left for a split second then back to normal. Other than that is has been perfectly fine. So yeah they fixed it or people just are creating an impossibly high pedestal that no game can reach and expecting this one game to be the one that is way above the rest. So I am going to say everyone still bitching about the game is talking out their ass.

 

[_l_]

Mass Effect Andromeda has some fantastic moments like when the Pathfinder (Ryder's dad) puts up his arm/hand and the triangle begins to glow, etc. The jetpack is really neat and I like how the weapons handle and especially appreciate that they changed the reticle to make it more like it was in the original Mass Effect. But it's easy to see for yourself why Mass Effect Andromeda falls short (regarding gameplay and audio comments) compared to earlier ME releases. It has nothing to do with animations, facial expressions or other things folks on YouTube bashed in order to get hits for their Youtube videos. Here's how you can compare and see:

- play Mass Effect 2, the DLC called Lair of the Shadow Broker
- then go play Mass Effect Andromeda and play the scene where you fight the gigantic Remnant creature (you know, "shoot at the legs!")

If that doesn't convince you that Mass Effect Andromeda wound up lowering the gaming bar, then nothing will. Even for $20 or $30 dollars, you'll soon realize for yourself how weak the gameplay is all too many times as well as the audio dialogs - IMO they are very not good. Classic Mass Effect audio is "For the love of God, take a breath!" (Shepherd's comment when he meets Mordin Solus) and I recall many others as well but Andromeda has, well, I can't think of a single one at the moment (not trying for effect here, I really can't recall even one at the moment)

 

[STR]

Why would you separate those out? The politics that's mixed into the game, and the animations are just as worthy of criticism.

Give me 5 games with equal or greater amounts of dialogue that had worse animations.

I'll give you Witcher 3. You just need 4 more.