Mass Effect: Andromeda

I think there are clearly two separate issues at work here. One is the "average" =ugly looking characters, and the other is the poor animations.

The first issue is purely political, there is no way all modelers at bioware suddenly forgot how to model a good looking face. Until anyone can give me another reasonable explanation I'll continue to assume it's pc culture at large that is responsible.

The second one I agree is technical. Rushed development or poor oversight doesn't matter. There should be heads rolling for it, but most importantly bioware should put out a statement that they'll do everything to fix it as soon as possible. Remember the first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge it's existence.
 
Bioware has forcefully shoved sjw bullshit down our throats for far too long. It's not even well written. In fact, their writing is so awkward and cringe inducing that I think it's more offensive to gay people than it is to the religious right.
 
I don't feel that a Gaming Culture is the issue when discussing the animation problems that are plaguing the game. Although to attack an individual is always uncalled for behavior. But, my thought is...

To call a gamer naive, foolish, or to have standards set too high are all points that lead back to the Emperor not wearing any clothes argument. The civilian population are not at fault for the result being janky, nor should they be hushed or booed for their opinion. How can we wish for quality games at 4K when we are willing to accept low-res textures, poorly animated models, and terrible day 1 patch philosophies (rush the release, push for pre-orders, make the first 5 hours playable, & patch the worst issues post-launch). Why do the consumers get the blame for this cycle, and why are we placated when the products and services are of poor quality?

Our maxim was once, "Can it run Crysis" because we wanted the best quality & style without exceptions. This year will mark 10 years since the release of Crysis. Didn't you think then that we would've gone further?
 
This is how animations, acting and lip syncing looked like in 2003:

I dunno if it's just me but I find the results in Freelancer superior (check 23:18-> for example)...
 
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jiminator said:
So what did they do with weapon ammo this time around?
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They split them into 3 weapon categories.

  • Milky Way weapons will be traditional ammo based projectile weapons (with an upgrade changing them to infinite ammo with heat sinks if you prefer)
  • Remnant weapons will be heat based beam weapons with no ammo, just cool down periods if you overheat them.
  • Helios weapons will be Plasma based that deliver a more powerful shot the longer you charge them, like the Quarian Shotgun from ME3's MP. I haven't read if they will require ammo or cooling as of yet.
Basically all the above, covering all their bases, but at least they did it in a relatively believeable fashion.
 
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Xaeos said:
First of all right now I don't think the majority of the discussion regarding Andromeda and its issues has anything to do with "SJW" (and honestly, no matter what side you come down upon on the behaviors associated with "SJW" types could we PLEASE dispense with that namesake? Social Justice and those who fight for it shouldn't be encumbered with association to those discussed here especially when we already have a long standing word for it going back at least to the 90s - " (excessive) political correctness". So lets move it to "PC" not "SJW" - I know that in a computing forum the abbrevation is a bit less clear than anywhere else, but political correctness shows that this is not a new "movement" in any way and provides historical context for despite a resurgence, it will likely retract/fade away to some degree in time just as it did before ). Lets also remember that a lot o "liberals" (in this case meaning socially and/or economically Left-favoring) object to the "political correctness police", so there's no need to create conflict by claiming that it is a "liberal" issue when not all liberals are PC Police in the same way that not all conservatives are ignorant racists.

The problems demonstrated with Andromeda are technical (or perhaps business driven) in nature , so there's no point to cause needless inflammatory rhetoric that really doesn't contribute to the discussion at the moment. The only tenuous link I've seen is the idea is regarding that one particular facial animator and frankly, its a poor one. Criticize her work in and of itself, that's fine. However, if you're going to bring her appearance or hobbies into it, then you're part of the problem; I admit I'm disappointed to see some of the insinuation that just because she's pretty or her hobby as cosplayer it is somehow related to her being (apparently?) bad at her job. That's no more right than it is for someone to claim evidence of some issue with one of us because "They're one of those anti-social neckbeards with water tubes in the computer to make it go fast! " or some such. It just muddies the point and even pragmatically provides more reason for people to think the criticisms of the game or the animation isn't based on it and of itself when they can point to people taking personal potshots at a female developer for how she looks and her hobbies; its not helpful. Oh and furthermore, lets stop focusing on Manveer. Unless there's evidence he did something in particular regarding Andromeda, as repugnant as his behavior has been in the past, you can't impugn every decision as connected to an entire company, especially one as large as Bioware much less EA, for having an asshat working there. Focusing on him in this Andromeda discussion is not helpful either and again makes it appear this is a personal, political greivence not a reasonable criticism of Andromeda's issues.

Finally, can we please stop with all of this "tears" nonsense. It doesn't matter to me if its "Trumper Tears", "White Tears", or "Libtard Tears", but I find it reprehensible that so many people are willing to put up with ANYTHING (in many cases, policies that often are against their best interest) simply because it makes "The Other" object, feeding off their response. While its natural (though its worth trying to keep things under control and be mature) to be satisfied pushing for agendas in which you agree and when things are going your way, there's a difference when it crosses over into specifically just being malicious to the point the agenda itself, or rationale for action, isn't based on sound judgement but instead an immature ideology of "Anything to fuck those guys over" or "anything they hate must be good"; an element that has exploded into the forefront among certain groups especially in the past year or so.

Its all well and good to discuss Andromeda or Bioware titles, but its worth considering that not everything needs to be seen through "SJW hating goggles". For instance the DA2 "Hawkesexual" issue doesn't have to be the work of finger-tenting "SJWs" scheming "Now we can push our agenda that everyone should be, or in fact is, pansexual! Those players won't even realize they're being indoctrinated until they realize their same-sex urges burst forth ! BWA HA HA HAHA". Instead it is more rationally a lazy design technique meant to give the player freedom of choice, without thought of the cost to the viability of NPC characterization. While I won't dispute that there have been some directly PC-related issues at Bioware, lets try not to look at everything through such a lens lest our criticisms lose credibility with many who should be listening.
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Nope , Social Justice WARRIOR fits the idea of the douchebag , whiney , liberal who is all about "LOOK AT ME !! I'm MR MeSeeks , and I want attention for calling out a perceived injustice that I am going to do nothing about but be an attention whore! LOOK AT ME!!!".

SJW fits well to describe the cesspool of people like that , and I'm hoping someone at EA with enough clout and greed (shouldn't be hard to find) makes sure this trend doesn't continue because in no way does it make them anything but less money.
 
I have not pre-ordered this yet and will wait for people to get their hands on full copies, but right now I am pessimistic. Seems the best thing people have to say is that "gameplay is good". That's fine and all, but I have other games in my backlog with good gameplay too. I want a great sci-fi story. Conversations are important, crappy voice acting and animations will detract. Some are saying the writing in general is a step back from the original trilogy, not so much the main story (which I have no idea what it is about beyond finding a "golden planet") but just everything in general.

I could buy this game, ignore the shortcomings and enjoy the good gameplay and multiplayer. I'm not sure if I am willing to do that though.
 
Tup3x said:
This is how animations, acting and lip syncing looked like in 2003:
I dunno if it's just me but I find the results in Freelancer superior (check 23:18-> for example)...
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Meh, I wish the technology used by Bondi games for LA Noire had caught on.
It's a big investment equipment wise but EA could afford it.


Check around 11 minutes.
 
Derangel said:
Yep. Wonder what it does.
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It won't fix the fucked up animations if that's what you were wondering. However, it could do something with some of the audio synchronization. That's really too much to ask for. Those issues appear in parts of ME2 and ME3 and they were never addressed.
 
RPS review...

Is it as bad as my previous comments on the first few hours suggested? Kind of, yes, but diluted down by sheer volume of busywork. There’s nothing I’ve found that redeems its crappy writing, threadbare companions, moribund story, and ghastly UI. But, well, the best I can say is it occupies time. The driving’s kind of fun, with its own list of annoyances. Um. Some it’s fine.

Which is frustrating, because dammit, I wanted a wonderful new Mass Effect game, and such a huge amount of effort and work has gone into this. For all its cacophony of flaws, it’s a vast and intricate creation, into which many people have clearly poured huge quantities of energy. To see so much achieve so little is dispiriting in the extreme.
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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/20/mass-effect-andromeda-review/
 
The current consensus is 73 on Metacritic which, from my 4-5 hours, I'd about concur with.

Even Forbes, who normally gives above 9s to EA's farts, gave it a relatively middling review...
 
Holy shit this isn't cool. I mean geeeeezus christ its 2017 and this is the shit they give us? I remember people were all excited like 2 years ago with this. Now its all horshit letdown, money grubbing corporate pricks.

I was looking forward to getting GRW, and come to find out its GTA type crap. And now MEA.

2017 was looking to be good year for gaming, now its looking like dog dudu.
 
It's pretty disappointing, no disputing that. The bad animation, character design, writing, UI, and dialogue transitions are not really excusable for a ME game -- and certainly not something that will be fixed (no way there will be a magic patch that will fix these types of core issues). Also, as mentioned, the soundtrack is pretty mediocre and sparse from what I've heard. These detractions constantly pop me out of the game immersion. I was really hoping after hearing the initial impressions this would turn out to be like AC: Unity which was panned, but I loved -- no such thing here after having played for a while.

Combat is decent, but I can play a Tom Clancy game for better combat. For me, it's definitely a rental or bargain/sale game as the above video review mentions which pains me to say as I love ME. There are just way better games out there at this point.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
It's an alt-right fake news website akin to Breitbart.
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Actually its not, and as much as the left likes to label anyone and anything with disparaging euphemisms and monikers to avoid having to deal with facts (and which btw hilariously blew up in the MSM's face after the term "fake news" was applied to all the falsehoods perpetuated by it), Zero Hedge has since its inception been equally scathing of both right and left political ideologies. What has also been missed is that the Mass Effect article in question is simply a blog entry which any registered user can create, as opposed to content from the site admins or regular contributors. You can even see that the author of the article has only been registered on Zero Hedge for 16 weeks.
 
Super harsh review from Venture Beat.....55%

http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/20/mass-effect-andromeda-review/

Polygon.....7.5/10

http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/20/14886618/mass-effect-andromeda-review-PS4-Xbox-One-PC

Eurogamer....

The combat crackles and the worlds are lush, but mediocre writing and tepid quests add up to what is probably BioWare's worst RPG yet
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-19-mass-effect-andromeda

PS Lifestyle.....6.5/10

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...-andromeda-review-finding-paths-ps4/#/slide/1

Games Radar......3.5/5

http://www.gamesradar.com/mass-effect-andromeda-review/
 
These scores of 6 to 7 out of 10 are justified.....IF the animations and character models weren't so god awful. It's a stretch to call this a 3/10 honestly....since EVERY cut scene just rips you out of the game and story because all you see is hideous characters with awful animation.....
 
Yeah I'll Skip it.....

The Art Design team for the Armor and stuff doesn't look very well compared to a game that does sci-fi space like bungie's Destiny's Art team does.
 
Motley said:
Holy shit this isn't cool. I mean geeeeezus christ its 2017 and this is the shit they give us? I remember people were all excited like 2 years ago with this. Now its all horshit letdown, money grubbing corporate pricks.

I was looking forward to getting GRW, and come to find out its GTA type crap. And now MEA.

2017 was looking to be good year for gaming, now its looking like dog dudu.
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The year hasn't been that bad. ME: A is the only thing that's really disappointed me so far. I had zero interest or faith in Wildlands so there is that. Horizon: Zero Dawn is freaking amazing, probably the best open world game in several years. While Zelda Breath of the Wild is a game that simply isn't for me it is very well designed and I can totally understand why people love it. Nier: Automata is great, finally a Yoko Taro game that marries his storytelling with good gameplay.
 
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IdiotInCharge said:
Panning for writing, story, essentially 'thin' composition.

Well damn.
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That hurts the most after reading some of these reviews. My original plan was to pick this up at release and get Nier: Automata on sale, I think I'll switch that around. I'm still going to play this one as I'm a huge fan of the series, but it doesn't look like it's worth $60.
 
I was so excited for this that I was actually going to pre-order it until I saw the early reports of the animations. Now I'll wait until I can pick it up for cheap; maybe they'll have fixed many of the issues by then.
 
Bankie said:
I was so excited for this that I was actually going to pre-order it until I saw the early reports of the animations. Now I'll wait until I can pick it up for cheap; maybe they'll have fixed many of the issues by then.
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There are a lot of issues mentioned in various reviews that could be fixed via patches. I wouldn't expect much if anything on the animation front outside of resolving some glitches. The quality of the animations, faces etc. will not be improved. I'd seriously be shocked if anything was done on that front.
 
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Yeah, I could probably deal with the animations and other disappointments if I wanted. But as it is right now; I'm cheap when it comes to games and squeezing $50-$60 for a single game out of me isn't going to happen unless it's near perfect (Or the original Looking Glass Studios reforms and pumps out a real Thief game).
 
Yeah 6.5 of 10 is about right. Could have been awesome except ea kills imagination. Corporate meddling is an omnipresent issue these days. Just hire the best people you can and go with that.
 
I can only speak about games I've actually played:

I guess Horizon Dawn Zero really is headed for the full fledged kick ass upstage at this rate and by more of a margin than I would have suspected. Hell, this isn't even close as of right now given all this.

My total takeaway from this is: This game simply needed more time in the oven and it shouldn't be coming out now. It needs another six months at least.


There's no excuse for some of this on a AAA juggernaut title and franchise from "the big boys." I think slagging it with 3s and such is pretty absurd. It's probably floating in the 7s somewhere. If they fix the issues it could break 8 best case scenario.


I have no idea how feasible it is...probably not for a lot of reasons...but ideally and in a perfect world I think they should yank this, issue refunds, and work on it for at least 6 more months. I know that won't happen and likely unrealistic for a slew of reasons.


If I had to sum ALL of this into one word it would be this: LAZY
 
Nvidia's Game Ready Driver dropped this morning: http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/116344/en-us

SLI is now working. I got a massive gain in performance, far beyond just what SLI would have introduced. Before, on Eos, I was struggling to get above 30fps at 1080p and medium settings. Now, I'm still at 1080p, every slider maxed, resolution scale at 1.4, and mostly steady at 60fps with an occasional dip into the low 50's. Both GPU's staying at or near 99% utilization.
 
Viper87227 said:
Nvidia's Game Ready Driver dropped this morning: http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/116344/en-us

SLI is now working. I got a massive gain in performance, far beyond just what SLI would have introduced. Before, on Eos, I was struggling to get above 30fps at 1080p and medium settings. Now, I'm still at 1080p, every slider maxed, resolution scale at 1.4, and mostly steady at 60fps with an occasional dip into the low 50's. Both GPU's staying at or near 99% utilization.
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Fantastic. I'm glad to hear it.
 
I swear people are really stretching with some of the reasonings behind this game being a visual disaster. Everything always has to be a "tool of [insert liberal or conservative group]" instead of EA just phoning a game in like they've been known to do. I'm just hopeful the core game isn't as bad as the animation and glassy eyes.
 
Watched the Cohh stream a little more this morning.

The facial animations and character faces overall are horrific , but the immediate game breaker for me is the running animation.

How can anyone , no matter how big of a fan , overlook the fact that every time you run the animation looks as if you are trying to half waddle , half run , the bathroom before you shit your pants.

Then , you TILT sideways to make a turn.

Seriously , the running animation might even be worse than the facial animations.

If this was a new game , new IP , and did not have the Mass Effect name , it would be getting properly raped in the reviews. 7/10 is generous as hell.
 
Domingo said:
I swear people are really stretching with some of the reasonings behind this game being a visual disaster. Everything always has to be a "tool of [insert liberal or conservative group]" instead of EA just phoning a game in like they've been known to do. I'm just hopeful the core game isn't as bad as the animation and glassy eyes.
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The review embargo lifted today, so this is really the first we're seeing impressions beyond the very limited EA trial. Overall impressions seem positive. Not groundbreaking, it's not the next GOTY, but there seems to be a quality game hiding in here somewhere. The general concurrences seems to be that if you trudge through the slow start, there are a lot of meaningful experienced to be had in the game. Unless your RPS, then everything is terrible.
 
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Seems to be a lot more than RPS saying the story is crap and other issues besides the animations. Venture's summary.

"
Conclusion
Games have to fit into our lives, and that’s not always fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda might’ve worked a decade ago on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it doesn’t work in a world that is delivering games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In this reality, BioWare’s latest role-playing game is old, broken, and often boring.

Worst of all, it’s going to disappoint fans of the Mass Effect series.

Score: 55/100"


Eurobeat

"The combat crackles and the worlds are lush, but mediocre writing and tepid quests add up to what is probably BioWare's worst RPG yet."
 
I played the trial last night for about two hours - its not that bad.. I would say the eyeballs are way more distracting for me than the face animations.. but maybe thats combined with what people are complaining about. Man they'll like look all crazy and sometimes even cross eyed lol. Very distracting

Otherwise the game was fun.. still going to play it when I am done with Nier
 
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