Mass Effect: Andromeda

French streamer is getting a different default face for Female Ryder.

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polonyc2 said:
has the damage been done?...is Andromeda destined to flop or at the very least disappoint now?...the entire internet is filled with meme's and gif's mocking the animations...I'm still going to buy but I'm thinking about waiting till the first patch or 2 to begin playing
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I don't remember a game ever being mocked this relentlessly by the internet. I'm sure I will pick it up on a $10 bargain bin special some day, but right now I have better games to play.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
French streamer is getting a different default face for Female Ryder.

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They could have tightened up a mesh or slider defaults and pushed out a small patch. Wouldn't be unusual, or even difficult. The real issue is the meshes and scripting they already built that make for an emotionless or awkward delivery of the dialogue. They had said they would fix this stuff months ago but to have this pop up on the Day 1 patch list after the review embargo came down isn't what people want from a AAA production.

Blade-Runner said:
I don't remember a game ever being mocked this relentlessly by the internet. I'm sure I will pick it up on a $10 bargain bin special some day, but right now I have better games to play.
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You posted this as I was typing and we may have been thinking the same thing.

The big reason everyone get so bothered by this crap is because of the nature of the medium. When a film or music critic get view/listen to something a week before a release the editing is done, the sound mixing is complete, & the experience is final. There is a professionalism to shipping a product complete and proud of everything with all the ends tied up in a neat bow. The AAA label, pre-order bonuses, and premium price-tag should demonstrate your commitment to quality. When the studios and publishers demonstrate that the quality is lacking the public will rebuke their claims and mock their choices which led to such a decline.

I am saying, the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
 
Blade-Runner said:
I don't remember a game ever being mocked this relentlessly by the internet. I'm sure I will pick it up on a $10 bargain bin special some day, but right now I have better games to play.
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I think what's getting drowned out is how solid the gameplay seems to be...seems like most people are enjoying the game and saying it feels like Mass Effect but everyone is focusing on the animations
 
Blade-Runner said:
Lead facial animator is apparently a cosplayer with very little experience in the field...

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Holy fucking fail batman.....EA dumb enough to leave multimillion dollar productions in the hands of utter amateurs?
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Well that explains it all. This is fucking pathetic Bioware.
 
polonyc2 said:
I think what's getting drowned out is how solid the gameplay seems to be...seems like most people are enjoying the game and saying it feels like Mass Effect but everyone is focusing on the animations
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This is the point I can't stress enough. The story and dialog delivery is important and I get why people are disappointed in the animations and face models. However, consider this: People got past the blockiest, ugliest graphics in RPG's going back to the beginning of the genre and got a pass for bad graphics because of the focus on story. Much of the time, story was delivered by text or terrible voice acting. The voice acting is reasonably good in this game for the most part. Graphically, the game's amazing aside from them choosing to give every woman a round face, messed up hair no makeup / bad makeup. Animations are wonky, no doubt about it but if this is your focus you are going to miss out on everything else the game has to offer. At it's heart, its got great game play and its another Mass Effect game that so far is as good as any other.
 
Dan_D said:
This is the point I can't stress enough. The story and dialog delivery is important and I get why people are disappointed in the animations and face models. However, consider this: People got past the blockiest, ugliest graphics in RPG's going back to the beginning of the genre and got a pass for bad graphics because of the focus on story. Much of the time, story was delivered by text or terrible voice acting. The voice acting is reasonably good in this game for the most part. Graphically, the game's amazing aside from them choosing to give every woman a round face, messed up hair no makeup / bad makeup. Animations are wonky, no doubt about it but if this is your focus you are going to miss out on everything else the game has to offer. At it's heart, its got great game play and its another Mass Effect game that so far is as good as any other.
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Exactly. This is still a great game. No reason not to buy it. So far in my eyes the story is great. Again I can look past the horrible animations and faces.

Just maybe next time Bioware, hire someone with experience, I mean a good looking woman couldn't even make proper women faces look good.....How this even got past QC before the demo is beyond me.

Is like everyone at bioware blind?
 
Brackle said:
Exactly. This is still a great game. No reason not to buy it. So far in my eyes the story is great. Again I can look past the horrible animations and faces.

Just maybe next time Bioware, hire someone with experience, I mean a good looking woman couldn't even make proper women faces look good.....How this even got past QC before the demo is beyond me.

Is like everyone at bioware blind?
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And I'll say it again, in the grand scheme of things this is par for the course with BioWare. The other games have horrendous clipping issues, weapons that your character doesn't have equipped, no female specific animations for Shepard, bizarre run animations with a weird head bob and look for Shepard and a host of other terrible visual inconsistencies. Shepard or other characters could cross their arms and clip through their own armor. Weapons clipped through your chest, armor or other areas. Sometimes Shepard might run in a cutsene with a rifle in the hand as though it were a pistol. Animations were reused between all three games. Several animations were reused between all the characters regardless of gender and even sometimes species. Lets not forget the horrendous ME1 textures that carried over to ME3 for background characters. Never forget that ME3 had lower grade textures than the game that preceded it. Several textures that were upwards of 2048x2048 were reduced to 256x256, 512x512 and even 128x128!

We tend to think of these games in a different and even somewhat nostalgic light but they were guilty of all the same bullshit that Andromeda gets crucified for now. I'll admit that all the chicks have round faces, fucked up makeup / no makeup and hair that looks like rats fucked in it. If that's all that's wrong with it I'll count myself lucky that I'm getting a new Mass Effect experience for the first time in over 5 years.
 
In searching around for other people's opinions of the female character models and animation issues, I came across Manveer Heir, lead developer, plus the whole SJW deal at Bioware. Manveer Heir seems like a real piece of work. I finished playing my 10 hours of ME:A and told my wife that I'd probably reorder on Monday (after canceling yesterday), even though I was unhappy with character models and animation. Then I found out about this guy and more that's been going on with Bioware. After that I can't give Bioware another penny of my hard-earned coin. Google Manveer Heir. Shocking.

It's obvious at this point that the ugly female character models are no accident. The men look a whole lot better, and most aliens look good too (unless they're very humanoid, like asari, who still don't look as bad as human women).
 
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Look at the fantastic CRPG revival we have in the Kickstarter/post-Kickstarter past few years. I'm thinking of Wasteland 2, Sunless Sea, Shadowrun, Blackguards, & Pillars of Eternity. I can't say I'm fans of all of those but they have sequels released or planned, they focus on art direction not HD character models, and they immerse the player in story & dialogue. If you are going to make a AAA title at this time, when you talk about showcasing the engine, when you want to talk about being 4k ready, then you should be releasing a polished product that isn't this ripe for criticism. When the criticism is pointed in a studio's direction no one should be afraid to say what it is for fear of tarnishing a franchise or drawing attention away from the story.

The emperor isn't wearing any clothes. The emperor was trying to show us their sense of fashion, but now they're the one standing in the street naked. I'm not saying the emperor doesn't have strong domestic policies, a long family history, or provided well for me in the past... I'm just saying that he walks funny, has a weird face, and he doesn't look as good as he did a few years ago.
 
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TaintedSquirrel said:
French streamer is getting a different default face for Female Ryder.

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Looks like the difference between 1080p Console and 4k PC, or a picture of a tv screen vs an actual screen capture.


Brackle said:
.....How this even got past QC before the demo is beyond me.
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This is why I'm a firm supporter of public beta testing.


Blade-Runner said:
Lead facial animator is apparently a cosplayer with very little experience in the field...

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Holy fucking fail batman.....EA dumb enough to leave multimillion dollar productions in the hands of utter amateurs?
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I would hardly lay this at the feat of one single Animator, Lead or not. This game should have had performance capture from the start. I find it more ludicrous that it doesn't in this age, then a do that a single animator botched 5 years of development.

What's more Chief Architect Alec Antrim mentions their use of "performance capture" in their 4k HDR trailer (at 1:19), but I'd like to know where in the game it's actually being used.




polonyc2 said:
I think what's getting drowned out is how solid the gameplay seems to be...seems like most people are enjoying the game and saying it feels like Mass Effect but everyone is focusing on the animations
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Valid point and a good reminder the final game and reviews are not out yet.
 
Frraksurred said:
I would hardly lay this at the feat of one single Animator, Lead or not. This game should have had performance capture from the start. I find it more ludicrous that it doesn't in this age, then a do that a single animator botched 5 years of development.
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I am no software or game developer, but from my experience in other professional fields the leader of a project ultimately bears responsibility for the quality of the product outputted by the team. She alone might not be single handedly responsible for all the poor animations, but the fact that the end product is clearly very rough is likely correlated with her lack of experience both in animation and managing the work of subordinates. As for why they did not use performance capture, we will likely never find out.
 
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This is Ass Creed Unity level glitchiness.

And there's this now....

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Wonder if its because PewDiePie is now shitting on it.

 
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Blade-Runner said:
Wonder if its because PewDiePie is now shitting on it
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mu guess is the embargo times have been moved up because the interweb is getting flooded with Andromeda animation meme's and gif's and Bioware/EA realize that the game is really good so they want completed game reviews to come out sooner
 
Frraksurred said:
I thought this video was well done, but you have to watch it to the end:

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Brackle said:
This video is spot on. I feel the exact same way.

PEople will rag on the game, but the game is good. Just the Animations and humans look bad.
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I couldn't agree more. Yes the animations suck but you shouldn't write the game off just yet. This is especially true if you are a fan of the series.
 
I think I can live with some goofy animations. The game will still be fun - just like the other mass effects.
 
Dan_D said:
I couldn't agree more. Yes the animations suck but you shouldn't write the game off just yet. This is especially true if you are a fan of the series.
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Well this is plain simply unacceptable in any AAA title. Not to mention one as anticipated as this one. There is no excuses to be made here. No matter how good the game is otherwise, this shit shouldn't and won't fly.
IF they get a free pass on this, that opens the flood gates. There is no way in hell this should be ignored. And the reviews should reflect that, harshly. If anyone calls this game a 10/10 despite this I'll spit in their face.
 
my crystal ball says the game will be getting mostly 8/10 scores on average...problem is that once the internet latches onto something it's hard for them to let go...
 
Pity the game got spoiled BC they hired a pretty face instead of a qualified professional. Something happened there. The rest of the game is on the level with what I would expect.
 
Horrifically crap tastic animation aside, the game is pretty solid.


Also, is anyone else playing on a Logitech G910? Seems there is a lightning profile at work. When I loaded up the game my keys went black and then the keyboard showed the ME:A "Ai" logo.

Completely worthless but kind of cool.

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Totally makes up for the bad animation.


(No, no it doesn't that was a terrible joke and I am sorry. )
 
Brackle said:
This video is spot on. I feel the exact same way.

PEople will rag on the game, but the game is good. Just the Animations and humans look bad.
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Yes but the thing is...this isn't a "just the animations and humans look bad" kind of thing....it goes far deeper. This is a AAA title with a vast history. Every single cut scene pulls you out of the story when all of the characters look like muppets and the movement is terrible. Even the way the characters run is horrific. It ruins the entire game and is completely unacceptable.
 
Dan_D I have a similar setup to your girlfriend, but I have a 4790k and a 780. Did she have to turn settings down or does it play OK on her setup?
 
Sprayingmango said:
Oh and thank god PewDiePie is calling them out, we need this kind of exposure for Bioware to fire all of these amateurs and fix this. Seriously I am so mad....
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Just because someone seems like an amateur from the outside doesn't mean they're actually bad at their job. Don't pass judgement without clear evidence.
It's not like this is a small glitch that went unnoticed. It stands out like a sore thumb, and anyone who looked at the game must have noticed immediately. This must've came from the top. "It's fine, leave it, we're not pushing back the date again".
This is placeholder level crap. Like they just fed the spoken lines and expressions to the default algorithm in frostbite with absolutely no oversight, or tweaking. Clear evidence of it being a rushjob.
 
spaceman said:
Maybe just a helmet mod? They are always on so we are spared the horror?
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And how will that work with all the countless NPCs who are not wearing space suits/ armor?

Why not just put paper bags on every character then?

In all seriousness the only solution to this is to revamp all major characters. And re-do the face fx parts properly.
 
spaceman said:
Pity the game got spoiled BC they hired a pretty face instead of a qualified professional. Something happened there. The rest of the game is on the level with what I would expect.
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I see this happening all the time, everyday.
 
Figured out today why my performance is so bad... SLI apparently isn't working yet. On my ship I get about 50fps, outdoors more like mid 20's. GPU1 staying above 90% usage, GPU2 hovers around 5%.

Hopefully Nvidia will have a driver out in the next couple of days. I'm surprised they didn't have it in time for the early access period.
 
Aside from the controversy for a moment maybe someone can weigh in on pricing? At the moment, it seems like the Deluxe Edition (and the Super Deluxe of course, but that's basically paying for a lot of multiplayer crap up front) are absolutely exclusive to Origin to the point that any legit 3rd party key sellers only have Standard edition pre-order keys for the PC version. That said, I've found these Standard keys to be considerably cheaper (ie usually around $46 or so) , so I was wondering - especially for those who have played the Preview or perhaps just those who buy a lot of Origin titles - is it likely that Origin will offer a "Deluxe Upgrade" on/before/near launch day? I'm willing to pay a little more for all of the extra stuff in the Deluxe edition, but the kind of discounts that one can pick up from 3rd party vendors like GreenManGaming and Amazon for the Standard are great. I seem to remember that ME2 and ME3 offered "Deluxe Edition upgrades", so if Andromeda does that would be even better. Any idea?

Oh, and regarding 3rd party PC version purchase - are the pre-order items different or incomplete? For instance, I see that Amazon lists the DeepSpaceExplorer suit + multiplayer pack, and some other places offer the Nomad Skin + multiplayer pack etc.... are these just not listing the whole "standard pre-order bonus" or are different places really only getting different parts of them?
 
I just started really playing this morning, and besides the facial animations, which oddly do not seem to affect all the characters (Alec for instance seemed to have been synched, and other than the lifeless eyes looked on par with what would be expected from Bioware), I have not had the walking or "T" glitches.

In the intro for instance I did not get the moon walking/alien AI member running across the hall. She ran with the stiff trot that everyone else runs with.

Also is it just me or do your squadmates seem to run differently/less stiff when on a planet or during combat?
 
I'll get to see how things are next week when it unlocks for me, and though the animations are annoying and somewhat jarring, I can overlook that if the gameplay is good and if the story and writing is excellent.

As long as we don't go down another path like this over the course of the series....
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...or this....
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...then I'm pretty sure I'll get plenty of enjoyment out of the game despite the technical glitches. ;)

The other ME's all had issues and I still played ME1 and ME2 probably 20-30 times each in total. (ME3... twice was enough, once with and once without the happy ending mod).

Looking forward to this unlocking this week. :)
 
Long/short: Iconsistent/Bad animations and character movements but overall good-very good-possibly awesome game.

^^ That's my total takeaway from everything here and all over the Internet.
 
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