Mass Effect Andromeda: Shitstorm Edition - RIP Biowear

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Lackadaisy said:
This just made me appreciate how well ME1 held up. Like, compared to this, the faces and body movement still look pretty good
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I am replaying through ME 1 - 3 right now and...holy shit, the expressions are so much fucking better. This despite the clear limitations with repeated animations (the turning and walking away one being identical, with the fist hand-pound). But there's nothing as fucking terrible as Andromeda.

I just can't even fathom a fuck-up this big. The problem isn't that people are going to recognize some shitty first time developers did this, this is going to carry onto Bioware brand itself. Even if it sells well (which I doubt, it going 27% off barely a week off release).
 
testaclesemaximus said:
Technically the term applies to biotic fields, not just the effects of the Mass Relays, so there is still mass effect in Mass Effect.
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Human weapons also use the mass effect to accelerate their projectiles, but apparently they have ammo constraints now, despite this being a problem that was solved in-universe 600 years ago?
 
There was a shitty explanation in ME 2 that after fights with the Geth, there were needs to have external heat sinks in the form of 'clips' to ensure continued fire without waiting for weaps to cool down.

Though, at least they tried an explanation to keep continuity instead of pretending it didn't exist. But that's why there were 'clips'
 
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Alto said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU
CrowbCat always does some great shit. He somehow managed to compile some of the worst bugs found in the game.
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Holy balls, that's some hilarious bugs.

It looks like they only programmed the mouth and eyes to move in a lot of those scenes. The rest of the face stays static and it's weird as fuck.
 

This video is probably one of the best explanations on why ME:A's facial animations looks atrocious.

TL;DW:
- The iris of the eye naturally appears in the shape of a semi-circle with the eyelid covering the top half. It was in Mass Effect 1~3, but in this one it isn't, so the eyes appear unusually wide.
- The bright lighting on the eyes makes the pupil stick out in an unusual fashion, which makes it looks like one of those thousand-yard stares into the distance.
- Not only this, but the eyes keep twitching in weird movements.
- Everything other than the mouth doesn't move in conversations.
- A lot of characters always have this creepy, mysterious smile that's unnecessary.
- The acting in some scenes are hilariously exaggerated. E.g. Sara has this grimace that looks like she's giving birth to a child when she wakes up.
 
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I think the colouring of the iris seems uncanny valley too. Other BW games managed to make irisis not just this blank baby blue colour. Even SWTOR, the most cartoonish, added some depth to the eyes.

But when the whites of the eyes show out, yeah it gives the googly eyes wibe.
They don't slowly, subtly move their eyes, it is all around crazed looking all around them.

The static nature of the eyes is that they the face does not move at all apart from the eyes and mouth.
No eyebrow movement at all, the rest of the face is totally impassive and usually looks forward as if staring into the headlamps of a car, unlike how Ashley or Lana acts. They look around, raise eyebrows, Ashley even shifts subtly the tilt of her head to add an illusion of life to the character. This one missed this out totally.

I'm not sure if this is a photoshoop or something like that, but damn looks better:
Ryder_Feat-e1490036463910.png

Now we can see all the damning details.
-Autist permagrin.
-Huge staring eyes.
-The eye is almost solid unnatural baby blue.

Here is a list of other BW eyes and faces, just for comparison:
Clearly the best and most realistic is the previous ME games.
me21.jpg

wallpaper-711080.jpg

1838413-hawke.jpg

2605-1-1302894368.jpg

latest

2spsasM.png

SWTOR is clearly the cartooniest with bigger eyees, but still manages to do better. And this is just literally a prettier World of Warcraft with laser swords. Now it has some shitty iris colours like the bright blue or echani white that seem like they belong in Andromeda. Though at least the Sith eye colours are supposed to be unnatural and creepy.

Even Space marine does better:
latest

titus.jpg

Now the new Starwars cartoon is so cartoony that it is free from the uncanny valley, with hair being bits of Crayola Fucking Model Magic pushed to one's face, but even that comes across as less disturbing! And they know which end of the gun you point at the enemy.
20140416-star-wars-rebels-hera-bg-2400x1200-717176862200.jpg

star-wars-rebels-out-of-darkness-sabine-wren.png

TL,DR, do not make cartoon eyes for a supposedly realistic game, and don't forget to animate the rest of the damn faces!

Here is again the weakest of previous BW games in term of graphics, TOR, showing how eyebrows and head movement help.

Here is a comparison with ME A and its predecessors.
 
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I'd like to point out that Mass Effect 1-3 was made by the original studio while Andromeda was not. Bioware also has poor communication with other companies, such as when Bioware Austin was created to continue working on Star Wars The Old Republic, only for the Austin location to talk more about the game instead of working on it forcing EA to send the game back to Bioware to work on the game. At this time they were working on Dragon Age Inquisition too. They would have worked on Andromeda, but they're now working on a new IP and a new Dragon Age so they don't have the man power.
 
I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I've been playing it for a few days, and it's actually not that bad. Yeah, the facial animations are painful - that's a given. The npc instantiation is lazy: dropping them from thirty feet up is the kind of thing you do in alpha builds to circumvent hitbox issues. I've not had any seriously janky walk animations manifest yet, although hitbox detection has gotten my character stuck a few times. There have been a few instances of heavily refined cringe in the scripting, but it's been otherwise OK.

"My face is tired" made just as little sense in context as it does out of it, though.
 
DangerousGas said:
I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I've been playing it for a few days, and it's actually not that bad. Yeah, the facial animations are painful - that's a given. The npc instantiation is lazy: dropping them from thirty feet up is the kind of thing you do in alpha builds to circumvent hitbox issues. I've not had any seriously janky walk animations manifest yet, although hitbox detection has gotten my character stuck a few times. There have been a few instances of heavily refined cringe in the scripting, but it's been otherwise OK.

"My face is tired" made just as little sense in context as it does out of it, though.
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Can't that be a french canadian or french expression that they somehow translated into English without thought?
 
Male Idiot said:
Can't that be a french canadian or french expression that they somehow translated into English without thought?
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It could be, but it's a very specific idiom, if that's the case. Localisation writers typically avoid stuff like that, although I suppose an inexperienced team wouldn't necessarily catch it.
 
Alto said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU
CrowbCat always does some great shit. He somehow managed to compile some of the worst bugs found in the game.
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CrowbCat really does make good content on these catastrophes. Probably the best compilation around aside from the "AAA Gaming Experience" vid with the amazing editing. Can't decide which I love more.
 
DangerousGas said:
I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I've been playing it for a few days, and it's actually not that bad.
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I don't know if saying "I basically paid for an alpha build of the game, but its not that bad." is exactly an endorsement. Maybe it will become a new trend if enough people shrug their shoulders enough. 6 months of patches and they'll have it up to beta standards.

Who knows? Maybe soon instead of season passes, you can by "Game Passes" so you can pre-buy the game when the development is first announced and you see the first CG trailer.
 
Lazuli said:
I don't know if saying "I basically paid for an alpha build of the game, but its not that bad." is exactly an endorsement. Maybe it will become a new trend if enough people shrug their shoulders enough. 6 months of patches and they'll have it up to beta standards.
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I wouldn't go so far as to condemn the game that hard. It's not the hilarious bugfest that the bandwagon would have you believe, although it is definitely lacking in polish. Most of the issues that I've described have also been present in other AAA games in recent years, too: skyrim was festooned with npcs falling from the sky, as well as some truly hideous voice acting and npc animation. Fallout 4 has some spectacularly retarded npc ai implementations, as well as a fucking awful storyline. Andromeda is definitely not in the same hallowed ranks as the trilogy, but it's not worthy of condemning to the same degree as, say, no man's sky was at release.
 
DangerousGas said:
I wouldn't go so far as to condemn the game that hard. It's not the hilarious bugfest that the bandwagon would have you believe, although it is definitely lacking in polish. Most of the issues that I've described have also been present in other AAA games in recent years, too: skyrim was festooned with npcs falling from the sky, as well as some truly hideous voice acting and npc animation. Fallout 4 has some spectacularly exceptional npc ai implementations, as well as a fucking awful storyline. Andromeda is definitely not in the same hallowed ranks as the trilogy, but it's not worthy of condemning to the same degree as, say, no man's sky was at release.
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The problem there is No Mans Sky was from a basically unknown niche developer, with a moderate budget, with a level of hype that made you roll your eyes and think about Star Citizen, the fact people still believe the hype after being burned so many times about space games makes me wonder about peoples sanity. Andromeda is a $40 million dollar game, 5 years in development, from what is supposed to be a Major Publisher and AAA developer, with an established franchise. I'd give them a pass if they were another unknown studio releasing on steam for the first time. They could've reused ME3 engine and assets and would have gotten better results faster.
 
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