BioWare Uses Stock Photo for Tali in Mass Effect 3

[isometry]

It's upsetting because it's a reminder that the game is not a labor of love, it's made to fulfill a contractual obligation, not to make art.

"But games have to make money so people can get paid!" Sure, and Michaelangelo had to eat too, but he still made great art.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The worst problem about it is, why would Tali EVER risk taking off her mask IN AN ATMOSPHERE? She could get seriously sick from the inside of a very clean, top of the line space ship, why would she expose herself to all the bateria that floats in the air of any given planet?

 

[The Random One]

Eh. Shepard is based off of Mark Vanderloo, Miranda is Yvonne Strahovsky, Liara is Jillian Murray, now Tali is....whoever the hell that is. No skin off my ass.

Liz Sroka.

[picsnip]

This is what I thought Tali should look like... http://fav.me/d2zcbd0 I guess it's not that bad, and in line with 'using real people to come up with character's faces'... Wonder who was the inspiration of Kasumi and Zaeed.

There is a difference between 'we used this real person as a basis for creating this virtual character' and 'we used a photo we picked up from the internet for something that was quite important'. I guess they had money to throw at gaming site hosts for them to show up in the game but not to ask a model and a photographer to do actual work for them.

I'm not angry, Bioware, just disappointed.

I wanted to add that even though I think it's bad it's not as big of a deal as the fanboys will make of it, but I think nothing could be as big of a deal as the fanboys make of it and not destroy all of mankind.

 

[JCBFGD]

Lazy? Yes. A big deal? No. Shut up, players. Good God, is that a pathetic thing to whine about.

 

[sargeant15]

Lazy? Yes. A big deal? No. Shut up, players. Good God, is that a pathetic thing to whine about.

How is this a pathetic thing to whine about? It's a character that a lot of people care about. When the reveal of Tali is this lazily handled, of course people are going to complain.

 

[The Random One]

anc[is]

I really, honestly cannot understand what there is to get mad about here? Not trying to be an ass, I just really don't get the reaction. Could someone who is insulted by this please explain it to me?

You have a table reserved at your favorite restaurant, it makes all sorts of delicious meals that you love. You've been waiting all week to go because the workweek was awful and your coworkers can't stop bitching about EA. You finally arrive, sit down and order something delicious. Your cook then completely forgets about your order, and 45 minutes later throws a TV dinner in the microwave, and that is what is served to you. That's why people are upset.

Bold part made me laugh.

Let's imagine that stock photo didn't exist though, but Tali's in-game photo was still the same. Nothing has changed. The experience of playing the game is in no way different, but presumably fans wouldn't get mad.

You're talking about a fan base that gets angry at one day DLC. Because they have to pay to have the 'full' version of a game. One article (article! not a post, not a comment, an actual page on the internet, linked to a unique URL and everything) said that a version of ME3 without the DLC was 'obsolete'. Someone even mentioned that EA should have waited a month before releasing the DLC, as if themselves waiting a fucking month before buying the DLC was completely out of the question.

Also, I think Francis' metaphor would be more fit like this: The food arrives. It is an excellent dish, but the corners of the bread are burnt and bitter. This makes the bread taste noticeably worse. The rest of the meal is OK, but the chef was supposed to be a top chef and you paid a lot of money for this meal. You storm out of the restaurant in anger. Some people complain that the rest of the meal was probably great but you point out that burning bread is an error that no self-respecting chef should ever make and they begrudgingly agree. The restaurant refuses to return your money because they claim the food is a service and not a product and therefore is not refundable. Checking the bill, you find out they charged for the breadsticks.

The next year, I go to a different restaurant with a far worse chef and ask for the same dish. It inexplicably tastes exactly the same as the dish Francis ordered. I wonder way Francis paid so much more if he could just wait a while. I already know that the bread is burnt, but I have to eat it anyway because if I don't the dessert will taste worse. Later that year I manage to exchange that meal that I've already eaten for a different meal. The restaurant hates that I did that and changes that guy for the breadsticks again, even though I didn't eat all of mine.

Does using a stock image diminish your experience of the game? No.

You couldn't be more ignorant if you tried. The fact that you said this makes me question whether or not you're an actual fan of the Mass Effect series at all or you're just a paid shill all dolled up on corporate endorsements from big daddy EA. The fact that a company actually spent money sending copies of their game into ****ing space only to cheap out on the graphics and art depart is spectacularly lazy design, intensified even moreso by the fact that this is supposedly a modern AAA developer.

Greg meant to say that it does not diminish one's experience of the game. One's experience of the game is based only on how the game performs by itself, regardless of outside events. You could argue that if Bioware is going the cheap route on this it might mean they didn't put as much effort as would be advisable on the rest of the game and thus this is an indicator that its quality might be lower than the company would be able to perform, and I would agree; but instead you chose to attack Greg directly and ignore his word choice, as is common for an Activision paid drone. That's right, drone, I have discovered your presence on a forum, thus now you must kill yourself to preserve your family's honour and give me all of the dirty money Activision has given you, as is drone custom. I'll PM you my Paypal name shortly.

 

[icnfde]

Lazy? Yes. A big deal? No. Shut up, players. Good God, is that a pathetic thing to whine about.

Yeah, god forbid people are anticipating the unveiling of an important plot character in the final installment of an RPG series. What a bunch of entitled basement dwellers!

http://kotaku.com/5817782/mass-effect-3s-makers-arent-ready-for-talis-closeup

Hey look, Kotaku did an article on it, I guess everyone should care now?

In retrospect, those quotes from Casey Hudson are hilarious. What kind of debate where they having when they decided to just can it and rip a picture off of Google images?

 

[Orange Lazarus]

I've only played ME1, and really don't care what Tali looks like or anything, but If anyone is lazy it's Greg Tito for not taking the 20 seconds in MSpaint to edit out the major plot spoiler above the photo.

 

[icnfde]

From a GameFAQs post, just had to repost it here because I thought this was hilarious:

 

[Gather]

Who would keep a family photo with such a massive amount of lens flare anyway?

...Or was it quarian tradition to take up half of your family members face with lens flare while they are posing for a close-up shot like that?

 

[icnfde]

Statements like the above make it hard to understand exactly why people are upset. According to some, BioWare is lazy for using an image service instead of crafting the image from scratch, while others seem to use this as evidence for something else they didn't care for, like the writing. Could have BioWare have used a custom image? Yes. Does using a stock image diminish your experience of the game? No.

Wait, isn't this the same guy that praised Dragon Age II for it's "innovate gameplay and masterful storytelling"? Not a direct quote obviously, but the review was practically gushing. And we're supposed to trust this guy's opinion because...?

Does using a stock image diminish your experience of the game? No.

You couldn't be more ignorant if you tried. The fact that you said this makes me question whether or not you're an actual fan of the Mass Effect series at all or you're just a paid shill all dolled up on corporate endorsements from big daddy EA. The fact that a company actually spent money sending copies of their game into ****ing space only to cheap out on the graphics and art depart is spectacularly lazy design, intensified even moreso by the fact that this is supposedly a modern AAA developer.

If I had a quid for every time somebody hinted that part of the escapist crew are being payed for their reviews, I'd be a very rich man.

Say what you want about his argument, but please, stay fucking classy.

You obviously haven't seen his DA:II review then.

I never said paid reviews either, it's a known fact that a lot of these publications get deals on the side for giving positive endorsements, and spinning negativity around onto the consumers whenever something like this occurs. It's happened somewhat recently too when Activision threatened to pull advertising from a review site that criticized MW:3 only to have their PR agency pull an about-face and claim it was all a misunderstanding after a public backlash.

I did, and I also don't think DA2 was as bad as everyone made out.

Greg loved the game, it was in his top 5 of the year, reviews aren't objective, obviously he didn't think the faults of the game had a huge impact on his opinion.

Now, either provide evidence that isn't speculative, or stop hinting at what I know you're hinting.

Here you go mate:

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=6228583&publicUserId=5379799

Apologies for the spam, this will be my last post for now.

 

[luckshot]

anc[is]

I really, honestly cannot understand what there is to get mad about here? Not trying to be an ass, I just really don't get the reaction. Could someone who is insulted by this please explain it to me?

You have a table reserved at your favorite restaurant, it makes all sorts of delicious meals that you love. You've been waiting all week to go because the workweek was awful and your coworkers can't stop bitching about EA. You finally arrive, sit down and order something delicious. Your cook then completely forgets about your order, and 45 minutes later throws a TV dinner in the microwave, and that is what is served to you. That's why people are upset.

to put what he said more bluntly they took a stock photo of an unrelated person (to game in general) and did a quick edit to it and used it as THE image for a major character, whose face has never been seen before

then there are the plot holes created by the picture, in game quarians have a bad immune system...so being outside of their suits out of a safe/clean area would probably be deadly

and then the question of if they were just going to use a human face and some edits why not use the voice of the character, that way even if people didnt like it they would still be hard pressed to say that it was not tali

basically they spent all of 30 min to give a major character a face

and ive been hearing too many mixed things on the game to risk my mental image of the universe to play it

 

[Piecewise]

This is the reason why I'm not getting this game. Not this specific thing, but the levels of idiocy it forecasts for the rest of the game. I mean, lets list out the levels of fucking stupid this is.

1. Using a photo of a real person in a game where the character models are practically cartoonish at this point does nothing more then draw attention to both the fact that the models are pretty shit, and that the photo is horribly out of place.

2.Using a stock photo rather then taking an original one/using your fucking game engine to render one. The levels of lazy, uninterested, "Who gives a shit, just throw something in" thinking required to believe that this is a good idea are unfathomable. And if they cared this little about a reveal thats been built up over all three of these games then how much must they care about anything else?

3. They actually asked fans if they should show Tali's face, used polls like with the new femshep. So, if you had the option of not showing it and were obviously too lazy/inept/apathetic to spend more then 30 seconds on it, WHY THE FUCK EVEN DO IT?!

4. Beyond all that, the photo shopping job on this thing is terrible. What did they do to turn this obviously human image into the image of an alien? Added a few black lines, smudged the earlobe till it attached to the neck and erased 2 fingers. THATS FUCKING IT. they didn't even bother to erase the fingers well or adjust the hand to make it look more natural; nope, just erase those fingers and throw some "High tech" looking black lines on her face for no reason.

Really, this one image, this one thing, illustrates for me all the lack of effort and stupid ideas that permeate this game. Because, lets be honest here, Mass effect was always a pretty generic cover based shooter with rpg elements, but with a good enough story to keep you going (even if it was just the same old sci-fi pick and mix of tropes thrown in a sack and regurgitated randomly.). But now, if the gameplay and demos are anything to go by, it's a subpar shooter with crap story and terrible ideas throughout.

So fuck it. Fuck it right in the ear. And while we're on the subject, fuck Dragon age 2, fuck Star wars the old republic, and fuck whatever EA zombie wearing bioware's skin put this out.

 

[Stabby Joe]

Regardless of people's views on the characters of Tali, it just seems lazy on their part and given it also describes a large part of their created universe, IE the appearance of an entire race I can see why this would annoy people. The same could be said if they exposed the Volus using years old fan art...

 

[Deathninja19]

I really, honestly cannot understand what there is to get mad about here? Not trying to be an ass, I just really don't get the reaction. Could someone who is insulted by this please explain it to me?

Just look at and compare the hand of the model, the laziness of just cutting off two fingers and not even bothering to modify the hand further just shows how much of an afterthought the reveal was. Now I don't care much I'm only going to buy Mass Effect when it's on sale but surely you can understand why people are upset that something that has been teased since the first game and has been one of the most discussed pieces of lore being treated with so little effort.

I know fans can exaggerate but this is a case of a company to treating it's loyal fanbase with, I'll say it, contempt and sadly Bioware are really going out of their way to make me actively dislike them.

 

[Deathninja19]

You know, at first, I was just a little bit upset at hearing that they used a stock image for the base of Tali's face, pardon the rhyme, but now, I just don't care, and for several reasons.

Firstly, it doesn't change Tali as a character. It does not affect her personality, the character growth shes gone through, and the only thing it does change is the image for whats under the mask.

Secondly, despite the method in which they came up with the final image of Tali's face, really, it doesn't look that bad. Shes kind of cute. And if all Quarian's look like that, there's potential for some really sexy Quarian babes underneath those suits, and for Kal'Reegar to pretty much just be an alternate, alien version of Jayne. Which, really, would make sense if you think about it.

And lastly, it doesn't make the game less fun, or draw me in any less. I'm still having a blast fucking up Cerberus, I'm still wanting to know how its all going to end, and I still had my Man-Shep make sweet love to her again, since hey, Tali is sweet. The shotgun helps too.

For all of those upset because of how they made that picture, yes, it does seem a little cheap, but really, the end result isn't bad. For those upset because she doesn't look like Dr. Zoidberg, well, I'm not really sorry you didn't get to have a laugh at the expense of those who decided to romance her, at least not because of that. Besides, you know that a fair amount of us would probably have romanced her again, anyway, even if she did look like Zoidberg. Or a Zerg, for that matter. I know I would've.

For me though it's not about what Tali looks like, I don't care about her compared to Garrus and Wrex, it's about how lazy Bioware was to basicly barely modify a picture.

 

[Lunar Templar]

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=Tali#/d3hetly

just my opinion, but i like that one of the 3

OT: :/ really :/ that's kinda lazy of them in a big way

 

[luckshot]

For me though it's not about what Tali looks like, I don't care about her compared to Garrus and Wrex, it's about how lazy Bioware was to basicly barely modify a picture.

it however is a good reveal of how they created a good character to begin with...by accident

and for me it would break immersion when i see that grainy, poorly photoshoped image trying to pass itself off as artwork for the character