Mass Effect Andromeda first impressions?

[CaitSeith]

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Just because they are the authors it doesn't mean their decisions aren't above criticism. The removal of infinite ammo in ME2 was so nonsensical from narrative perspective that the developers put a joke about it in ME3. What it's nickpicking for some people is a deal-breaker to others, and usually neither of them are wrong.

 

[CritialGaming]

I was very much looking forward to ME:A. I actually wanted to review the game for you guys, because I love reviewing stuff for you. But honestly if the animation work is as bad as all these montages make it look, I don't think I could handle playing the game long enough to review it (24hrs min playtime). Certainly not to pay full price for it, I would consider it if I got review code, but I'm not famous or even liked enough for that to be a pipedream.

I want to see the official reviews, and hope there is a quick patch that will fix this stuff. I mean Bioware has never been good at faces, and to be fair Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't have great dialog animations, but ME:A looks fucking horrible.

No matter how good the gameplay is, the story is a huge element in a game like this and if the animations are going to pull me out of a story in a game where the story is extremely important, then that's a deal breaker especially when there are so many games trying to eat up my life right now. Luckily I just got Nier on PC.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I want to see the official reviews, and hope there is a quick patch that will fix this stuff.

I doubt they can patch in an entirely new animation rig for the faces. Some of the glitchy walk animations they can patch up, but I think Sara Ryder's stroke face is here to stay.

 

[CritialGaming]

And the animations are baaaaaaaad, like giving Bethesda a run for their money bad. Half the animations are worse than the ones in ME1! And the bugs, fuck, not since AC Unity did I see such a flaming garbage heap on that front. This is something special, alright.

I think biggest damning thing for me, is that they did better animations in the FIRST game, TEN YEARS AGO! I mean at the very least you would think they would be able to match a standard that they set a fucking decade ago. Even if their new tech isn't working, how can production go on so long with fucked animations and not do something to fix it? I mean for fuck's sake, didn't they push the release date back a few months?

 

[Dornedas]

I am wondering where all this 'good writing' is. From all the hours of previews and streams I saw, dialogue and story are both exceptionally terrible.

Hilarously so, in certain instances!


I guess this game will be a good barometer to tell who is capable of distinguishing good writing from dogshit.

And the animations are baaaaaaaad, like giving Bethesda a run for their money bad. Half the animations are worse than the ones in ME1! And the bugs, fuck, not since AC Unity did I see such a flaming garbage heap on that front. This is something special, alright.

See there you have it: an in-universe explanation as too why the animations are so bad.
They are just tired. I don't wanna know what your walk-cycle looks like after you've been awake for 60 hours.
This is all an extremely intelligent satire about modern work-attitudes.
But I guess a wage-slave like you isn't sophisticated enough to understand it.
/s

 

[Diablo2000]

And the animations are baaaaaaaad, like giving Bethesda a run for their money bad. Half the animations are worse than the ones in ME1! And the bugs, fuck, not since AC Unity did I see such a flaming garbage heap on that front. This is something special, alright.

That's not fair. Bethesda animations haven't been this bad since Oblivion... In 2006. Even Mass Effect 1 had better facial animations, that's pretty much unexcusable to be worse than it's first game and to be on par on game from 2006 who's notorious for it's awful animations and bugs.

 

[Cowabungaa]

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Holy shit I laughed so hard I actually got tired. What the hell is with those walks?! How did this get through quality control?! What is this??

I think I need this game now, but for purely comedic reasons. Oh shit that's special alright.

 

[Imre Csete]

The only thing that matters is the IGN 10/10 GOTY review folks.

 

[Gatlank]

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Holy shit I laughed so hard I actually got tired. What the hell is with those walks?! How did this get through quality control?! What is this??

I think I need this game now, but for purely comedic reasons. Oh shit that's special alright.

You should see it with laugh tracks.

 

[meiam]

You should see it with laugh tracks.

Okay that's golden, great use of the really awkward silence, in the middle of a conversation!

What gets me is that this is basic femstryder face, not some random face player made purposefully to screw up the engine. This is the default! The default option is shit!

ps, love that everyone just accepted that mass effect game are played with fem character, I don't even know what malestryder look like.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You should see it with laugh tracks.

God, that poor woman's face. I guess that's what 600+ years of cryo will do to you.

 

[josemlopes]

(weird, no one made gifs of Horizon's awful stiff animations)

Yes they did, the part with the black guy dying in a bed, the part with the terrible voice acting of some dude screaming in a cliff, the final boss death scene, these were all terrible. And Andromeda looks terrible too. ME1 did look better

 

[CritialGaming]

You should see it with laugh tracks.

God, that poor woman's face. I guess that's what 600+ years of cryo will do to you.

I Lol'd.

The voice acting isn't as bad as I thought. Except for that robot chick. "Alex.....is dead." flaty delivered. My god. It must be more than her face that's tired.

 

[sanquin]

Been playing original mass effect games recently again and the facial animations aren't necessarily better in those most of the time. They're more expressionless if anything. But that's where the problem lies, imo. ME 1/2/3 had less expressive faces overall, but that kept it a bit more on the good side of the uncanny valley. In MEA they for some reason almost skipped eye/brow animation all together (wide-eyed, blank upper faces) and purely focused on the mouth animations being more expressive. Which wholly put them into the bad side of the uncanny valley.

 

[JamesStone]

I am wondering where all this 'good writing' is. From all the hours of previews and streams I saw, dialogue and story are both exceptionally terrible.

Hilarously so, in certain instances!


I guess this game will be a good barometer to tell who is capable of distinguishing good writing from dogshit.

And the animations are baaaaaaaad, like giving Bethesda a run for their money bad. Half the animations are worse than the ones in ME1! And the bugs, fuck, not since AC Unity did I see such a flaming garbage heap on that front. This is something special, alright.

Is that real? That is real, isn't it?

Oh god my smugness is reaching levels so high my brain is confusing it with joy. Ever since the ME3 ending and the pisspoor way they handled that I've been hoping for a Bioware game to crash and burn and I think this'll be it. I'm not exactly proud of the schadenfreude I'm deriving from this, but holy hell it is delicious!

 

[Casual Shinji]

(weird, no one made gifs of Horizon's awful stiff animations)

Yes they did, the part with the black guy dying in a bed, the part with the terrible voice acting of some dude screaming in a cliff, the final boss death scene, these were all terrible. And Andromeda looks terrible too. ME1 did look better

And then remember that this was Guerilla Games' first attempt at this type of storytelling, while it's Bioware's seventh atleast.

 

[Arina Love]

Mediocre UI for PC

Do you mean that the icons and text don't scale with the screen resolution (again)?

Scaling is alright as far as i'm aware, it's the layout. It's console like not really as space efficient as you can be. But it's minor gripe i stopped noticing it by the time i was done with allocated 10 hours.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I was hoping for less of a SAVIOR role and more of a smaller scale story but hey, its Bioware... I don't know if they know how to do that.

Doesn't DAII feature a smaller scale story? Sure, it sets up something fairly boringly 'big' that DA:I [kinda] dealt with, but 'The Tragedy of Hawke' wasn't exactly a saviour narrative, more of a 'hold back the tide whilst everything goes to hell' narrative.

So I do believe there are different standards being upheld here. Be aware of subconscious bias, humans.

Biases against a BioWare game? Surely not...

I've been avoiding videos and trailers for ME:A, so I'll wait for release and read some summaries. I'll get it regardless, but will hold off if it's particularly buggy. So far I've heard positive and negative feedback, so it's par for the course on all games, frankly.

Ever since the ME3 ending and the pisspoor way they handled that I've been hoping for a Bioware game to crash and burn and I think this'll be it. I'm not exactly proud of the schadenfreude I'm deriving from this, but holy hell it is delicious!

I'm fairly certain you'll be disappointed (so yay for my schadenfreude, perhaps?), but you want a game to crash and burn? So you effectively want people to lose their jobs?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

This one got a good belly laugh out of me.

Oh man, the off-key Battlestar Galatica music was too much!

 

[Casual Shinji]

This one got a good belly laugh out of me.

Oh man, the off-key Battlestar Galatica music was too much!

Found another good one.


Man, I really love the internet sometimes.