Mass Effect Andromeda first impressions?

Trunkage

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Currently playing Witcher 3, and I have to say there is no end of wonky animation, dodgy facial animation and even main story cutscenes that fail to load something as simple as a sword in Ciri's hand when she draws it out...This is after the game's fully patched, completed and won awards and critical acclaim. So I do believe there are different standards being upheld here. Be aware of subconscious bias, humans.
I literally had way more bugs in Witcher 3 than Fallout 4. F4 crashed once after almost 100 hrs. Witcher 3 crashed about 20 times. I had so many issue like what you described and others like having to reload because quests didn't flag. I played F4 on launch and Witcher 3 a few months after launch so it already had some patches.

Like the Zelda: BOTW review score shenanigans with Sterling, if a group decides a game is good, there can be nothing wrong with it. The group cant let others have their own opinion on what a game is like. I'd still class W3 as the better game, but that doesn't mean there wasn't problems with it.

I did get a case of Sky Bear in F4 so they had funnier bugs...
 

Dornedas

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undeadsuitor said:
Kibeth41 said:
2/3rds of this thread is essentially people stating that reviews exist, rather than giving first impression views.

It'd be constructive to see actual comments of opinions, rather than "I have to tell the world that reviewers are a thing"
The salt must flow dude

The salt must flow

The mass effect reddit has a much better balance of opinions and criticisms that go into more detail than the usual escapist internet tough guy cynic circle jerk.
Really?
The reddit designated to the games, the place with most likely the highest density of fanboys now that the Bioware forums have shut-down, has a higher percentage of defence for this game.

That is your argument?
 

Redryhno

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Darth Rosenberg said:
I'm just going to stop you here, because it's not an art first and foremost, so quit acting like it. And I have no respect for anyone that doesn't acknowledge a simple fact. It's an entertainment medium and while it can be "art" it is primarily a business. Especially at this level, we're not dealing with indies here, this is a massive franchise from a massive company underneath a massive publisher. And the way you decide this is by pointing out the technical errors and criticizing the glaring flaws. You know, sorta the way you get better things from shit in real life?

You don't go into a Spielberg movie and ignore the boom that's on screen for half of it because it's "art". You don't read SoIaF and decide that it's an artistic choice to drop a spaceship in the middle of King's Landing and you should probably just shut up about it because who are you to criticize "art"? You don't go into a photography exhibit and say "oh, look, Picasso, nothing wrong with the theme going on in here at all".

You wanna play the empathy card, fine, but I have no interest in people that aren't competent in their jobs continuing to work if they don't expect criticism or attempt to get better at it. Whatever that makes me in your eyes, so be it.

oRevanchisto said:
I'm "nitpicking" because I expect a level of consistency in a universe and I should just ignore all the rules and world-building of the previous three games?

SAM was built for the Andromeda project, meaning that as many ships and people were put on board, implanted, and shipped off, they somehow had Council permission to create an AI, I don't give a fuck how many handwaves they throw out to justify it, it's going against the established fluff.

Sure, it might be a part of the story later on, but it's still a glaring oversight as far as I'm concerned at the moment. EDI was explained within five minutes of being introduced and you even had a choice to say you didn't like an AI on board and if I remember right, you even had more choices in ME3. In Andromeda, he seems to be about as normal as the Halo AI's to the people on board, he exists and they have no problems with him. Which would be fine in many other sci-fi settings, but again, it's Mass Effect.

And maybe I am ruining the fun for myself, but I enjoy background lore and universes that can keep some semblance of consistency with said lore are where I get alot of my fun. I can even overlook small things here and there, characters that don't quite fit for a joke, or an event or place that shouldn't be possible in the setting and makes no sense, but SAM is one of those "too big to handwave" kind of problems. His explanation better be a good one if they even decide to do it. Nothing Andromeda has done has even positively "huh'd" me. Combat is standard, story is sub-par, and I don't consider myself a graphics whore in any way, but there's too many problems and inconsistencies in the game for me to say "this is good".

Also, quit acting like GOTY means anything. Oblivion and Skyrim won GOTY, alot of the sub-par CoD's have won GOTY, Fallout4 won GOTY, fucking Overwatch won GOTY for crissakes. These are all decent games, but acting like they're the best of the best for that year is nearly an institutionalizing loss of mental cognizance.
 

oRevanchisto

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Redryhno said:
[

I'm "nitpicking" because I expect a level of consistency in a universe and I should just ignore all the rules and world-building of the previous three games?

SAM was built for the Andromeda project, meaning that as many ships and people were put on board, implanted, and shipped off, they somehow had Council permission to create an AI, I don't give a fuck how many handwaves they throw out to justify it, it's going against the established fluff.

*snip*

Also, quit acting like GOTY means anything. Oblivion and Skyrim won GOTY, alot of the sub-par CoD's have won GOTY, Fallout4 won GOTY, fucking Overwatch won GOTY for crissakes. These are all decent games, but acting like they're the best of the best for that year is nearly an institutionalizing loss of mental cognizance.
First, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the first two Modern Warfares were all amazing games deserving of awards and are you REALLY saying that Overwatch didn't deserve GOTY? It's literally one of the best online multiplayer experiences released in years. But back to Andromeda and SAM, I've yet to encounter anything about SAM that is lore-breaking or inconsistent. Also, EDI wasn't explained within the first five minutes of Mass Effect 2 beyond, "Cerberus built me in secret." It takes a lot longer to get a full explanation of her background and abilities. SAM is similarly given enough explanation at the outset to justify his existence, if you poked around you even get to see a flashback of Dad Ryder trying to get the Alliance to come around to his ideas before they shut him down over fear of the Council finding out about his research.

SAM is clearly a BIG deal and the story makes that apparent from the start, they even straight up tell you that Dad Ryder kept the full extent of SAM's abilities a secret to even the Andromeda Initiative over fear over what he had actually helped create. An AI with full symbiosis with an organic host. Only time will tell how this will play our in the rest of the narrative but I'm going to doubt that even in Andromeda everyone will be fully on board with the extent of SAM's influence over Ryder as the story progresses.
 

Dornedas

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Redryhno said:
PFFT You are just a hater.
DA:I has won ALL the important awards:
The /v/ga Most Hated Award for most hated game of the year
The /v/ga "Not Important" Award for worst character
and
The /v/ga Citizen Kane of Gaming Award for worst writing/story

And we all know what awards are worth.
 

Casual Shinji

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stroopwafel said:
Casual Shinji said:
At the very least a couple of animators, writers, voice acting directors, and quality control guys need to have a good talking to.
Maybe Frostbite engine is atleast partially to blame? Obviously it's able to render impressive environments and pretty lighting but when it comes to facial animations it appears no better than gamebryo. I guess with the Battlefield games no one ever really noticed since these games are all about the environments and the action and the incidence there is of character interaction they transition into cutscenes. Ofcourse that doesn't excuse the shitty dialogue and characters hit by the ugly stick in Andromeda. I also wouldn't put it beyond EA to heavily interfere with the creative process and that they put their ear to the internet to determine what ehmm..ehh particularly 'inclusive' vocal minority prefers in regard to character designs.
Yeah, but DA: Inquisition wasn't this bad, and that ran on Frostbite. Sure, the faces in that game weren't great, but they were atleast stable and emotive. They seem to have applied some new kind of facial capture technology with Andromeda and it's resulted in these weird pliant play-doh faces.
Darth Rosenberg said:
This is a creative medium, so most assessments of jobs done "well" or not are purely subjective.
Sorry, but no. You can also say a boom dropping into frame is not a screw up, but a creative decision. These faces look terrible, the eyes look hollow, and the animation on them is crap. This is worse than the first Mass Effect.

At the very least a couple of animators, writers, voice acting directors, and quality control guys need to have a good talking to.
Which is a very different thing to hoping a game or/and company crashes and people start to fear over their livelihood.
I think it's more the overall principal of not wanting a billion dollar corporation getting away with selling us a broken product. In this type of situation someone is going to get burned. But should it be the one who made the product (and not very well by the looks of it), or the one who buys it under the assumption that it's not broken?
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Adam Jensen said:
And this is just hilarious


Games is emotions and emotions therefore are games.
Mass Effect Andromeda is the most games of all games because it has the most emotions.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Currently playing Witcher 3, and I have to say there is no end of wonky animation, dodgy facial animation and even main story cutscenes that fail to load something as simple as a sword in Ciri's hand when she draws it out...This is after the game's fully patched, completed and won awards and critical acclaim. So I do believe there are different standards being upheld here. Be aware of subconscious bias, humans.
You might want to verify the game file integrity. I must have played through The Witcher 3 five times by now and I've never encountered those problems. I know that others have had weird issues caused by corrupted game files though.
 

Amaror

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Didn't particullary enjoy it. Story didn't grab me and Characters seemed uninteressting which is pretty bad in a Bioware game. Gameplay also just feels clunky and unresponsive on PC on basic movement. Combat seems largely fine, though. But again it's nothing to write home about, the quite frankly atrocious face-animations just take a lot of joy out of the conversations, which aren't that great to begin with. Just on a whole it seems uninteresting.
 

IamGamer41

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oRevanchisto said:
I played all the 10 hours the trial could offer and can't wait to play it all the way through once the game releases. It's exactly what I want out of a Mass Effect game from what I played. For some reason it's "cool" to hate on BioWare at the moment and somehow posting funny animation gifs is reason enough for the whole game to be declared garbage, but I don't play RPG's for Uncharted level facial animation. Still, dumb gifs aside, I was actually really impressed by the facial animation in the game. Yes, there is some occasional derpiness but your player character is way more expressive than really any modern RPG I've seen (weird, no one made gifs of Horizon's awful stiff animations), this is especially amazing considering you can customize your character.

Any way, I play Mass Effect and RPG's for the in-depth stories and great characters and so far Andromeda has been delivering. It feels a lot like Mass Effect 1 with its slower pace and I love it, feels like a real Star Trek type sci-fi game that I want. I enjoy just walking around and talking to as many people as I can and scanning weird new alien worlds. If you liked the past Mass Effect games then you'll probably like Andromeda, if not then I don't know.

A totally unbiased opinion. I do not believe you played all 10 hours and not notice how bland your companions are. Some of those dialogs are horrible lip sinked. Not to mention those ugly ass faces on the women. Guess i'll be going solo this mass effect game or until we get a mod on the PC that fixes their faces.
 

IamGamer41

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trunkage said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Currently playing Witcher 3, and I have to say there is no end of wonky animation, dodgy facial animation and even main story cutscenes that fail to load something as simple as a sword in Ciri's hand when she draws it out...This is after the game's fully patched, completed and won awards and critical acclaim. So I do believe there are different standards being upheld here. Be aware of subconscious bias, humans.
I literally had way more bugs in Witcher 3 than Fallout 4. F4 crashed once after almost 100 hrs. Witcher 3 crashed about 20 times. I had so many issue like what you described and others like having to reload because quests didn't flag. I played F4 on launch and Witcher 3 a few months after launch so it already had some patches.

Like the Zelda: BOTW review score shenanigans with Sterling, if a group decides a game is good, there can be nothing wrong with it. The group cant let others have their own opinion on what a game is like. I'd still class W3 as the better game, but that doesn't mean there wasn't problems with it.

I did get a case of Sky Bear in F4 so they had funnier bugs...
That's how jim sterling made his name. He bashed good games (along with bad ones) to get himself clicks to get to the point he is at today. It wasn't a surprise to anyone who knows how that asshole works. The amount of followers that obese sjw shill has is obscene.
 

oRevanchisto

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IamGamer41 said:
A totally unbiased opinion. I do not believe you played all 10 hours and not notice how bland your companions are. Some of those dialogs are horrible lip sinked. Not to mention those ugly ass faces on the women. Guess i'll be going solo this mass effect game or until we get a mod on the PC that fixes their faces.
Now, you're just reaching. How can you possibly judge your companion characters based on the brief time to had with them in the game? We've literally just met them for the first time. Also, for that brief time we had with them my human companions seemed pretty interesting and well written with some great banter. But, how can you possibly judge your companions based on the little time we've had with them? Or are you suggesting a character like Garrus was the most well written and interesting dude in Mass Effect 1 after our first mission with him?

IamGamer41 said:
That's how jim sterling made his name. He bashed good games (along with bad ones) to get himself clicks to get to the point he is at today. It wasn't a surprise to anyone who knows how that asshole works. The amount of followers that obese sjw shill has is obscene.
Ah, you're one of those people.
 

crimsonspear4D

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I haven't played the demo, and am actively avoiding anything spoiler-ish, but I have to admit the reports of face derping and janked animations is a bit worrying. Putting off all the whiny fucks that cry about female facial designs is one thing, but some honest to god glitching, tearing, or whatever is a bit disconcerting.

But be that as it is, as long as I can play as a gay black woman smashing more pussy than a biotic slam, than fuck it, I just hope the story is entertaining... and good I guess.
 

dragoongfa

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I have sworn off anything EA and Bioware after the 'Ending' but I have been following the ME:A debacle for many reasons, including amusement and a sense of personal closure because frankly I was a huge fanboy of Mass Effect, perhaps I still am for the first two installments.

I can nitpick on what has been released about the game so far but all I can force myself to say is this: Most if not all of the people that made the Bioware brand have left the studio, many of them right after ME 2. Just compare and contrast the end credits of the trilogy to see how much it changed between ME2 and ME3.

As for Mass Effect Andromeda this is a game made from a new studio at Montreal that is a Bioware studio in name only. There may as well be no people employed there who had any creative oversight or even input in either of the first two games, possibly even the third. The quality of the game being so low only serves to highlight the fact that the franchise was given to a brand new studio that had no experience with it.

If we have to accept one fact then that fact is this: Bioware as we knew it has long been dead, what we see walking now is the dead body that is walking according to the whims of its corporate puppetmaster.
 

DarklordKyo

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dragoongfa said:
If we have to accept one fact then that fact is this: Bioware as we knew it has long been dead, what we see walking now is the dead body that is walking according to the whims of its corporate puppetmaster.
Does this mean Bioware's gonna go the way of Maxis, Origin, and Bullfrog then?
 

Torque2100

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The worst part about this fiasco, I think is that thanks to EA's absolutely gargantuan Marketing machine, this phoned-in piece of crap game is going to still sell like hotcakes and spawn an entire series of sequels.
 

sanquin

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Torque2100 said:
The worst part about this fiasco, I think is that thanks to EA's absolutely gargantuan Marketing machine, this phoned-in piece of crap game is going to still sell like hotcakes and spawn an entire series of sequels.
Of course it will. Just the name "Mass Effect" in the title will already make it sell like crazy. Combine that with tons of people that are way too willing to ignore the terrible parts of the game just to be able to play the new shiny thing, and ME:A will probably be considered a success if you go on sales numbers alone.

I might personally eventually buy it if it's on sale for 50% off or more. As I do love Mass Effect as a whole. But it's certainly not worth 60 euro to me. I'd rather save up for a while and buy a Nintendo switch so I can play BotW. (Yes, I'd rather spend 400 euro or more to play BotW and get some other games for the switch later, than pay 60 to play ME:A.) Either that, or I might get it if it turns out that the game does get a lot better after the first 10 hours. (Though the UI, animations, atrocious planet scanning, cheesy/bad dialogue and story and DA:I style open world design hardly seem fixable at this point.)