Support NeoGAF

[JadedWriter]

To be fair the Battlefront characters look sort of hideous themselves. Nor do they animate the faces. Though you can certainly use BF1 as an example. This game doesn't appear to have any issues with the environments, just the characters.

This is probably what I get for being used to stuff like Horizon and Uncharted 4/Last of Us and such. I mean nothing is perfect but the facial animation in ND games is top tier.

 

[Juanivan]

Once again...

 

[cleveridea]

I quickly/horribly shoved Aloy's larger iris/smaller pupil eyes over the existing pale irises and wandering pupils:

Less wired/more human.

Wow, what a difference.

 

[martino]

Once again...

ho angry minority was really active to shit on user score there.
i understand andromeda threads better now.

 

[Lime]

Mass Effect Andromeda |OT| 2819: A Face Oddity

Bravo. Who's in charge of the OT?

 

[Garlador]

Okay. Okay, holy shit. Holy shit. I know people like to hyperbolize and compare old games' animation favorably against modern ones (when they're subpar) but this is objective. Mass Effect 1's animations are better.

Look, I'm not rooting against ME:A. I hope the game is fantastic. I want it to be.

But when I pointed out that I can be both a fan of the series AND criticize stuff I've seen, it was like the wolves were unleashed.

I feel sorry for people who feel the need to nitpick games to death.

I really do.

"Oh my god, the framerate dropped to 59fps. Devs promised 60! Broken game!"
Not saying you're doing that, but it's annoying to see that.

Seriously, that is annoying.

If you can't see how Andromeda meets and exceeds the standards of ME3 than I don't know what to say

It's just weird to see you giving no benefit of the doubt in light of your fandom.

Agree to disagree on the benefit of the doubt thing, especially after dismissing shinobi's feedback out of hand. You're well within your rights not to give it, and not to buy day one

I love Mass Effect 3 too. But hold it up next to what we've seen in Andromeda and the difference in technical quality and general polish is huge. Nobody's mistaking BioWare for Naughty Dog when it comes to character animation, and there certainly have been graphical glitches in the footage we've seen, but if you can't see the stark improvement over ME3 and you don't attribute that to nostalgia goggles then I just don't know what else to tell you

Yeah, I don't know dude. Revisiting Mass Effect 3 in 2017, it's pretty rough. Textures, animations, lip syncing, etc., even for the time it was not great in those areas. When you think back to the earlier games what you remember is your investment in the story and your connection to the characters, which we can't form with Andromeda until we actually play it.

TLDR: "I don't believe you."

Which is your prerogative of course, but I can't quite reconcile your stance with how massive a fan you claim to be.

He explained his logic, and I still don't think his stance is reasonable given everything we know.

The game is solid. Only had a few hours last night but I'm not exaggerating, it's the most polished Bioware game I've played in terms of performance/glitches. Those little niggles like the backwards gun (already fixed in the next post launch patch) and a glitch here or there stand out because these videos are being hyper analyzed. They're being freeze framed and nitpicked to death and inconsequential to the overall experience.

You're a big ME fan, there's no reason for your hesitation man, it's damn good.

How you could hold such an opinion and still seemingly have any hope that Bioware can even make a functional game, let alone one that's fun to you is entirely beyond me.

Now, I know GAF can be ruthless as well and chock full of hyperbole, but I do think that, 10 years out from ME1, some stuff is actually, objectively worse.

I mean, Silent Hill 3 was from 2003... nearly 14 years ago.

 

[matrix-cat]

For those interested, A Youtuber named xletalis did a comparison yesterday contrasting ME1 to Andromeda.

ME1 da gawd. Despite the low-res textures, you can see a level of vulnerability and femininity in Ashley's face solely because of the animations. Andromeda lady is just like *BEEP BOOP, INITIATING HYOO-MAN LANGUAGE FACSIMILE ROUTINES*

 

[Widge]

For the ones without subtitles, are the characters saying "flubbity plub plub blub fuhwubbaawubba blub"?

 

[guybrushfreeman]

Even Okuyasu doesn't know where The Hand sends stuff.

 

[JBourne]

Whoa wait what!?!? The animations in this one scene alone do not make any sort of sense at all. In particular the female character looking somewhere else after hitting the Krogan.

It's like looking away from an explosion, after taking a shot in basketball, or tossing out a bowling ball. Cool people don't need to look at the results, they know it worked.

Except this time, when she got rocked in the face and fell on a space table.

 

[StoppedInTracks]

For those interested, A Youtuber named xletalis did a comparison yesterday contrasting ME1 to Andromeda.

And people lolled at me when I said some months ago that I find ME1 characters looking better even though technically they are worse (polys, textures).

Incredible laziness or dumbness on BioWare animation team part.

 

[Shredderi]

Whoa wait what!?!? The animations in this one scene alone do not make any sort of sense at all. In particular the female character looking somewhere else after hitting the Krogan.

It looks like the Krogan is trying to headbutt the other character.

 

[Zackat]

Man this is hilarious. I am laughing but sad at the same time. God damnit.

 

[truly101]

Once again...

Yep, those user scores are completely reliable and objective. No agenda there. none at all.

 

[Apathy]

Why is bioware so bad at this?

 

[Cob32]

I cant stop laughing at this one.

 

[Gradly]

Where are these taken from? especially the awkward walking stuff?

 

[Unaha-Closp]

This game had to have came in incredibly hot. It's Fucking Mass Effect - how on Earth do you let this one out? This had to be a development hell kind of deal and EA are saying fuck it the name alone will sell it? I've played 3 hours of it and I cannot get over the noot noot mouths. I just cannot get over them. All its making me want to do is replay ME1 again. Holy shit. Noot fucking Noot.

 

[CharminUltra]

I haven't laughed this hard in a long while.

 

[thepenguin55]

Whoa wait what!?!? The animations in this one scene alone do not make any sort of sense at all. In particular the female character looking somewhere else after hitting the Krogan.

I think this is what happened to her after she punched the krogan:

NPCs outside of the main cast really appear to have not gotten much love in this game which says a lot considering that the main cast hasn't gotten as much love as they should have.

 

[RRockman]

Oh man, I like mass effect but these gifs are hilarious. Cant wait till I get home from work to watch these. Disarm gif was posted right?

 

[magnetic]

Bad walking/running animations are such a turnoff for me. I can deal with many technical issues, but in a third person game where I spend almost the entire time seeing my character on screen the developer really should spend some care into how she/he runs and moves. It breaks my immersion like nothing else.

Resident Evil 4, Monster Hunter, Dragons Dogma, MGSV are fantastic examples of believable movement and how it really increased my enjoyment of playing these games, and from what I´ve seen, BOTW, Nier and Horizon also have brilliant animations.

Maybe Andromeda is a great game otherwise, but this stuff really would bother me the entire time playing.

 

[StoppedInTracks]

maybe there was a time where i thought this looked bad but after scrolling through this entire thread this looks pretty good.

Haha yes exactly.

 

[Auto-Reply]

Kinda glad it looks like that, this is way more entertaining than another "nearly perfectly animated/boring scene".
I guess they build the character editor as good as they could and then created everything with that so NPCs and player character don't look like from 2 different games, it's probably not easy getting this to look as good as characters in games that can't be changed by the player... maybe too hard. I don't know.
Then again even the silly dof still blurs the finer details of the hair in conversations, I thought that would be solved by now in a game like this.

 

[NightShift]

I don't know how any one can take this game seriously if all these gifs are as common as they seem to be. Shame because I was really looking forward to starting fresh on Mass Effect but this is a big turn off.

Yep, he clearly got trapped between that Krogan's butt checks.

 

[Zok310]

EA fucked up didn't they?
Ohh boy, here we go.

 

[Ethranes]

The craziest thing is how easy this would have been to fix. All they had to do was darken the iris and increase the iris size. That's all I've done to the following image and she all of a sudden doesn't look completely insane.

I hope that they patch this addition in, or hope that modders can get this done, that tiny change really changes everything.

 

[Auto-Reply]

The character designs aren't even the real problem.

Of course I included the animation in that statement!

 

[cripterion]

Mass tweet this to the team please.

It's literally a one day of work fix.

Fix the eyes and the stare for everyone but please keep the line "my face is tired from dealing with everything".

Oh and Bioware you could sell tshirts with that tagline.

 

[CHC]

Now, I know GAF can be ruthless as well and chock full of hyperbole, but I do think that, 10 years out from ME1, some stuff is actually, objectively worse.

At best, it is absolutely NOT any better. I feel that in this particular instance it looks worse, but it's hard to judge the whole game.

Either way, terrible. It's been TEN years!

 

[dan2026]

Silent Hill 3's character faces look better than anything in any mass effect.
Some black magic for 2003.

 

[PowderedToast]

i'm not usually a fan of railing against games for glitches in order to tear down its reputation, every game has glitches and they're often isolated and rare despite how they appear.

but this is different. the tech, craft and polish is is just straight up average

 

[TharpDaddy]

 

[LogicStep]

Maybe this game will be more modable than previous so we can make the game much better. I'm still excited for the game, these things are just funny as hell to me.

 

[Gai Murakumo]

Silent Hill 3's character faces look better than anything in any mass effect.
Some black magic for 2003.

Silent Hill 3's faces are God Tier.

 

[Soul of the Beast]

ho angry minority was really active to shit on user score there.
i understand andromeda threads better now.

I think Metacrirtic shoud have just remove the user score function, it really has no purpose.

 

[obeast]

I don't know how any one can take this game seriously if all these gifs are as common as they seem to be. Shame because I was really looking forward to starting fresh on Mass Effect but this is a big turn off.

For whatever it's worth, I've played the early access for a bit more than an hour on PC, and I have seen nothing this egregious. I have a pretty high tolerance for occasional visual bugs, though.

I remain convinced that whatever the merits of this game end up being (and I'm currently withholding judgment - what I've played so far has neither convinced me nor turned me away), its animation jank will not be the deciding factor.

 

[Enduin]

Mass tweet this to the team please.

It's literally a one day of work fix.

Seriously it's like an hour of work tops. Just take the eye map file or whatever, decrease the pupil size, increase in the iris size and darken them a bit. That alone would fix a major problem with how human characters look totally coked out of their minds most of the time.

Animations might be fucked, but at least they make the models not looks so crazy. I can deal with subpar animations, but if the models look like they're going to spend 8 hours staring at me in my sleep it's hard to get over that.

 

[Soul of the Beast]

Silent Hill 3's character faces look better than anything in any mass effect.
Some black magic for 2003.

You see, it's this something Japanese called ''Effort''.

 

[Wishmaster92]

what the hell is wrong with the last gen lighting here. For a second i thought this was me3.

 

[Keasar]

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

NPCs outside of the main cast really appear to have not gotten much love in this game which says a lot considering that the main cast hasn't gotten as much love as they should have.

I think that was actually a big problem in Inquisition as well though. NPCs that weren't your companions generally did not look very good and looked like they were banged out with the in game character creator.

And think back to Inquisition- one of the criticisms some people had with the game was how the game rarely would zoom down into a closer up view for dialogues but just kept things over the shoulder in the third person gameplay view. Maybe they weren't doing that in Inquisition because the procedural lip syncing and animations on character models that aren't companions are kind of rubbish?

I don't know... this all just seems kind of sad, really. As much as I'm apt to go at BioWare I want them to make good RPGs. There are only so many big budget developers making big budget RPGs nowadays, so I want good Mass Effect and Fallout and Dragon Age games. Seeing Andromeda look so thoroughly mediocre really stinks.

Maybe this game will be more modable than previous so we can make the game much better. I'm still excited for the game, these things are just funny as hell to me.

Its Frostbite. Easier modding isn't happening.

 

[Vital Tundra]

You see, it's this something Japanese called ''Effort''.

With a little black magic they probably stole from Nintendo, lol.

 

[Lime]

he looks like he just had a big toke of that dank andromeda kush and is now talking about the size of the universe

 

[Mr. Phellps]

Once again...

Except the user scores were an exaggeration caused by the ending and ME3 never deserved those scores.

 

[GavinUK86]

For those interested, A Youtuber named xletalis did a comparison yesterday contrasting ME1 to Andromeda.

They certainly most likely did, but something must have gone wrong during development

That's a really disingenuous comparison. The video creator obviously has an agenda and fishing for youtube views. That's an ME1 squadmate that could possibly be part of every scene and gameplay. The other in MEA is at best, an NPC you see now and again. That video needs to compare Cora with Ashley. I've played the trial so I could do just that to prove the video wrong.

 

[Aces&Eights]

In a way I feel bad for the team. There is no way a professional looks at this and says, "Nailed it! Ship the game!" They have to know it's fucked. So, that tells me they were rushed and simply not given enough time from management to get this shit sorted out. I would be pissed as all hell if I was working on a project for 5 years and my manager came in at 80% completion and took it from me then gave it to the public while my name was on it.

It's funny in jest but I do feel bad for the men and women at EA who worked on this and are sitting in their cubicles reading GAF and squeezing a stress ball until it explodes.

 

[Pestilence11]

Now, I know GAF can be ruthless as well and chock full of hyperbole, but I do think that, 10 years out from ME1, some stuff is actually, objectively worse.

You are correct on all points.

 

[AaronMT86]

Congrats, we made Kotaku

 

[Lime]

From nubbe: One of PeeBee's idle animations in one conversation (first encounter)...