Lionel Richie
Member
The big problem with it is that it looks like shit, it's a poorly done job all things considered. Can't believe there's a conversation going on about fixing a poor gaming model being sexist.
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Early impressions from RPS for ME:A. It's... not good
- Thread starter Kumquat
- Start date
The big problem with it is that it looks like shit, it's a poorly done job all things considered. Can't believe there's a conversation going on about fixing a poor gaming model being sexist.
EA doesn't really care how shit the product is, as long as it makes them money. I'd say ME is going to sell. After all, they were pretty happy with the sales of DA:I.
Pyramid head
Banned
The writing and tone shifts from mere sentence to sentence conversations is just...really awkward and borderline terrible imo. Listen to the video linked if you want to hear it in context. It doesn't help, it just makes it worse imo.
Lines like this:
source: https://youtu.be/Vss92x8YaF0?t=1h37m56s
I mean...it's a valid thing to say...I guess? I'm sorry, my face is tired from dealing with everything? Huh? You could say this is nit picking, but for a game series that prides itself on character interaction, I'm consistently finding the animations, transitions, tone, and writing to be really off putting and bizzare.
Fuck.
That... was the...
worst line...
reading I've ever...
heard in a triple 'A' video...
game.
Reminded me of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.
Dick Justice
Banned
Paul Tassi for Forbes Magazine echo the galaxy map and UI complaint:
Some positives as well, of course.
Some positives as well, of course.
Witcher 3 and Horizon are best in class for faces even of random npcs in a big RPG. Yes even not super pretty model women look great in those games to me.
I don't think it's because I don't know how women look without makeup...
Bioware just didn't raise the bar as high as those other new RPGs for whatever reason (not saying lazy). Maybe next gen they'll do better.
But it's not mean to say the faces look bad if they in fact do look bad. Even if they scan real people in doesn't excuse if they look extra strange.
I don't think it's because I don't know how women look without makeup...
Bioware just didn't raise the bar as high as those other new RPGs for whatever reason (not saying lazy). Maybe next gen they'll do better.
But it's not mean to say the faces look bad if they in fact do look bad. Even if they scan real people in doesn't excuse if they look extra strange.
captainnapalm
Member
I'm looking at her instagram and the vast majority of her photos are from photoshoots and selfies where she's wearing a shit ton of makeup. Actually, it seems the most natural looking photo is in black and white.
in the same way that photos like this:
are transparently sexist as shit in their intention.
I'm really confused at how this is sexism. Are you suggesting ingame female Ryder is basically Jayde Rossi but without makeup and photoshop and so complaining about her makes us sexist? I think that's what you're saying.
I really don't think that's true. Rossi is a professional model and is just clearly more attractive than the character model they settled on for the game - makeup or no makeup. They barely even look similar anymore. You can only see the faintest trace of the original model in FemRyder.
And if they did purposefully make her look totally plain without any of the beautifying methods women use even in real life, what's the point of that? What heroic fantasy game or movie or comic or anime or anything would not want their female lead to look good. Is this really the battle we need to fight?
If you want to make some gritty piece where you're purposefully undercutting regular conceptions of beauty and the stylized reality these games tend to take place in, that's one thing. But they haven't done this here. In every other respect, Mass Effect is as shlocky a sci-fi genre piece as you can hope to get. I mean male Ryder is literally based off a male model and looks like one. So what exactly are they trying to do by going from Jayde Rossi to Fem Ryder?
FlutterPuffs
Member
Hey we have one thing we agree on!
Yeah, I know. I dont mind if FemRyder looks like how she looks but they really need to fix her animation.
PeeBee though.... really not a fan of her design. She looks to much like a Dreamworks Animation character, and I'm really not a fan of it.
It's like it's cut together from fragments of other sentences. Really weird.
Primethius
Banned
Uh, not really sure where this is all coming from as I'm not really saying that ME:A is a bad game or anything. I'm commenting on the facial animation.
"Chosen One" doesn't really have a meaning anymore as it's applied too liberally.
Are those real lines? If so, that writer needs a new job.Did they hire the writer behind True Detective Season 2?
Dick Justice
Banned
It's coming from an insecure fanboy.
No. But the real lines are pretty fucking awful to begin with.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
Sorry, I should have made it apparent that I wasn't commenting specifically at you since I quoted you.
Um what? You wanna back that up bro?
This is a Bizarre Explanation!!
Heckler456
Banned
Game development in general is rough, from what I hear. Which is why I find it patently ridiculous how harsh people are being over what amounts to tiny details. People aren't even just calling it out anymore, they're straight up reveling in the negativity.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
Maybe you could explain why you think it's bizarre. Would help me out much more to figure out where or how I went wrong if I did.
I've actually heard an explanation like that for why facial animations are only now bugging people so much about Mass Effect. I guess I sort of get it, but I don't really agree with it. The shit faces didn't bother me in the original trilogy (or any 3D RPG of the past really) and I suspect they won't now.
meanspartan
Member
Is this true?
If so, I don't give a shit about his opinion, our tastes clearly don't align.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
So your only peeve is being called pathfinder? Shepard isn't even called anything of the sort until you take the bullshit ending in ME3.
The humans are the only ones that treat Shepard like someone of respect, and even that varies, in the Mass Effect games everyone else regularly tries to shit on her and even the alliance navy grounds her until shit hits the fan after ME2.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
If a simple glance at those render photoshops isn't telling you exactly what's the issue I and others have with them then I feel you're part of the problem, complaining about the shading and lighting and eye shaders is a different thing altogether than what's going on with those edits.
well now i know not to trust his opinion.
I mean the "Jank" you are constantly repeating in your post,which is still there in ME:A but it somehow okay because the face is also "Jank".If you have problem with "jankyness" than it should be Implied for everywhere, Its bizarre saying, Well I expected shit so its okay.
Thats the "Uncanny valley" effect and its absolutely normal to feel like that, The models are not that good in previous game so it doesn't matter much, Now due to the advancement in other fields like environment & lighting , the models looks rather odd.I am playing final mission of ME:3(pc) , as i am typing and i can totally see why the faces will not bother too some. I am playing for the Story and mainly the Characters(squadmates) and looking forward to play ME:A for the same reason.
TheChillyAcademic
Member
Do we know all of the companions thus far?
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
So, you don't understand how my brain expecting something to happen would be easier on my immersion than something unexpected? Or how my brain seeing two things of equal immersion happen at the same time being less immersion breaking than one greatly immersive thing happening alongside one greatly immersion breaking thing in contrast?
I never said I didn't have a problem with jankiness either, in fact I said that it is there in almost everything and that it is ok to complain about it...
EDIT: I'm trying hard not to come off aggressive and I'm sorry if I did. I'm just having a bad day cuz life is happening as normal for us.
captainnapalm
Member
If preferring attractive female leads in schlocky sci-fi epics makes me part of the problem, then I guess I am part of the problem.
TL;DR
Its okay, Lets just wait for other impressions and reviews and hopefully we can shift the discussion to some positives rather than hinging onto specifics(faces) which is going on in every ME thread.
Captain Tuttle
Member
I like to be fully transparent when I describe things so people don't come back and say I misled them. I haven't done many sidequests personally. I stated that from several reviewers I've spoken to that are deep in the game, more than myself, sidequests come into their own later and some have multiple quest lines that can span multiple areas/planets.
I also described a few side activities on the very first prologue planet that *felt* more fleshed out to me as opposed to DAI's fetch quests because they actually had narration by the characters and you learn/investigate some interesting things that provide neat info vs "Collect 10 ram hides for the soldier" in DAI for example.
Some more examples: I've also been going through a Turian murder mystery on the Nexus that spanned multiple conversations with the Nexus director, then a witness, the suspect's wife, etc and that's now asking me to go to Eos to find and investigate the remains.
Also been following up leads on someone sabotaging electrical grids on the Nexus and now I have to find out what's going on and why.
These things feel more compelling to me than a lot of the junk in DAI lol.
There's still the "tasks" that are simpler in nature. One injured soldier asked if I could place a pendant next to where he lost his brother on a planet, but even that felt more fleshed out than DAI 'sidequests' because he talked a bit about how close he was to his brother. I'm enjoying them personally.
So I can only speak for myself. Hope that helps
It does. Quite a bit actually.
Thanks
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
PandaShake
Member
The writing and tone shifts from mere sentence to sentence conversations is just...really awkward and borderline terrible imo. Listen to the video linked if you want to hear it in context. It doesn't help, it just makes it worse imo.
Lines like this:
source: https://youtu.be/Vss92x8YaF0?t=1h37m56s
I mean...it's a valid thing to say...I guess? I'm sorry, my face is tired from dealing with everything? Huh? You could say this is nit picking, but for a game series that prides itself on character interaction, I'm consistently finding the animations, transitions, tone, and writing to be really off putting and bizzare.
What the hell is this? Is she a robot? Sounds like they chopped up and stitched her dialogue.
SolicitorPirate
Member
Yes but narratives and feelings have always been more important than facts and reality
dr_rus
Member
All put next to each other the photoshop version looks arguably closer to the model
I think it's simply a limitation of the engine that we ended up with the more uncanny looking one one
A little reminder from 2014:
This is most certainly NOT an issue of the engine.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
She's a literal self insert for the player. She's not there for you to wanna fuck her my dude.
Vire
Member
I knew I wasn't going crazy. I didn't enjoy Inquisition but the character model quality is much better overall.
Like I said in the other thread, the RPS thing sounded to me like DAI. I haven't played a whole lot of DAI but everything I've seen in it so far outside the main quest has felt like it was designed for almost no reason other than to elicit base dopamine responses. The side quests, crafting, and a bunch of other stuff feel like they're there just to give players some numbers to play around with and trigger a completionist's OCD just enough to force them to spend 60 hours on the game for no real reason. I avoided the OCD so I've been able to stay fairly laser-focused on DAI's main quest and in that capacity I've been able to find an interesting, enjoyable core to a product that otherwise feels like junk food.
This is how I've increasingly felt about EA's and Ubisoft's big games: a massive helping of junk food wrapped around a nugget of genuinely interesting and unique gameplay. Some games like Metal Gear Solid V, Breath of the Wild, and Witcher 3 are so good because they managed to cut away the fat, dig out that nugget, and enrich it.
With Andromeda right now I feel like the exploration might be that nugget of interesting game design but it might be surrounded by more numbers and crap like what I've seen with the mining or with leveling up the Nexus. The big fear is that it's going to be DAI in space, though BioWare has probably learned at least a little from that game if not also Witcher 3.
The criticisms of the story are potentially even more grave because the stories and characters are the main reasons I even play BioWare games, but for some reason I'm not panicking over Andromeda yet. The characters I've seen so far in DAI are okay I guess. I can see how people think they're pandering archetypes but I feel like everything present is still deep enough to put DAI above most video game stories. Honestly I didn't even hate Dragon Age 2's story and characters. Maybe any flaws are just more jarring because any RPG coming out these days is living in a post-Witcher 3 world.
As for the facial animations, what are we all comparing them to? If we're comparing them to games like Uncharted then I don't think that's fair given the difference in the amount of characters and dialogue in a BIoWare RPG compared to a linear Naughty Dog game. I thought Witcher 3's faces and animations were very good considering the breadth of that game. I think the criticism of Horizon in this area is happening because the characters' faces look ridiculously realistic and the animations don't match up to that standard. In fact, for some reason some part of me has instinctively assumed the faces in Andromeda were sort of stylized a little bit and not even really trying to be fully realistic. If that's the case BioWare should own up to it.
This is how I've increasingly felt about EA's and Ubisoft's big games: a massive helping of junk food wrapped around a nugget of genuinely interesting and unique gameplay. Some games like Metal Gear Solid V, Breath of the Wild, and Witcher 3 are so good because they managed to cut away the fat, dig out that nugget, and enrich it.
With Andromeda right now I feel like the exploration might be that nugget of interesting game design but it might be surrounded by more numbers and crap like what I've seen with the mining or with leveling up the Nexus. The big fear is that it's going to be DAI in space, though BioWare has probably learned at least a little from that game if not also Witcher 3.
The criticisms of the story are potentially even more grave because the stories and characters are the main reasons I even play BioWare games, but for some reason I'm not panicking over Andromeda yet. The characters I've seen so far in DAI are okay I guess. I can see how people think they're pandering archetypes but I feel like everything present is still deep enough to put DAI above most video game stories. Honestly I didn't even hate Dragon Age 2's story and characters. Maybe any flaws are just more jarring because any RPG coming out these days is living in a post-Witcher 3 world.
As for the facial animations, what are we all comparing them to? If we're comparing them to games like Uncharted then I don't think that's fair given the difference in the amount of characters and dialogue in a BIoWare RPG compared to a linear Naughty Dog game. I thought Witcher 3's faces and animations were very good considering the breadth of that game. I think the criticism of Horizon in this area is happening because the characters' faces look ridiculously realistic and the animations don't match up to that standard. In fact, for some reason some part of me has instinctively assumed the faces in Andromeda were sort of stylized a little bit and not even really trying to be fully realistic. If that's the case BioWare should own up to it.
I don't get why people are focused so much on the face designs when the real offender is the goddawful facial animation and lip sync across the board. There's two halves of visuals that produce the uncanny valley effect, the way it looks, and the way it moves. I just don't get devs like Bioware are so focused on the first half while completely overlooking the second.
You say that as a joke but look who we hired as our US president.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned in this thread, but I noticed on tonight's "inbox" on the Metro site, somebody emailed a letter in about this very article, it went like this.
"After coming across this it seems that the game is going to be a stinker. I am definitely looking forward to your review"
Simon
GC: That seems a rather extreme take on the game, and yet somehow doesnt mention things that we do have problems with. Our review is Monday
I'm intrigued to know what the issues are which aren't covered in the article. The fact that there's more problems to come can't be good
"After coming across this it seems that the game is going to be a stinker. I am definitely looking forward to your review"
Simon
GC: That seems a rather extreme take on the game, and yet somehow doesnt mention things that we do have problems with. Our review is Monday
I'm intrigued to know what the issues are which aren't covered in the article. The fact that there's more problems to come can't be good
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Paul Tassi for Forbes Magazine echo the galaxy map and UI complaint:
Some positives as well, of course.
Yeah, from the streams that I've been watching, crafting is really, really confusing.
MontyBrown
Banned
Considering it was all downhill from the first game it's not surprising.
Disappointing if true though.
Disappointing if true though.
I'm sure that's why they scanned models. Because they really wanted that average look
It has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with a horrible rendering job. They did fine on the male Ryder. He looks very close to who he was modeled after and it works.
Fem Ryder on the other hand looks like a Loony Toons face that got run over by a steam roller. There is something just WRONG with her face. Like it triggers feelings of wrongness and it's not because of "beauty". Since the very beginning her face has been wrong and the janky facial animations make it even worse. I don't know where or why they went wrong with her stuff but there is something that just blasts across the uncanny valley to her. It really sucks because I wanted to do a Fem Ryder play through but that face creeps me out. It has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with somebody fucking up. The eyes especially are just fucking super creepy.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It is absolutely
I mean they kept in skin blemishes and the defaults while attractive are far from a character like Morrigan in DA. And regardless of using models, the player still isn't intended to think, I wanna fuck my literal self insert. Do you wanna fuck Bella from Twilight or the actress from Fifty Shades? Or the defaults from any RPG with custom characters? Probably not.
Iriscomeback
Member
posted in the other thread
the game's presentation in cinematics and conversations seem very rough. I'm worried that the game has been in troubled development if this is the result after 5 years.
hahaha, wtf is that walk?! Looks really wierd
I believe Conor McGregor does that walk.
They're pretty damn attractive people. Same with default male Shepard and default male Ryder. None of those are average looking self inserts
Do you understand that saying things like "you're part of the problem" is probably one of the most insulting things you can say to someone? You're completely dismissing any and all frame of reference the other party might have because they don't agree with you. Despite what a lot of people here might think, the attractiveness of characters in video games is *NOT* just as important an issue as combating racism.
Just because you want someone in a game to be attractive doesn't mean you want to fuck them, my dude. I'm sure there are celebrities that you think are ugly, that other people think are attractive. I think you're taking one point, which is "I don't like how FemRyder looks" and presuming several different things about the poster because of it. I think FemRyder is unattractive, personally. I don't care if she's a self-insert for the player, because I'm going to be staring at her face for countless hours. If Steve Buscemi was the target for Joel in TLoU, I probably wouldn't have played TLoU.
Now, a good counter-point to this, which is the reason I don't really give a crap if she's attractive or not, is that you can customize the character. So if I want to be Shrek, the Pathfinder, I can be-- green skin and all. Or, I can be <insert your celebrity of choice>. In ME1, I made my male Shepard super attractive. I was Hotty McBody.
The point that I'm trying to get across is that we're not going to solve anything by talking about how minorities are represented in video games. Pointing out misrepresentation is well intentioned, but is more or less pointing out "perceived racism," when the intent behind the representation isn't inherently racist. Same thing with gender representation and perceived sexism. For every post about how it's stupid that the armor for every JRPG female ever is bikinis, there isn't a single post pointing out that Batman's armor literally has abs. Batman is supposed to be sexy in a way, as are those armors-- those were intentionally designed that way. Video games are an entertainment medium, and as such, you should be able to interact with them whatever way you like. There isn't a wrong way to interact with your game.
There's a very thin line between being progressive, and being authoritarian. You perceive something as giving someone more rights, someone else perceives it as their rights being taken away. This is why conversing about it in a serious manner that doesn't fucking involve "you're part of the problem" is so crucial, because by saying "you're part of the problem," when things go wrong, it's your fault for dismissing both fair and unfair criticism of your platform.
Vlaphor
Member
