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[Jamie OD]

Watching the Giant Bomb stream. I couldn't put my finger on why the facial animations looked off, but then they pointed out that the eyebrows barely move. Now I can't unsee that.

To me they look like the kind of puppets used in Team America.

 

[Ryzaki009]

Can I get a link to the giant bomb stream?

 

[Kthulhu]

Could this be the disappointed game of the year! I hope not.

And here I was enjoying the endless wave of 9/10 games.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I agree, wholeheartedly! However, they aren't equally valid as compared to combating sexism and racism in other, more important fields. That's the point I was making.

This is a video game forum, the gaming discussion side specifically, so obviously the main talk is gonna be about sexism and racism in the games industry.

While it's not what you said in the slightest, please be aware that you're "defending" a very specific standard of beauty. I use quotations because it's not really a defense, no one is actually attacking FemRyder for looking the way she does. Point is, it could be inferred that you're saying one very specific standard of beauty (FemRyder how she is now) is better than another very standard of beauty (FemRyder as she could be, Schrodinger's FemRyder, perhaps). Which is the exact thing you're arguing against people doing.

Coded language is a thing.

This is generalizing. You're now trying to group me (and others) in with other people because of some things said, regardless of the persons actual viewpoint. You just flat out admitted that you're dismissing people for viewing things differently than you

Then maybe people should stop posting horribly sexist pictures?

Perceived sexism would be something that is inherently sexist, without the intent of being sexist.

Kinda like photoshopping a character to look like a photoshopped picture of a specific photo from a photoshoot.

Perceived racism would be, for example, in the Horizon gifs posted, Varl having significantly bigger lips than other characters. The intent behind that design choice doesn't come from a racist, or negative place. Regardless, it could be used to argue as to why or why not Horizon is a racist game (which I don't think it is, in the slightest). So, perceived sexism would be, for example, Bayonetta. Bayonetta is without a doubt sexist, but because the intent is to empower her with those sexist elements, it's not taken as an offense.

I genuinely don't see how this is relevant to ME:A? What in the world?

I don't believe for a minute that men don't get sexist stuff done to characters in the entire industry. That's another generalization. If discussions about FemRyder not being attractive enough or too attractive are sexist, then there's DEFINITELY been similar discussions about men in video games. I think the Bruce Wayne model in the Arkham games is ATROCIOUS, I mean, Batman looks like a freakin' goober! Nah, Batman gotta be super handsome, you know? He's Batman.

Mentoo™ doesn't invalidate the issue here.

I'm not saying that I do or do not "get it," or that the problem doesn't exist. However, again, by continually insisting that your viewpoint is the only valid one, you're actually invalidating any progress you could be making with anyone who doesn't share that viewpoint. You're actively working against your own causes, man.

It's pretty evident that people actually don't get it. And pointing that out isn't inherently an issue.

Again, you're generalizing. I actually said, and I quote:

"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."

I didn't say anywhere that FemRyder and.. Peebee, whoever that is, need x characters from my favorite animus. I said that I didn't find FemRyder attractive. Which.. I don't. And that I can customize the character, which I can.

Again, the issue is that, well, no one asked if you found her attractive, players not finding Fem Ryder, who's traditionally attractive enough already, attractive isn't a knock against the game's quality. As she's not there for players to get their rocks off. And by that I mean, she wasn't designed so that players are supposed to constantly be staring at her, she's the self insert. She isn't meant for the male gaze, ffs the game is full of characters who are already.

And again, as I've tried to get across several times, there's a thin line between progressive and forcing people to view things through the lens that you view stuff through. If FemRyder was statistically the ugliest character to ever exist, people would say it was sexist. If she was statistically the most attractive character to ever exist, people would say it was sexist. And there are people that feel that FemRyder's current design is sexist, because it's still more attractive than the majority of people. Can you say factually which of these groups is right or wrong? No, because it's not a social thing. It's personal preference. What matters is the intent behind the action, as I've said repeatedly.p/QUOTE]
There's nothing sexist about FemRyder's current design. So those people would be wrong, i've absolutely seen nothing of the sort suggesting that people think she is, so what are you talking about?

People tend to make movies they like, songs they like, food they like, in general, stuff they like. A gay writer will probably have more success writing a gay character than a straight writer-- they can relate to specific issues and viewpoints that someone else might miss or not know how to handle. And even then, that's going to change down to the invidual, because they have different life experiences.

White men are not incapable of writing about perspectives that a)aren't their won and b)don't appeal to them. Wanna know why? Because minorities do the same all the time.

If you're a man and feel like you're better than a woman, you're wrong. If you're a woman and feel you're better than a man, again, you're wrong. I sincerely think that you're assuming a lot of malice and evil intent where there is none, but rather just ignorance to issues.

Ignorance is why we're still getting cringeworthy photoshop jobs like that Ryder and Peebee thing in 2017.

The fact that most the characters look derpy isn't an issue?

There's a difference between "this characters look derpy" and "these female characters aren't pretty enough so here's a photoshop where I added shit from common beauty standards, like a v-shaped chin and eyeliner. MMmmm"

 

[Forsaken82]

After Dragon Age: Inquisition got so many amazing scores and even god-damn GOTY awards from how many sites, it's clear that many outlets don't know how to distance themselves from whatever strange hype is present in a new Bioware release. This time around, when considering what happened with DA:I, if you found yourself not really enjoying that game despite all the praise, considering these previews it seems being wary or cautious of Mass Effect: Andromeda would be prudent.

Or... OR... people liked DA:I

Opinions are great... like the guy earlier in the thread that thought "Hey a negative preview, I can finally say I told you so!" despite plenty of positive previews. The people who enjoy prior bioware games will likely enjoy this game. People that didn't wont. That's the fun of having your own opinion. I don't think Hype has anything to do with it.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

The animations remind me of Fallout 4.

Spoiler

And so does the dialogue

 

[ironcreed]

Yeah, the negative impressions only seem to be building. But I am still fully expecting to enjoy it for the most part. Some of the footage I have watched looked great.

 

[inky]

Can I get a link to the giant bomb stream?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9fm_54DboE

 

[Calm Mind]

What the fuck is this:

Next gen porn filter. Brown chicken brown cow.

 

[Ryzaki009]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9fm_54DboE

thanks

 

[Vire]

Don't even think I'm going to buy this anymore... I can't believe this. This stream is shocking.

I'm such a big Mass Effect fan.

 

[The Technomancer]

Or... OR... people liked DA:I

I mean...How many people really go to bat for DAI these days? I see a lot of people who likes it who, in hindsight, seem to go "that game was sort of a slog"

 

[Diancecht]

KILL.ME.MY.LIFE.IS.A.TORMENT.I.HAVE.NOTHING.TO.LIVE.FOR.FREE.ME.FROM.THIS.BODY

 

[The Sum of Zero]

Eh, that's not a deal breaker for me. Still getting it.

 

[Chumley]

The animations remind me of Fallout 4.

Spoiler

And so does the dialogue

tbh I think it's even worse than that.

The human beings have dead eyes, all of them, and animate like robots. Nothing about them seems even somewhat real.

 

[careksims]

The sex scenes are gonna be so meme-tastic. It will be glorious.

 

[ironcreed]

KILL.ME.MY.LIFE.IS.A.TORMENT.I.HAVE.NOTHING.TO.LIVE.FOR.FREE.ME.FROM.THIS.BODY

 

[Suzushiiro]

The "maybe they just don't want the female characters to all be perfect supermodels" argument would work a little better were it not for the fact that they explicitly stated that they based default FemRyder off of an IRL model. They clearly weren't going for a more "average" look.

Watching the GB stream. This writing is horrible.

Yeah, that's the big thing- the animation and visuals in Bioware games have pretty much always been "passing," so ME:A isn't a huge downgrade in that sense. Where their games have always shined is in the character-focused dialogue, banter, etc etc, and it seems like they're failing at that here too.

 

[Lime]

PC Gamer has a lot of alarm bells going off:

Tim: One of the things that's really bumming me out so far is I just don't seem to like any of the companions. Before it was a real Sophie's choice who to take on a mission, because you wouldn't want to miss out on bonding with Garrus, or Legion being all robo awkward. But in Andromeda, eesh. They all say such dumb stuff in combat too. Liam, in particular, is an absolute shuttle crash of a character

James: I'm with Tim, it's the companion conversations that I can't stand. Maybe they've always been this way, but so often you'll just stumble into someone's room, ask them a simple question, and get their entire life's Sparknotes in a long winded anecdote. I'd rather the characters didn't straight up tell me their history and how they felt about X thing at Y time, and instead expressed more of that through behavior and performance. There's nothing subtle about them so far. I'm hoping that changes in the companion quests though.

Tim: Returning to the set up, because that's all we're allowed to talk about, it blows my mind how clumsily the story is introduced. [Spoiler warning.] In the very first scene you wake to find your sibling is stuck in cold storage, and may never wake up. But because you've never seen the Ryder twins interact, and so have no investment in their relationship, it's completely inert dramatically. The same goes for the antagonists, the Kett. You understand they're bad simply because they shoot at you on sight, but I feel no actual antipathy for them. I laughed out loud when the big bad did his ”grr, I'm pissed" face after he couldn't open a monolith. That's it? That's what we're given to glean from his character notes? The colonists they've massacred exist only as the very occasional body the away team stumbles across, so I also don't care about them. BioWare, so often lauded for storytelling, seems to have settled on neither showing or telling, but just assuming we'll accept these guys as some sort of rent-a-nemesis.

Which isn't to say there's no story. What there is, still, is the exact same dialogue system, doling out vast amounts of exposition in the form of five wedges of selectable speech at a time. Only now stripped of even the semi-interesting Paragon/Renegade options. How can they honestly have had this much time between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda and not come up with a more elegant solution for characters to talk to each other. Presumably most players painstakingly work our way through all the options anyway, so you might as well shove them into a VLC playlist and let me listen while doing something else. So much of these systems are just plain badly designed, as is the nested quest UI, and why I'm skeptical that much of it will improve. In one instance early on Eos, my team triggered the release or arrival of some sort of space beast, and reacted in panic. But I couldn't see what they saw, so it left me absolutely bemused by what was happening. That's just inept direction.

James: Guys, the planet scanning is awful. How did they make the planet scanning actively worse than Mass Effect 2? And even then, it was just spherical acupuncture, a pretty mindless minigame where you move a reticle around an orb until it vibrates. Now, moving between planets requires watching a slow first-person travel animation from the perspective of the Tempest. Getting between planets can take 10 to 15 seconds and most of the planets are completely devoid of resources. The ones that have anything just take a single click to suck up everything they've got, and just shows up as a tiny indication of the left side of the screen. +159 Iron or 50 Milky Way Research points or something. At least flash that stuff on the screen in big letters to tell me what a good space explorer I am. Even if it just gets me enough junk to buy one gun, I need to feel like all that time slowly crawling between empty planets was worth it.

Jarred: I've gotta be honest, the characters look ugly. Those eyes... don't look into their dead, lifeless eyes. I'm not even convinced the worlds in general look much better than the last two Mass Effect games. Maybe I'm just jaded, but this is the same engine that powers the amazing looking Battlefield 1, only it runs significantly worse.

but this is a bit warming

Chris: More than anything else, my early experience of Andromeda was defined by just how closely it mirrors the first game. This is a spiritual successor to the first Mass Effect in many ways, ignoring or undoing many of the ways the original series changed in its sequels. It's an RPG with shooter elements, not a shooter with RPG elements. It has free roaming elements and driving. And it closely mirrors the pace of ME1's opening, too, from the stakes-setting first mission to the extended space station walk-and-talk section to the first, introductory, relatively linear objective that you're given. The details are different but the rhythms are the same&#8212;so similar, in fact, that I think it's a fair criticism to say that BioWare is rolling out a structure of play that has had ten years to become overfamiliar.

 

[Gator86]

Holy shit, this scanning thing is trash. Why would they keep that?

 

[Kthulhu]

Didn't they say that the animations were gonna get better at E3? Cuz they look worse to me.

 

[Mezoly]

I mean...How many people really go to bat for DAI these days? I see a lot of people who likes it who, in hindsight, seem to go "that game was sort of a slog"

I love DA:I. It won multiple GOTY awards. If anything, it's a vocal minority and Bioware haters bandwagon who hates it.

 

[The Broker]

DICE employee in charge of sending the Frostbite animations manual to BioWare:

 

[The Wart]

Doesn' change the fact that there are people who seriously think that way here.

I agree? Apparently my mockery of those people was too subtle.

There are weird uncanny valley aspects of many character models, particularly the eyes and the lighting, but the way the community obsessively and pretty much exclusively fixates on the female faces is pretty fucked up.

 

[ironcreed]

I love DA:I. It won multiple GOTY awards. If anything, it's a vocal minority and Bioware haters bandwagon who hates it.

Yeah, I love it as well.

 

[texhnolyze]

Or... OR... people liked DA:I

Opinions are great... like the guy earlier in the thread that thought "Hey a negative preview, I can finally say I told you so!" despite plenty of positive previews. The people who enjoy prior bioware games will likely enjoy this game. People that didn't wont. That's the fun of having your own opinion. I don't think Hype has anything to do with it.

Seems like a pretty hard concept to grasp for some people.

"The game is bad so you should feel bad for enjoying it."

 

[The Technomancer]

PC Gamer has a lot of alarm bells going off:

The secret

Is that BioWare has actually been bad at storytelling for a while now

 

[wolfhowwl]

Don't even think I'm going to buy this anymore... I can't believe this. This stream is shocking.

I'm such a big Mass Effect fan.

Yeah, it's a huge step down from the second and third games.

For all its flaws the first game wasn't lazy and sloppy like this either.

 

[Lime]

The secret

Is that BioWare has actually been bad at storytelling for a while now

:lol I know and I should've taken it into account. Especially with Mac Walters as creative director and Halo 4 writer as the lead. Not sure what I tried to tell myself the last couple of months. Maybe the promises of ME1 exploration and sci-fi rpg with at least serviceable storytelling :/

 

[LiquidSolid]

Guerilla Games is superior to Bioware in term of raw talent. They still struggle with putting out quality games on a consistent basic (which is very hard to do), but they do have the tech. Fantastic tech along with great art designs and top notch moment to moment animations. There's just no way we can compare GG and Bioware.

I don't expect Bioware to match GG or CD Projekt Red respective strengths, but they should at least reach the AAA standard.

ME: A is an AAA game based on it's budget, but the team working behind it is so sloppy that it's an A / AA caliber game. The roughness of Andromeda is usually what you get out of some obscure European dev which has no money and are in way over their heads lol.

Why? I feel like doing that and holding them to a lower standard is one of the reason studios get in this kind of situation. Instead of being forced to compete and evolve, they're happy with their current standard, while more ambitious studios (like CD Projekt Red and now Guerrilla) end up surpassing them. If Bioware can't compete then that's their problem and they need to solve it, it's not like they lack the resources to do so. Same goes for Bethesda and Telltale.

And TBH, I don't think it's just tech or animation Bioware's been weak on, it's the structure of their games (which is very formulaic IMO) and the writing too.

 

[essenn]

Am I a shitbag for wanting Andromeda to bomb both critically and commercially so that we can get back to Kotor?

Sorry ME fans

Maybe if it was 10 years ago. I don't wanna see 2017 Bioware ruining KOTOR too

 

[Jarmel]

:lol I know and I should've taken it into account. Especially with Mac Walters as creative director and Halo 4 writer as the lead. Not sure what I tried to tell myself the last couple of months. Maybe the promises of ME1 exploration and sci-fi rpg with at least serviceable storytelling :/

Mac Walters is an automatic red flag.

 

[Khezu]

So what's so special about Pathfinders?

Why couldn't like any well trained person do this?

 

[aGuyInaBearSuit]

Christ, the animations look like Disney park animatronics, and the dialogue is just as mechanical.

In a post-Witcher world, that doesn't cut it anymore. I expect a Fallout 4-style thrashing by fans.

 

[Ryzaki009]

Mac Walters is an automatic red flag.

Yeah I was pretty meh on him in the first place but yeah. Rip. I guess I should stick to DA from now on.

 

[Vire]

WE FUCKING GOT THIS

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Maybe I should just play BG2 again and relive the good ole days. I'm still getting this, but man it's not looking good. Please surprise me Bioware.

 

[Charamiwa]

I read the Kotaku preview which was extremely positive, but after watching EZA and now GB streaming it, people actually playing the game, I really don't see how you could be that positive on the game.

It's not just the technical stuff either. All the squad members and other npc are super flat, they all treat you like a god for no reason. There's no sense of mystery, there seem to be a disconnect about the theme of discovery and unknown and how boring it all seems.

Even the combat had wonky AI, and the jump and dash seem barely adequate to the small corridor environnements.

Here's hoping it picks up after a while.

 

[Catvoca]

Don't even think I'm going to buy this anymore... I can't believe this. This stream is shocking.

I'm such a big Mass Effect fan.

I feel the same way. I should be the easiest fan to please, I mean I loved ME3 and I enjoyed Inquisition (or parts of it) quite a bit but this looks awful. So disappointed by what I'm seeing.

 

[HoodWinked]

halp Casey Hudsons

 

[obeast]

Maybe if it was 10 years ago. I don't wanna see 2017 Bioware ruining KOTOR too

Nearly everything that's wrong with modern Bioware games is also wrong with KOTOR. It's just a much earlier game, so it gets graded more gently (as is only fair).

KOTOR totally enchanted me when I played it near release, and I still like it enough to replay it every ~5 years, but nearly every element - including the writing and voice acting - has aged poorly.

 

[The Technomancer]

:lol I know and I should've taken it into account. Especially with Mac Walters as creative director and Halo 4 writer as the lead. Not sure what I tried to tell myself the last couple of months. Maybe the promises of ME1 exploration and sci-fi rpg with at least serviceable storytelling :/

I've deliberately avoided reading or watching much of this game because I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised. And I'm sure there are people who will enjoy it. But the stuff I'm reading now assures me that this game would drive me nuts

 

[aGuyInaBearSuit]

And the AI just went stupid on the GB stream there.

This is looking grim.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Searching the galaxy looks like trididash. The space travel looks cool but it got old after they did it 3 times on the GB stream. Way too slow.

 

[Kthulhu]

And the AI just went stupid on the GB stream there.

This is looking grim.

Who looked at this build and thought "this is what we want critics to see"?

 

[SomedayTheFire]

I feel the same way. I should be the easiest fan to please, I mean I loved ME3 and I enjoyed Inquisition (or parts of it) quite a bit but this looks awful. So disappointed by what I'm seeing.

Right there with you. I should, in theory, enjoy anything thrown at me in a Mass Effect dressing but these streams are horrible. Oh well I'll be able to play it tomorrow, let's see how that goes.

 

[Vlaphor]

Alright, the open world looks kinda alright so far. I guess that's to be expected with the Frostbite engine, but at least this is some good news.

 

[Jarmel]

Who looked at this build and thought "this is what we want critics to see"?

EA

 

[Ryzaki009]

And the AI just went stupid on the GB stream there.

This is looking grim.

Expecting the AI not to be stupid in a BW's game was a fool's hope from the beginning.

It's why I lmao at that restricted weapons because it made the AI smarter nonsense.

 

[Gator86]

"And space baby makes three" in the chat killed me. This game looks hilariously mediocre. I was already planning against buying it, but it might fall down the gamefly queue for Nier.