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Early impressions from RPS for ME:A. It's... not good

J

Jocund

Member
jtb said:
How can KOTOR's writing have aged poorly when BioWare has been copying it beat for beat, trying (and failing) desperately to recapture the sense of wonder and innocence that game inspired?

For starters, KOTOR has a plot, which is more than you can say for just about every game BioWare has made in the past decade.

BioWare's writing has always been formulaic. But it's gone from being formulaic to bad and formulaic.
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I'd argue that their flagrant copy-pasting in regards to story structure has had a retroactive effect. I love KOTOR, but it's clear to me now more than ever that that game doesn't offer much in terms of effective writing, be it character-level stuff or the backbone stuff, like structure.

I'd put most of their output (Jade Empire, the first Dragon Age, all three previous Mass Effects) on the level of KOTOR. And as much as I like those games, the scripts have only ever been kind of okay, and really good in spots.
 
S

Spiritwalker

Member
AAMARMO said:
Can't wait for the CrowbCat video.
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I was just thinking this lol.

The GB stream has completely put me off buying this game. It looks like a shoddy early alpha game with some of the worst animations I've seen in recent years. I was hoping at least the writing would be decent, but noooope.
 
S

spazchicken

Member
Within minutes of starting there’s a cutscene in which a soldier type is shooting an already entirely dead corpse, and someone else has to say, “Hey, hey, take it easy,” and he fires off a few more shots and declares himself satisfied.
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What's wrong with that as a scene?
 
Demoskinos

Demoskinos

Member
My take on ME:A is that they put all their development resources into making the sex scenes were fantastic and then forgot to build the RPG part.
 
J

jtb

Banned
Jocund said:
I'd argue that their flagrant copy-pasting in regards to story structure has had a retroactive effect. I love KOTOR, but it's clear to me now more than ever that that game doesn't offer much in terms of effective writing, be it character-level stuff or the backbone stuff, like structure.

I'd put most of their output (Jade Empire, the first Dragon Age, all three previous Mass Effects) on the level of KOTOR. And as much as I like those games, the scripts have only ever been kind of okay, and really good in spots.
Click to expand...

Makes sense. I go the opposite way. Seeing the diminishing returns of beating their formula to a bloody pulp just makes me appreciate the focus and simplicity (and charm!) of KOTOR.

(Also, KOTOR does have the huge benefit of a sequel that really adds in some background texture to the first game's story, while the Dragon Age and Mass Effect sequels do the exact opposite.)
 
P

Pops Maellard

Member
Spiritwalker said:
I was just thinking this lol.

The GB stream has completely put me off buying this game. It looks like a shoddy early alpha game with some of the worst animations I've seen in recent years. I was hoping at least the writing would be decent, but noooope.
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GB stream is making me think this game is one step away from a dumpster fire. Looks shockingly awful.

I really liked the ME franchise. Shame they're throwing it away.
 
GHG

GHG

Gold Member
No wonder they kept this game completely under wraps until just a few weeks ago.

Oh well, with the way this year was going something was bound to not live up to expectations eventually.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
There are an awful lot of very dismissive posts in here but honestly have y'all been watching any of the streams? Because going by what I've seen thus far his criticisms seem spot on. I get that people love this franchise but you have to remember this is Mass Effect by an entirely different studio who have only a small handful of people who were involved in the original trilogy at all using a completely different engine. The pedigree of the previous games really has almost 0 bearing on what to expect out of this game knowing that.
 
J

Jocund

Member
jtb said:
Makes sense. I go the opposite way. Seeing the diminishing returns of beating their formula to a bloody pulp just makes me appreciate the focus and simplicity (and charm!) of KOTOR.

(Also, KOTOR does have the huge benefit of a sequel that really adds in some background texture to the first game's story, while the Dragon Age and Mass Effect sequels do the exact opposite.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'd agree that KOTOR does have a charm to it they haven't completely been able to recapture. I think you can find some of it in Jade Empire and DA1, but never all of it as it was in Star Wars.
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
Sycoraxic98 said:
I mean, this is the build going to consumers, not just critics. For $60.

Fiscal is a bitch, ain't it? I'm not saying that Bioware didn't feel like they finished, or anything else, but I'm sure in a scenario where Bioware felt they needed another two months, it was "finished enough" as of January to polish, stabilize, cert, and ship.
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I don't work in the industry, and I'm not gonna pretend that it makes financial sense to release this game as is.

But surely, they could've done better than this.

I've seen SFM videos with better animation than this. Hell I've seen SFM porn that looked better than this.

Plus the delivery of the lines sounds auful, and I'm not picky about voice acting.
 
E

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
Things are looking really rough. Going to need to see some good impressions from Origin Access tomorrow.

Looks like Montreal was not up to the task at all. How do you fuck up so much with character models and animations? DAI was pretty decent on that front and was cross gen, this looks decidedly worse in all regards. I know the size of the game limits how much fine detail they can add to each interaction, but everyone looks pretty fucking bad by any standard. How do you mismanage such a major franchise?
 
J

Jocund

Member
The texture pop-in on the faces remind me of when I tried to play Inquisition on the gen 7 consoles. Those were dark times.
 
A

A-V-B

Member
What is UP with this writing?

Whatever vague hopes I had for this game are dying with every passing minute. This is like... the things the first game got right that necessitated its sequels? Andromeda is getting wrong.

Think I'll just nope out of this.
 
D

Doctor_Thomas

Member
Ouch.

I think, genuinely, coming off the back of Horzon and Zelda, it's going to make Mass Effect look even worse. Two really polished games, ME needs to step it up.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Yeah the animations I've seen in these gifs and clips so far don't look encouraging. I'll watch a stream archive or Giant Bomb quick look or something later. What sort of baffles me is the comparison if you look back at DAI, which actually has really good looking faces despite being a cross-gen game.
 
A

AntraxSuicide

Banned
spazchicken said:
0384d956f17a85092b76f6c2eea0fdc0.gif


Not to discredit his impression of the game but this comes off as someone who was forced to play the game and would probably rather be playing Nintendogz.
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I have to agree. This is the only ME:A review I've read so far (media purge for this) and it's not super well-written. It sounds like the writer just went into it poorly? If that makes sense? Like, similar to that old Darksiders 2 review on IGN where the writer just couldn't stop mentioning Zelda every paragraph (and I even didn't like Darksiders 2!).
 
T

TheFatMan

Member
I think he animation is honestly to stiff and rigid, it doesn't look good compared to games like Horizon, Uncharted or even the Witcher. During some cutscenes it feels like you are controlling robotic store mannequins.

It doesn't ruin the game for me at all, but it could be a helluva lot better and is gonna cause this game to get some lower ratings I think. Honestly though the game is pretty fun and if you let the visuals ruin it for you, you'll be missing out.
 
T

Tranqueris

Banned
If the reviews aren't extremely favorable, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to put out some kind of statement saying, "while we pride ourselves in providing quality experiences, yadda, yadda, we are committed to working on this game until it meets the highest standards."
 
digoutyoursoul

digoutyoursoul

Member
A-V-B said:
It's just a bit heartbreaking. I don't think this series will survive a failure.
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Gutted

I don't know if I can be bothered being pissed off at the head team who worked on this. Five years in development and there is footage clearly showing it's not finished in certain aspects.
 
R

Randdalf

Member
I'm really quite surprised how rough the conversation system is given how important that feature is to Mass Effect. I'd much rather have a super polished version of that than a bunch of open world stuff.
 
C

Chumley

Banned
Tranqueris said:
If the reviews aren't extremely favorable, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to put out some kind of statement saying, "while we pride ourselves in providing quality experiences, yadda, yadda, we are committed to working on this game until it meets the highest standards."
Click to expand...

They can't fix the character models, animations, and writing.

And honestly, if they fucked those 3 core pillars up this badly, they shouldn't even be given the chance to try again. How on earth they thought they could just job those parts of the game after how pissed everyone was about ME3 defies logic.
 
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