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

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Oh, we're doing the single still frame in the middle of an animation to prove it's the norm, thing? I'm not saying Horizon is perfect when it comes to facial animations, but it far from "awful" Or "last gen" by open world standards, only game that does it better is the Witcher 3, which also isn't perfect.
I mean, there is no animation. That frame represents the "peak" of her smile. lol
I could capture it, and dozens of other BioWare-esque conversations from the game, and I think you'd have to be an apologist to say that they look particularly good.

The pre-rendered cutscenes/specifically created cutscenes look fine, but the in-engine conversation stuff where she stands around talking to another person who stands around just looks bad.

(I also think that when you make a game where you have a "photo mode", every aspect of your game should look good, particularly when your entire story is told by people standing around talking to your player character)

Edit: maybe it is a case of the models looking good but the animations looking off, but it defeinitely bugged me as I was playing through the game.
 

Lime

Member
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.

For one thing, at least in terms of writing, guess who's the creative director of this game
 

jwhit28

Member
walk265k56.gif

NO CHANCE!

That's what you got.
 

Floody

Member
I mean, there is no animation. That frame represents the "peak" of her smile. lol
I could capture it, and dozens of other BioWare-esque conversations from the game, and I think you'd have to be an apologist to say that they look particularly good.

The pre-rendered cutscenes/specifically created cutscenes look fine, but the in-engine conversation stuff where she stands around talking to another person who stands around just looks bad.

(I also think that when you make a game where you have a "photo mode", every aspect of your game should look good, particularly when your entire story is told by people standing around talking to your player character)

By what standard is this bad?
Yeah I don't agree with you as far as Horizon is concerened. There's obviously a bit of jank here and there but majority of the game is pretty good:

SickHarmfulFrillneckedlizard.gif
ComplexLimpingBlackwidowspider.gif
DesertedVerifiableEuropeanfiresalamander.gif
TalkativeElatedArchaeopteryx.gif

You'd have a hard time finding a open world game that tops it.
 
I mean, there is no animation. That frame represents the "peak" of her smile. lol
I could capture it, and dozens of other BioWare-esque conversations from the game, and I think you'd have to be an apologist to say that they look particularly good.

The pre-rendered cutscenes/specifically created cutscenes look fine, but the in-engine conversation stuff where she stands around talking to another person who stands around just looks bad.

(I also think that when you make a game where you have a "photo mode", every aspect of your game should look good, particularly when your entire story is told by people standing around talking to your player character)

Mmm no I wouldn't say that at all, unless you're comparing it to Uncharted, Quantum Break, and similar games... nope. It's better than any Bethesda game, any Biowere, Deus Ex an lot of others.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Aloy and Petra
 

Randdalf

Member
I wouldn't be surprised if after this game comes out, the post-mortem conclusion is that "going open world was a mistake." Not necessarily from the perspective of it not being very good, but the fact they've needed to rebuild all of Mass Effect in Frostbite, which is no small undertaking, and build an entire open world game around it as well, stretching themselves thin in the process. It also kind of makes me think BioWare lost track of what made people like Mass Effect in the first place. It wasn't content or collectables or nonsense like that, but the story and the characters, tightly woven into what at the end of the day was a series of linear levels played out in a non-linear order. Hopefully Andromeda delivers on that front, even if it has a shaky start, but I'm very skeptical the open world element brings anything substantial that enhances the game as a Mass Effect game and isn't just a bullet point on the back of the box.
 

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
This is the type of preview/review I was talking about. Several people discussing their views on what they played. Wish this style would become the default.
This is what happens on a lot of gaming podcasts. It's the best way to build an opinion.
 

heringer

Member
Man, I just watched a 1 hour playthrough and the animations are hot garbage, just as the character models. Ryder looks worse than Shep, like, way worse. If people thought Horizon cutscenes were janky...
 

wolfhowwl

Banned
I knew something was weird when they wanted to make the worst and most unpopular part of the first game such a focus with the nu-Mako.
 
It's bad. Real bad. Inquisition was decent enough, not sure how they fucked up here.

It's funny how EA said they would give however much time they needed to get the game out. And they come out with these piss poor animations. Makes you wonder!

It's literally my only gripe from what I've seen so far. Call it hyperbole but it actually looks worse than mass effect 3 facial animation.
 
At four or so hours in, Andromeda hasn’t given me a single reason to keep playing
I’ll caveat what I’m about to say by noting I’m only six hours in, but right now I’m not sure I even want to play much more, and that hurts given how much I was looking forward to this.
Ho boy that doesn't sound good
 

heringer

Member
It's funny how EA said they would give however much time they needed to get the game out. And they come out with these piss poor animations. Makes you wonder!

It's literally my only gripe from what I've seen so far. Call it hyperbole but it actually looks worse than mass effect 3 facial animation.

I honestly feel the same way, and I played ME3 a couple of weeks ago.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I think most people who like Inquisition acknowledge the very serious flaws. I liked it and finished it but it was like not what I would consider a good RPG.
 
I think most people who like Inquisition acknowledge the very serious flaws. I liked it and finished it but it was like not what I would consider a good RPG.

Agree. Really didn't enjoy my time with Inquisition. 80% felt like a chore to play.


I honestly feel the same way, and I played ME3 a couple of weeks ago.


Yup I've been playing through ME2 and I swear that looks more natural than Andromeda.
 

Dingobloo

Neo Member
My impression of the Origin Access trial so far is that I might have spent $6 AUD to save $80...

I had to knock the settings down far more than expected and the controls still felt sluggish, the lowered texture resolution means that even the faces that animate well (Alec Ryder) look quite poor.

It's also doing it no favours that I'm clearing the Witcher 3 from my backlog in preparation where the conversations, sidequests and pacing out of combat is blowing it away.
 
Geez after that first trailer where Fem Ryder steals the gun in that awful animation everyone said

'WTF, why does that look so bad?'
"Just one part of the trailer, not an issue"

And now it seems like the games legacy will be about how it is janky as fuck. I'm really not sure if people will accept something like this when the bar has been raised so high (very recently) I expect lots of reviewers coming off of Horizon and BOTW and just giving this 5's and 6's. There will definitely be 9's and a few 10's. But this is definitely concerning.
 

Neptonic

Member
I can respect this savage tear down as someone who has never played a ME game. This person was not having a good time at all with this game.
 
My unique concern so far is that when everyone aligns against a game before its launch is because something wrong it's really happening.

On the other hand, I can't believe that after three fantastic games (I love 3) they shit the bed with this one. I also liked Inquisition quite a lot.
 

bndadm

Member
I will be honest and say from the start I was lukewarm on the premise. But watching the streams on Game Informer and Giant Bomb, all the jank in the world cant measure up to the cliche dialogue. Which is dissapointing after all this time.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I mean focusing on small keyframing issues is sort of petty. I think it's more important to focus on crap writing and world building...
 

Lime

Member
Geez after that first trailer where Fem Ryder steals the gun in that awful animation everyone said

'WTF, why does that look so bad?'
"Just one part of the trailer, not an issue"

And now it seems like the games legacy will be about how it is janky as fuck. I'm really not sure if people will accept something like this when the bar has been raised so high (very recently) I expect lots of reviewers coming off of Horizon and BOTW and just giving this 5's and 6's. There will definitely be 9's and a few 10's. But this is definitely concerning.

When shitty animations end up in widely disseminated public trailers like for the Game Awards, you know there's a reason for it.

I didn't actually understand the damage control by Bioware and others that it was just a bug and it would be fixed before release. Why even include an animation in your public trailer? And how the hell do you plan to fix it 2 months before the game goes gold?
 
Seems like 99% of the problems are to do with character models, animation and writing. There are aspects of the game that look a lot better though. The combat for example, looks pretty fun. I like the environments and a lot of the tech. Maybe the writing will get better in other areas of the game.

It's such a massive ambitious game and it seems like they reached and failed in some areas, and were probably just flat out incompetent in others. Troubled development? Biting off more than they can chew? Who knows.

I have to say, I still can't wait to play the thing and really see all it has to offer. I imagine it's going to be some kind of big beautiful trainwreck that you kind of have to experience. Inquisition was dull and tedious. This game looks like it took some crazy pills.
 
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