We Streamed Some Mass Effect: Andromeda | 15 March 2017
giantbomb.com/videos/we-streamed-some-mass-ef...
giantbomb.comPosted Mar 16, 2017, 2:44 AM UTC
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giantbomb.comTL;DW: Environments look great, shooting and RPG elements seem nice, the game doesn't come off super well at the beginning, characters aren't introduced well at all, and man, the animations and especially the human faces look like hot garbage. I mean jesus. Look at the video preview image! It's nuts! The main character's eyeballs are twice the size they should be, and his irises are half the size they should be!
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Someone in chat pointed out that the reason the faces look so weird (aside from the lip sync) is because the eyebrows never move, like ever. I can't stop staring at them now, they only ever shift like 1 mm up or down it's really weird
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The lip sync and facial animations are bad, but there's a ton of bad scene direction in there that's leading to all the awkward moments of silence. There's some dreadful scene angles (in the scenes where Brad doesn't control the camera), delayed animations, bad animations, no sound or too much sound in the background. The lip sync can probably be put down to hitting the auto lip sync button and saying fuck it that'll do, but the rest is a straight up amateur job.
In a series and from a developer that are both all about conversations this is tragic.
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I've always felt that BioWare's robotic animations interfered with my ability to take any of the characters seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTA8X27KUMc
Even in Mass Effect 1, which I enjoyed quite a lot, every line felt bland and a lot of the environments felt sterile.
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Mass Effect 1 had the excuse of being 10 years younger than present, being a genuine leap forward at the time for this sort of character interaction within an RPG, and being their first time using the engine (UE3 at the time).
Mass Effect: Andromeda is not their first Frostbite game, there's a precedent already set previously from Dragon Age: Inquisition and there's much higher standard to be met now we're 10 years further down the line (Which they've previously met!).
Even in Mass Effect 1, which I enjoyed quite a lot, every line felt bland and a lot of the environments felt sterile.
Conversations looked better in Mass Effect 1 than Andromeda. The visual model of each character is not as advanced, but conversation scenes look far more natural than they do here. I mean christ, you'll find more evidence of life in a vat of acid. (And I'd put money on the fucking sex scenes being animated to perfection which is the biggest insult here)
That said, on my time with the trial so far (5 hours) I've stopped noticing the conversations so much because I have reverted to my usual form of reading the subtitles and skipping ahead so I've dodged most of it.
This game has far bigger problems than just the animations, mainly that it is utterly lacking in flavor. It's about as sterile as can be. You could slap a different title (and obviously change the alien models) on this game and you couldn't tell it was meant to be a Mass Effect game. There's little that ties it thematically to the previous games. There's almost no music when you are running around the social spaces, which is odd given the great use of background audio this series has had in the past. There's already too much scanning and hidden object hunting. The immediate suggestions of existential threats in the opening mission are a tedious trope that the new setting should have made it easy to avoid. It definitely retains the MMO-esque design philosophy of Inquisition.
It's just a bit boring and uninspiring. Given the premise of Andromeda they needed to recapture that 'Whole New World' sensation that the first game had, where the prospect of exploring a new galaxy offered an opportunity for new experiences. And Mass Effect 1 managed that by beginning with a really quite low-key plot that evolved into existential threats to existence (remember that the initial premise of ME1 was to track down a rogue agent and discover his motives). It gave the player room to breath and left them free to enjoy the exploration aspect free of the weight of the plot on their shoulders. Andromeda needed another low-key start to establish the new galaxy and ease you into the threats it held, rather than immediately throwing you in at the deep end.
I think the more open world-ish design of this and Inquisition goes against Bioware's traditional strengths and a bit too much of the Star Wars design document has informed the creation of both. I don't think I'll be picking this up until a good sale appears because I'm really not enjoying it at present, and that's coming from someone who's career was in part influenced by love of this series.
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I've seen some people say that the PS4 Pro version (version GB played) has some issues.
edit: playing the trial on Xbox One. It strangely doesn't appear as bad? Idk...
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The thing that made Mass Effect compelling was the character animation during conversations. I specifically remember the lead-up to ME1 with Bioware highlighting the use of body language like breaking eye contact to convey deception or anxiety. My one hope was that they would fix the issues with bad lighting and glossy/plastic skin textures but instead they appear to have regressed further into the uncanny valley.
The writing for the Ryder character so far sounds super bland. It's like he has no personality beyond "I'm the Pathfinder 'cause of my dad". Everyone else seems to have been ripped out of Brave New World, acting like they're all poor Betas and Gammas who thankfully don't have to worry their pretty little heads now that the Alpha has arrived. At least Shepherd had a bare minimum of backstory to explain what he did to earn his status as Specter.
Fortunately, the combat/movement and environments have improved in an interesting direction. There looks to be a lot more freedom to explore, with more variety and verticality.
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The first time you see that it's horrifying. After about 10 loops you can kind of see where they were going with it. I wonder if the animators had just seen the awful animations so many times they couldn't even see how bad they were anymore.
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For me it feels like the team was force to work on in-house engine Frostbyte and they didn't know what to do with it(lack of experience or whatever). So they dump all stuff from FIFA and here we are. When I saw all the running animations and face animations for me it felt like I watch mod for FIFA. Not BF3/4/1 animations but specifically FIFA.
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Haven't watched this yet as I was playing about three hours of this. Here's my initial take:
I think the writing is hit and miss but is weighted in the former. The opening is a bit too cluttered, so you can miss stuff (new characters, state of the world) due to them throwing so much at you at such speed.
Your character controls slightly sluggish (large wind up to get moving), like worse than Geralt from the witcher initially, but things smooth out in combat. Jump jets are quite fun but can get you into trouble. Control scheme will take some getting used to. Melee is on Y, which is awkward.
As for the facial animations, they range from competent to poor. Not much of an improvement over the original trilogy. Voice acting seems solid but sometimes it feels like somebody forgot their lines, as in there is a lot of dead air between lines. Probably because the animations that are happening aren't obvious enough.
All in all, I'm intrigued. Don't think I got nearly as far as they did (still doing side stuff on the Nexus) but I'll definitely be seeing this one through. I'm getting a whiff of the feelings I had playing the first game and I'd like to see if there's more where that came from.
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I feel like you just described every Bioware game.
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Combat in this one feels quite good though. Much better than any of the previous titles.
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Camera directing is really bad.
I believe the original trilogy didn't do as many close-ups, instead more panning and switching between angles to make things feel cinematic. So less emphasis on facial animations but rather body gesture/tilt, which seemed easier and more natural.
Here every shot of Scott is right in his face, even when he is just talking to the AI in his head, resulting in these awkward shots where he just stares into space.
Environments and combat looked good though. At the end of the day, the story will make or break this game. ME1 had weird world-building, indoctrination, Sovereign, and run for the Citadel (I still the strongest writing of the series), ME2 had the elusive man, Legion, and other squadmate stories. ME3 also had its moments. We will see...
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Did somebody steal all the eyelids?
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No wonder that lady's face is tired.
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I'm glad they talked about the writing as well. It did not impress me at all; everyone seemed to be so "quippy".
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With the introduction of the Asari character, all I could see was Dreamworks Face.
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There are some really amazing Shrek mashups out there
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I wonder if they'll review this. They seem to just give up on games they hate which I definitely don't blame them for and this video was just 100% negative. I dont think they even reviewed Inquisition.
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Matt Rorie reviewed Inquisition. Four stars.
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Oh shit, you're totally right. I've been listening to older GOTY podcasts and I just finished 2014 and they were all pretty down on the game so I assumed none of them reviewed it.
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Most of them gave up on Witcher 3 though, a game which took the Bioware model and leapt far, far ahead of them in every respect. This so far looks nowhere near that game.
Rorie loves RPGs in a way the rest of the team don't so much.
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I could see them reviewing it out of spite and because they actually like Mass Effect. I bet Brad gets a review out. From that video it sounds like a 2 star game but I bet it gets at least a 3
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So when's the Star Trek VR bridge game coming out?
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Why is it that every time I take a chance and buy a game close to release, it ends up being not so good? The last game I did this with was No Man's Sky, and this time I pre-ordered Mass Effect. It's me. I did it. I broke the space games.
I'm glad this game exists, because man I loved ME3's multiplayer and I'm totally down for some current-gen alien bonin', but boy oh boy, does it ever look like a really elaborate and poorly executed fan-made project.
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Let this be a lesson to those who may not have learned from No Man's Sky. Do not pre-order. Ever.
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I wish they hadn't made another Mass Effect game.
why couldn't they have just left the series alone
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Nothing can erase what came before. I for one am a massive ME fan and I'm super glad they gave it another shot. For my money they created the best universe in video games and I want to spend more time in it
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How does this ruin the previous 3 games? Oh, it doesn't? Ok.
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next you're going to tell me that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull didn't make you think at least a little less about the other Indiana Jones movies
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It didn't. I can enjoy those original 3 movies as much as I always did. The idea that a bad thing in a franchise somehow ruins good things in that franchise is CRAZY.
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I'd rather have 3 good movies and no bad movie than 3 good movies and a bad movie
CHECKMATE
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As a ME fan who's been waiting five goddamn years for this game the lack of polish on display is really disheartening.
Im playing through the trial right now. It reminds me of the first mass effect in terms of general jankiness. That game still managed to be amazing despite all that, so I'm hopeful.
Except it's 2017 and the 4th game of the series so you can't excuse this level of jank like you could for the first one.
It's on a new engine so it might as well be a completely new series, honestly,
This is their second game on this engine.
Yea, I'm getting serious ME1 vibes from this game except it plays waaaay better and the soundtrack isn't as good. I can't wait for Tuesday