Mass Effect: Andromeda (PC/Mac/PS4/XB1)

[Souj]

None of the higher ups at EA would consider the amount of work required (and thus having to pay people to fix it) worth it to please a bunch of whiny internet nerds who probably weren't even going to buy the game anyways.

It was enough for me to cancel my preorder. When 50%+ of your game is based on character and yiu have this kind of disconnect, thats a very bad thing. Maybe a lot of the negatives have been blown far out of proportion, but there's been far too many great games this year and more still to come for me to take a chance on this game as a preorder. Once I'm done with the other stuff I might go back and pick this up, but until then I'm going to keep play more Nier and Nioh.

And yeah, there's no patching this, even if EA wanted to. At this point they just have to eat shit. Odds are it's not bothering any of the execs though.

[Tarage]

They should have done it right in the first place. It's not like EA said "Make these animations look like shit." They did that all on their own.

[Souj]

Most definitely.

[Krandor]

Maybe a lot of the negatives have been blown far out of proportion

They have by obscene proportions. All the videos highlighting the stupid facial animations are almost entirely from the same 3 or 4 scenes. The general quality of the animation isn't great, but it's far better then the hysteria would leave one to believe. Most of the general movement animations are obvious glitches that could be patched.

Same stuff extends to the writing, most of it is fine, but the trouble spots are being beaten over everyone's head over and over again.

A large number of people have been looking for reasons to hate Bioware because they have a bunch of employees who are legitimately awful people + SJW nonsense, and paired up with people on the hunt for sweet reddit karma/youtube clicks, here we are.

[Andalusian girls]

'whiny internet nerds' is p dismissive. shouldn't be surprised fanboys demand everyone accept and overlook the flaws of a broken product as they have but here we are

for whatever it's worth this is the first Mass Effect i won't be getting opening day and it's solely the result of playing the trial. loved Bioware since Baldur's Gate II but am not obligated to give them money, especially in the middle of an insanely crowded release season.

[Obsidian]

They should have done it right in the first place. It's not like EA said "Make these animations look like shit." They did that all on their own.

It's not like the people at the studio went "we should make these animations look like shit" either.

[NynJa]

It's not like the people at the studio went "we should make these animations look like shit" either.

Someone at the studio should have said "what in the fucking fuck is this?" when presented with these animations.

[Souj]

Jesus shoulda been like "wtf Bioware. I ain't dying for your sins. Fuck dis shit imma go to da club and motorboat all da fine bitches."

[Obsidian]

Someone at the studio should have said "what in the fucking fuck is this?" when presented with these animations.

For all you know, somebody did. As has already been established, it's a time-intensive thing to go back and modify.

[NynJa]

For all you know, somebody did. As has already been established, it's a time-intensive thing to go back and modify.

I'm no programmer or digital editor, but I'd like to think that at some point on the design process between the storyboard and the final touches on the game, SOMEBODY on that entire staff must have looked at these animations with a hint of micromanagement and said "we can do better than this". Its not like its one singular mess up that slipped through the cracks. One (or more) of the team leaders looked at that work of their team and said "yup, this is our final product, we cant make it better than this"

[Tarage]

For all you know, somebody did. As has already been established, it's a time-intensive thing to go back and modify.

Hi. I'm a video game programmer.

The thing about making a video game is it's an iterative process. You go through iterations and then you fix what's broken while adding new things. What you are claiming is through all the iterations, they didn't have any time to fix this shit. Bullshit. They worked on this game for years. If you don't have time to fix something this blatantly wrong, you have no business being in the industry.

[Obsidian]

Having done some engine programming and some model rigging myself, those two things typically happen in parallel. And I assume what happened here is they ripped all the assets they had from ME3, tried to force them into Frostbite, got a demo set up and someone said "good enough", they got farther into the animating process, realized some things really weren't going to look great and were too committed to their schedule at that point to go back and rig everything again from scratch.

It's the first release from the studio. Shit happens, they underestimated how much time they needed for certain things as new studios tend to, they probably took some shortcuts without fully understanding the ramifications of those shortcuts. To sit there and act like BioWare Montreal intentionally fucked up the animations to piss people off is just asinine. To sit there and pretend like they could have fixed them in a reasonable time-frame and simply chose not to is equally asinine. No one ships stuff like this and goes "yeah, I'm proud of that."

[Tarage]

Having done some engine programming and some model rigging myself, those two things typically happen in parallel. And I assume what happened here is they ripped all the assets they had from ME3, tried to force them into Frostbite, got a demo set up and someone said "good enough", they got farther into the animating process, realized some things really weren't going to look great and were too committed to their schedule at that point to go back and rig everything again from scratch.

It's the first release from the studio. Shit happens, they underestimated how much time they needed for certain things as new studios tend to, they probably took some shortcuts without fully understanding the ramifications of those shortcuts. To sit there and act like BioWare Montreal intentionally fucked up the animations to piss people off is just asinine. To sit there and pretend like they could have fixed them in a reasonable time-frame and simply chose not to is equally asinine. No one ships stuff like this and goes "yeah, I'm proud of that."

Congratulations, you've just described what a bad studio does. And guess what everyone is complaining? That this was done by a bad studio. You've reached the start of the conversation. Here's your gold star.

And no, I will not excuse them because 'they are new'. They were funded by a triple A publisher. This is a $60 game. They aren't some indie company. They don't get a pass for acting like one.

[Prothescar]

I mean the fact that a professional artist being paid to make a AAA multimillion dollar game sat there and looked at their work in this state and said "this is fine", followed by the higher ups along the chain also thumbs upping it and prolly patting each other on the back along the way is fucking absurd and quite frankly indefensible.

Facial animations I can give some leeway on, the only Frostbite game that I've seen do them well is Battlefield 1 and even then they can get a bit janky and DICE has some aces in their sleeves when it comes to working on their own engine. They're still way below the standard I'd expect though, and there is no way I can excuse the horrendous body animations and animation transitions popping and yanking characters around when they switch between different actions.

I can say without a doubt that if I was being paid money to make something I would feel absolutely ashamed to put my name on something as halfassed and comical as what Bioware's artists are offering in terms of their character animations.

[Koul]

I think fans would've been understanding if they pushed the game back for extra lovin or re-touching up of SOME sort. Terrible animations aside, the models themselves are fugly as shit. I get that's the usual for western devs but it's 2017! Come on!

[Prothescar]

Then you've got people saying dumb shit like "well mass effect 1/2/3 didn't look any better!"

A) they did
B) I have a certain expectation for people to improve their skills over time and adapt to new methods and technologies thus creating a better product

It's not the same people working on these games, yes, but honestly I don't see why people working for the same AAA development company should be held to different standards to such an enormous degree, and if that were a consideration for these people to begin with they wouldn't even have grounds to make these arguments. In most fields of work and study you are expected to keep up with the times and constantly better yourself to remain with the pack, not stagnate and accept "good enough".

[NynJa]

To sit there and act like BioWare Montreal intentionally fucked up the animations to piss people off is just asinine. To sit there and pretend like they could have fixed them in a reasonable time-frame and simply chose not to is equally asinine. No one ships stuff like this and goes "yeah, I'm proud of that."

1-No ones saying that intentionally fucked up the animations. Were saying they were content with a shoddy job.
2-Like Tarage said, this is a AAA game with a AAA budget retailing for a AAA value. The customers expect AAA quality.

Also, a couple articles I found dated early Nov 2016, BioWare would have delayed the game further if they felt it "needed more work".

[Obsidian]

I think fans would've been understanding if they pushed the game back for extra lovin or re-touching up of SOME sort.

It would have been a delay of probably 9-12 months to correct animations and models.

[NynJa]

It would have been a delay of probably 9-12 months to correct animations and models.

1-that seems like an exaggeration
2-even if its not an exaggeration, these corrections should have been made before multiple touchups and adjustments.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I have and will continue to make it well-known that I consider this game's SP and all related problems an afterthought so lemme pose this question.

If the janky animations on humans were NOT in your first looks at the game, and instead buried more towards the end, would that make the issue less of a controversy? I mean you still have the problem of faces but to me it seems like most of the reason people are up in arms about this is that it's right there in your first hours/minutes of the game and impossible to ignore.

I do understand the whole triple A budget = seemingly subpar product thing, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. I've come off the heel of several games that had what you might describe as the best of last gen's graphics but phenomenal gameplay and story. So I'd be willing to take a quality bump to how baby's-butt-smooth my player's face is if the rest of the game is polished to a lens flare-inducing shine.

Or in short, give me ps1 graphics for all I care as long as the gameplay is top notch.