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Mass Effect: Andromeda | Review Thread (READ MOD POST)

Lime

Member
The drunk woman was something else. I was only half watching, did they figure that out?

mozP64A.gif


No she just stands there forever
 
These reviews, ouch.

Also, why are all the skin textures so damned flat? Is it the lighting? Because I swear ME2 characters looks loads better than this.
 

Gator86

Member
The thing that annoyed me the most was the galaxy map and it's weird animation transition that happens every time when you want to look at another planet.

Like how in the world did they make the galaxy map worse????

The constant transitions seem infuriating.

Man, Jeff's "oh" followed by disappointed rant after bumping into drunk lady killed me. He seemed actually angry at the game for being mediocre. If he could have cut off the stream right then, I'm sure he would have. This fucking game haha
 

Slaythe

Member
Has this been discussed? This is shocking. It looked 100% better a year ago. How are all the assets both different and worse in the final version? What could possibly have happened to this game?

It's talked about in the Bioware ex employee thread.

It doesn't have a dedicated thread about the downgrades.

mea.gif
 

Karak

Member
Any new info about how the game looks and performs on the PS4 Pro?

Later planets I was getting drops to 24-26. Particle effects REALLY can cause issues as well. Depending on playstyle(lots of skills use) and location there are some places with a heavy amount of drops just walking around.
 

TheFatMan

Member
Has this been discussed? This is shocking. It looked 100% better a year ago. How are all the assets both different and worse in the final version? What could possibly have happened to this game?

It was probably a matter of it being too much for the console. From what I understand the game has frame issues as it is, you increase the graphics to that level and I can't even imagine the problems it would have.
 

Slaythe

Member
It was probably a matter of it being too much for the console. From what I understand the game has frame issues as it is, you increase the graphics to that level and I can't even imagine the problems it would have.

This literally just came out

Po3mcPf.gif


And Battlefront runs great on ps4.

They have no excuse even if you're right.
 

Gator86

Member
This literally just came out

Po3mcPf.gif


And Battlefront runs great on ps4.

They have no excuse even if you're right.

In all fairness, Horizon is a technical marvel and an exclusive and the people at DICE are wizards. That said, ME still shouldn't run like that being the dull-looking mess it is.
 
In all fairness, Horizon is a technical marvel and an exclusive and the people at DICE are wizards. That said, ME still shouldn't run like that being the dull-looking mess it is.
Not to mention

dragonage_inquisitionttkeh.png


Lookie here. A good looking RPG using the Frosthite engine by the same company.
 

RexNovis

Banned
I really can't see this ending well for Mac Walters or the Bioware Montreal team. While I feel for the people that will likely lose their jobs its clear they bit off way more than they could chew and just were not ready to develop a game of this scale and budget. Looking on the bright side at least Mac Walters might not be able to wreck the franchise anymore.

Regardless I'm sure ME:A will debut to stellar sales based off the name alone enough so to ensure that EA gets theirs (is mildly profitable) but the damage has been done and just like AC: Syndicate before it it is the next entry that will actually suffer the consequences if there is one. But regardless of sales I think EA will be very very unhappy with how the legs develop for this game as they seem to have been pushing for the MP to become a long term GAAS platform for them and I can't really see that being particularly successful with things as they are. Then again this could also mean that EA might fund extensive development to fix the game's problems in hopes of propping up their money making MP platform albeit that seems rather unlikely with the extended dev time the game was already permitted.

What insanity this all is. If you had told me a year back that Guerrilla Games would make an Open world RPG that would be rated dramatically higher than the next Mass Effect game I would've called you crazy yet here we are.

It was probably a matter of it being too much for the console. From what I understand the game has frame issues as it is, you increase the graphics to that level and I can't even imagine the problems it would have.

Given the other SW releasing recently this makes no sense whatsoever. There is no reason the earlier build would not have been playable on current HW given what other developers have also achieved.
 

Slaythe

Member
I wasn't saying ME should look like Horizon.

But from what we have seen with Dragon Age and DICE, Frostbite shouldn't be the issue (outside of hair).

Nothing in the alpha target render shows something undoable for the ps4 in 2017.

Or hell, on PC.
 
I wasn't saying ME should look like Horizon.

But from what we have seen with Dragon Age and DICE, Frostbite shouldn't be the issue (outside of hair).

Nothing in the alpha target render shows something undoable for the ps4 in 2017.

Or hell, on PC.
Definitely. Blaming consoles for graphical problems is moot when Dragon Age Inquisition looks great.
 

Gator86

Member
I wasn't saying ME should look like Horizon.

But from what we have seen with Dragon Age and DICE, Frostbite shouldn't be the issue (outside of hair).

Nothing in the alpha target render shows something undoable for the ps4 in 2017.

Or hell, on PC.

I think we're just all gonna be ryanreynoldsbutwhy.gif until press sneak fuck or someone shares what happened.
 

Renekton

Member
In all fairness, Horizon is a technical marvel and an exclusive and the people at DICE are wizards. That said, ME still shouldn't run like that being the dull-looking mess it is.
The environments and aliens are really good, so the power budget was spent somewhere.
 

joecanada

Member
This gif has always been so stupid. I love it when people post it, it roots out how ignorant the poster is.

As much of a downgrade from DAO DA2 was it's combat was never even remotely like that.

Actually it's exactly like that. Finished the game .... The only difference is you have other buttons which you also don't do anything except press.... So it's more like ...

X,X,X,X , oh triangle charged , X , X oh square charged , X ,X ....

Nothing like that? What else is there to do ? There's no cool spells, no manoeuvering, no timing the presses, no aiming .

I remember finishing the game and thinking exactly like that gif .... Just wow .
 
The constant transitions seem infuriating.

Man, Jeff's "oh" followed by disappointed rant after bumping into drunk lady killed me. He seemed actually angry at the game for being mediocre. If he could have cut off the stream right then, I'm sure he would have. This fucking game haha

I nearly spewed my drink at the monitor when Jeff went "Why does this alien have this accent?"
 
This gif has always been so stupid. I love it when people post it, it roots out how ignorant the poster is.

As much of a downgrade from DAO DA2 was it's combat was never even remotely like that.

Unfortunately A and X are actually the same button, they are just different controllers on different platforms. I can understand how that would give the illusion of depth.
 
I wasn't saying ME should look like Horizon.

But from what we have seen with Dragon Age and DICE, Frostbite shouldn't be the issue (outside of hair).

Nothing in the alpha target render shows something undoable for the ps4 in 2017.

Or hell, on PC.

I agree with you that the ps4 on a pure technical side should have been able to handle those visuals but there is so much we don't know. We don't know how ME:A handled their workflow, what problem they encountered, their deadlines, etc. For all we know those visuals could have been possible with more time and money but EA didn't want to commit so they had scrap it to save time.
 

selo

Member
I'm sad to see my hunch was right. Good thing most review sites didn't fall into the same trap as DA:i or DA:2. Its pretty sad for me to see, been following before ME1 came out, but it all went downhill from there :(.

Is it safe now to say that the Bioware of old is no more?

I'll pick this up when its 20 or so. See you in a couple of years ME Universe :'(
 

Justinian

Member
Is it safe now to say that the Bioware of old is no more?

I'll pick this up when its 20 or so. See you in a couple of years ME Universe :'(

It's definitely confirmed that BioWare has lost the plot.

I was going to pick it up on sale after a dozen patches before, but after seeing and hearing a bit more I won't be getting this ever. Plus I can feel better about not supporting low quality crap from a once storied developer.
 

Slaythe

Member
I agree with you that the ps4 on a pure technical side should have been able to handle those visuals but there is so much we don't know. We don't know how ME:A handled their workflow, what problem they encountered, their deadlines, etc. For all we know those visuals could have been possible with more time and money but EA didn't want to commit so they had scrap it to save time.

They had 5 years though...

And they kept saying they understood the fans and wanted to make sure they would meet and exceed their expectations.

The alpha proves they knew what to do.

I'm not blaming them directly, as in, I'm not looking for a culprit, but obviously, the solutions they took were TERRIBLE.

G1I9EOr.gif



The only thing we can infer, is that they had to ditch the good assets VERY LATE into the dev, because I don't see how the people that made the Alpha, could ship a game that has this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSNCAZyjdU4&feature=youtu.be

The management at EA, the Bioware QA, the members of the team that had to rush the new characters (that are not unique and are using the shitty CC for most npcs now......), the broken main characters...

It's insane. I think the worst offender is that Bioware pretends everything is fine. This isn't a simple downgrade where like the game has less effect and worse aliasing, it's literally a generational gap of visual fidelity for characters, in a game that strives to get "characters right" :/ ...
 
It seems we're getting our first flop of the year. A pity a game themed around exploration has to measure up to Zelda which might be the definitive exploration game for quite some time. I had hoped for more from Bioware.
 

Even still, sometimes I see gifs / videos of this game and its hard for me to believe its real.

Literally some of the face work / animations look worse than the original trilogy somehow on current gen hardware (obviously not the whole game, but there are certainly times)
 

a916

Member
This literally just came out

Po3mcPf.gif


And Battlefront runs great on ps4.

They have no excuse even if you're right.

Game development... we have no idea whats happenning under the hood causing this issue/issues and how they ran into performance issues

Humans, even ones with poor animation, are more expensive than robot dinosaurs. They'll do a post mortem but unfortunately for us we won't be privy to that information
 

Anticol

Banned
The giantbomb quicklook might have ended my interest entirely, barring a monstrous drought this summer. Holy fuck this game looks mediocre. The bad UI, the complete lack of any feedback from the weapons, the bad textures, etc. It just looks unfinished as hell, even having kept up with it over the recent weeks.

Drought? You can play persona 5.
 

janoDX

Member
Now the only game left between Zelda and every single GOTY of 2017 is RDR2.

I really wanted to like this game, but. It feels bland. It's not ME3 that had a good story with a shit end. Or ME2 that was amazing. It's, dull, bland, it doesn't feel right.
 

Slaythe

Member
Game development... we have no idea whats happenning under the hood causing this issue/issues and how they ran into performance issues

Humans, even ones with poor animation, are more expensive than robot dinosaurs. They'll do a post mortem but unfortunately for us we won't be privy to that information

For the record, Horizon has more humans than Mass Effect.

But let's not shift the debate with a Horizon comparison, the point wasn't to say "look how much better Horizon is", rather than "the ps4 can run this so it's hard to fathom they couldn't run their alpha target on ps4 because we don't see anything out of the ordinary for 2017".
 
Game development... we have no idea whats happenning under the hood causing this issue/issues and how they ran into performance issues

Humans, even ones with poor animation, are more expensive than robot dinosaurs. They'll do a post mortem but unfortunately for us we won't be privy to that information
What Andromeda has and needs isnt at all close to what is required for the machines in Horizon.

No one is asking for lifelike animation or advanced AI innit. So I dont see the point.
 

Melchiah

Member
A lot that kinda stuff has been in various scifi stories and books for years, Babylon 5 didn't invent it, but did mix many things together. Great series.

I haven't really read any sci-fi books, apart from H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, but it wouldn't be surprising that similar themes existed before B5.


This is absolutely soul crushing.

What's missing most of all from Andromeda, though, is any genuine sense of exploration. In Andromeda, there are no indifferent gods to be found over the next hill, only more waypoints. Consequently, there's no reason to set off into uncharted territory because you know that a mission will send you there anyway. Andromeda has so little faith that you'll explore on your own that anything worth seeing in its cosmic wilds is clearly marked and integrated into some kind of quest chain. Scan these rocks, gather these plants. Even if it were possible to get lost in Andromeda, I can't imagine wanting to; no matter how gorgeous the game's vistas may be, they exist largely to be exhausted and, as a result, give off a sense of emptiness, not possibility. This would be a disaster for any open world, but for a game in which you supposedly play a "Pathfinder," it's fatal. Andromeda is a game about exploration that gives you no space or reason to explore.

I don't actually have a problem with that, as ME1's Mako wandering was what I disliked in the trilogy the most. Even more than the ending. I think it's better, if the game provides a mission that gives a reason to explore a territory. I just hope there's enough variety. I wonder how the areas and sidequests compare to DAI?
 

A-V-B

Member
That other thread made me read Glixel's review:

It notes that the game starts to improve and that Mass Effect 1 had flaws and formulaic stuff in it too, but admits that this could just be bargaining and the game is a disappointment:

"You had no right to sterilize our species!" bellows Drack.

"Your people deserved it for using nuclear bombs on each other," the Salarian replies.

"I guess that is true," Drack chuckles, and the conversation abruptly ends.

If that conversation isn't taken any further and the story makes the Salarian look right, isn't this really similar to the gonzo-ass Starchild logic from the ME3 ending...?
 
It's talked about in the Bioware ex employee thread.

It doesn't have a dedicated thread about the downgrades.

mea.gif

I feel like the guy in the final release version manages to blink more during the first three seconds of that gif than any other character I saw in the trial, including Ryder. It's probably not technically true but I really can't remember any character blinking for some reason.
 
Not to mention

dragonage_inquisitionttkeh.png


Lookie here. A good looking RPG using the Frosthite engine by the same company.

Eh I think overall ME:A certainly looks better than DA:I, if less polished. The geometry of the scenery in DA:I reminds me of a last gen game, which is unsurprising as the game had last gen versions.
 

Melchiah

Member
Eh I think overall ME:A certainly looks better than DA:I, if less polished. The geometry of the scenery in DA:I reminds me of a last gen game, which is unsurprising as the game had last gen versions.

That's good to hear, since DAI was a looker at the time. I'm curious though, in what sense it's less polished visually?
 
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