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Mass Effect Andromeda Graphical Downgrade

Ambient80

Member
Reveal
vlcsnap-2017-03-14-20npsvz.png


Latest
peebee3wsr8.png

I mean, I'm not seeing a huge difference here. At least not in terms of graphical fidelity. She has a deeper blue skin and the lighting is a bit different, but otherwise she looks fine. I mean, I think she still looks kinda goofy, but the actual graphics I have no issue with.
 

Whales

Banned
Maybe... maybe people aren't invested in the franchise the same way you are, and care about different aspects of it than you do, and thus see things that disappoint them? I mean all the animations in the game look unpolished, like a middle tier game. That's pretty obvious. To some, that's not a big deal, to others it is. I can see why some might not care. Can you legitimately not see why others might care? If so, then there isn't much point discussing things.

What's with all the posts with the persecution complex?

So does these ''middling animations'' warrant whole pages of '' lol jank'' ''lol shit animations'' etc?

What i've watched from this looked fine. Sure, the animations aren't the best in the game business, but are they seriously considered completely janky? They look fine/ serviceable... But for some reasons it's like people want to shit on Bioware as much as they can because they have a reputation of crappy animations and jank ( which is true, i'm not denying that) so they apply this to andromeda. but that's the thing, to me andromeda looks fine, the animations feel like a step-up from their previous output.

These posts also aren't from a 'persecution complex'', it just quite literally gets tiring of opening a MEA thread on this forum for the past month and seeing the same shit get spewed all over the place. '' Lol jank'' ''lol garbage animations'' '' lmao these faces, oh god they ALL look hideous'' '' this game looks like crap'' ''lol poor mass effect fans'' when all of the videos released about this game look good... Yes, some characters here and there are ugly ( like femryder sometimes) but the others are not that bad at all...
 

KillLaCam

Banned
I thought that 1st scene with Sara waking up was pre-rendered anyway. They didnt even say it was in game or representative of game graphics. That one isnt a downgrade
 

Big Nikus

Member
It's not a downgrade but I liked Peebee's colors in the reveal. She was more... raccoony ? lol. Now with the deeper blue she looks more like a regular asari.
 

Harlequin

Member
Mostly just looks like they changed the lighting. Maybe there are fewer lights in each of those scenes now which could be called a downgrade? Could also just be an artistic choice, though. Either way, the actual assets don't look like they've been downgraded.
 

Ambient80

Member
So does these ''middling animations'' warrant whole pages of '' lol jank'' ''lol shit animations'' etc?

What i've watched from this looked fine. Sure, the animations aren't the best in the game business, but are they seriously considered completely janky? They look fine/ serviceable... But for some reasons it's like people want to shit on Bioware as much as they can because they have a reputation of crappy animations and jank ( which is true, i'm not denying that) so they apply this to andromeda. but that's the thing, to me andromeda looks fine, the animations feel like a step-up from their previous output.

These posts also aren't from a 'persecution complex'', it just quite literally gets tiring of opening a MEA thread on this forum for the past month and seeing the same shit get spewed all over the place. '' Lol jank'' ''lol garbage animations'' '' lmao these faces, oh god they ALL look hideous'' '' this game looks like crap'' ''lol poor mass effect fans'' when all of the videos released about this game look... Yes, some characters here and there are ugly ( like femryder) but the others are not that bad at all...

I think most people felt like BioWare would have progressed beyond having these types of issues, and are disappointed that they have not. While TW3 had some issues, it didn't look this bad, and people are setting their expectations high now. While I think the facial animations are kinda bizarre, the rest looks like the same sort of stuff we had before in ME. However, as I mentioned, expectations have changed and people expect more of them now.

I still plan on playing the game, I just think the characters, male and female, look just really strange in the face, particularly when speaking. The vistas are beautiful from what I've seen.
 

tuxfool

Banned
I'm not buying it, I haven't preordered it, it's nothing to do with being defence force or anything.

I'm not calling you thirsty, I'm saying there is a subconscious component to thinking that the female models are of lower quality than the male models because they're less attractive. They're really not, they are fine. It is only ever the girls that get pulled up on this issue.
I don't really buy it. You can tell that they're making this NPC relatively appealing. She is somebody you regularly interact with on the ship.


Here is a random female NPC in the witcher, that is involved in a very minor quest at the beginning of the game.


There is a great deal to be said for what is happening around the eyes, and when the game is in motion, the more natural movement of the lips. I should also point out that I could make the same comparison with male character models. None of this is to say that the downgrade is worth worrying about, but the final quality does leave a lot to be desired.
 

Durante

Member
The eye rendering was pretty good in the earlier shots, and is now significantly worse.

(I've been prone to looking at eye rendering in detail since seeing an in-depth presentation on UE4's eye shading)
 
I don't really buy it. You can tell that they're making this NPC relatively appealing. She is somebody you regularly interact with on the ship.



Here is a random female NPC in the witcher, that is involved in a very minor quest at the beginning of the game.



There is a great deal to be said for what is happening around the eyes, and when the game is in motion, the more natural movement of the lips. None of this is to say that the downgrade is worth worrying about, but the final quality does leave a lot to be desired.
The animations aren't as good but the models themselves are fine. Notice the paper card hair in the Witcher shot; the Mass Effect NPC also seems to be directly under a spotlight which is rarely flattering for game models.
 

i-Lo

Member
I'm not buying it, I haven't preordered it, it's nothing to do with being defence force or anything.

I'm not calling you thirsty, I'm saying there is a subconscious component to thinking that the female models are of lower quality than the male models because they're less attractive. They're really not, they are fine. It is only ever the girls that get pulled up on this issue.

They're "less attractive" because they can come off as uncanny creepy plastic dolls due to skin and hair shader tech and NOT proportion. They modeled her after this instagram model:

This woman is very attractive and yet it really doesn't translate. Hell they could have brought an old granny but in the context of tech and male counter part she'd have looked proper if the shader tech was up to par.

The same thing happened with Yvonne Strahovsky's & Jessica Chobot's in-game models. Those women IRL are gorgeous but in-game they looked very poor. Once AGAIN, it has NOTHING to do with attractiveness. I'd bet much on the possibility that no one would have said the same had these women belonged to alien races. That's why very few here are complaining about PeeBee's character model because the alien skin has its own made up property and the shader tech has done a great job selling it. Plus their species does not hair which aids in the believeability immensely.

Unfortunately, we know what human skin looks like pertaining to its light reflective properties. For males, a couple of other things Bioware did to reduce this uncanny stuff besides giving shorter hair and scruff are age lines and flaws. If males had the same skin shader properties and textures as their female counterparts, I'd be complaining about them just as ardently (and I believe so would many others).
 

tuxfool

Banned
The animations aren't as good but the models themselves are fine. Notice the paper card hair in the Witcher shot; the Mass Effect NPC also seems to be directly under a spotlight which is rarely flattering for game models.

Certainly I'll concede to the lighting for the ME shot to not be under the best conditions, but I'd also say that Bioware chose it. The character is sitting in a static location on the ship, they could have controlled the lighting to be more flattering.

No doubt there is a great deal of commonality on the periphery such as the alpha cards for the hair. However this is precisely what I wanted to highlight, their fundamentals such as poly count etc are roughly the same. I could have also pulled up shots of other NPCs under less harsh lighting and once again the eyes and lips wouldn't flatter them at all.
 

Renekton

Member
The eye rendering was pretty good in the earlier shots, and is now significantly worse.

(I've been prone to looking at eye rendering in detail since seeing an in-depth presentation on UE4's eye shading)
Significantly? Damn

I trust when you and Dictator you say so.
 

888

Member
First set looks better now than reveal. Middle set looks fairly ok. Last set looks totally different.

Im going to get it on pc still. I'm just glad they have controller support this time.
 
Kinda looks good on its own but compared to the atmosphere of the initial shots, it feels too clean.

I already gave up on bioware character models. Remember when they had a low res texture/background character tier texture for the clothes of Shep in ME3.

Character's look like they would want to be cartoony designs but doesn't really get there. Faces look rubbery and unsettling.


I'm sure I will get used to it when I'm in the game itself and I won't notice this "downgrade". Looking forward to the multiplayer.
 
Certainly I'll concede to the lighting for the ME shot to not be under the best conditions, but I'd also say that Bioware chose it. The character is sitting in a static location on the ship, they could have controlled the lighting to be more flattering.

No doubt there is a great deal of commonality on the periphery such as the alpha cards for the hair. However this is precisely what I wanted to highlight, their fundamentals such as poly count etc are roughly the same. I could have also pulled up shots of other NPCs under less harsh lighting and once again the eyes and lips wouldn't flatter them at all.
I agree that the models and lighting aren't anything to write home about, but I still disagree with the idea that the female models are worse than the male models.
They're "less attractive" because they can come off as uncanny creepy plastic dolls due to skin and hair shader tech and NOT proportion. They modeled her after this instagram model:

This woman is very attractive and yet it really doesn't translate. Hell they could have brought an old granny but in the context of tech and male counter part she'd have looked proper if the shader tech was up to par.

The same thing happened with Yvonne Strahovsky's & Jessica Chobot's in-game models. Those women IRL are gorgeous but in-game they looked very poor. Once AGAIN, it has NOTHING to do with attractiveness. I'd bet much on the possibility that no one would have said the same had these women belonged to alien races. That's why no one here is complaining about PeeBee's character model because the alien skin has its own made up property and the shader tech has done a great job selling it. Plus their species does not hair which aids in the believeability immensely.

Unfortunately, we know what human skin looks like pertaining to its light reflective properties. For males, another thing Bioware did to reduce this uncanny stuff besides giving shorter hair and scruff are age lines and flaws. If males had the same skin shader properties and textures as their female counterparts, I'd be complaining about them just as ardently (and I believe so would many others).
But that's just the thing - MShep from the original trilogy who was also modelled after a real model looked rough too.

There is no tech reason for the women to look worse than the men - they will be using the same pipeline for both.
 

Lime

Member
honestly what's bothering me the most and I know that people are tired of hearing about it, but the recent romance video really shows how jarring the facial animations are:

JPyfwh1


ciqoQeU


The ones in Mass Effect 1 and DA:I were less jarring. Maybe it's the eyes or the animation structure in the face, it just seems less believable I guess?
 
Before Plastic Surgery:

vlcsnap-2017-03-14-207askl.png


After Plastic Surgery:

vlcsnap-2017-03-14-201rsvz.png


She got that kylie jenner treatment.

I like the befores better personally but when seeing it in the video it looks ohhhhk.
 

hiim_haz

Banned
Maybe I'm blind, but the game looks fine visually. I'm not that excited for it because something seems off to me compared to the original trilogy, but it isn't looking bad visually by any means.
 
Oh crap I didnt know. Even when I first saw it I thought it wasnt in-game. Well then thats really bad.
I wonder if its because of the console GPUs? Its all I can think of since they already had this done. Like they just completely removed the eye shaders from the game

No idea mate, I don't think this is a Watch Dogs situation but I do prefer the lighting/colour of the reveal last summer.
 

tuxfool

Banned
I agree that the models and lighting aren't anything to write home about, but I still disagree with the idea that the female models are worse than the male models.

I'm definitely not making the argument that the female characters are worse than their male counterparts. They exhibit similar flaws.
 
honestly what's bothering me the most and I know that people are tired of hearing about it, but the recent romance video really shows how jarring the facial animations are:

JPyfwh1


ciqoQeU


The ones in Mass Effect 1 and DA:I were less jarring. Maybe it's the eyes or the animation structure in the face, it just seems less believable I guess?
Okay, this is horrifying.

Confirms it's not just the girls tho 🌝
I'm definitely not making the argument that the female characters are worse than their male counterparts.
Sorry then, I think I may have gotten you confused with the other poster.
 
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