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Mass Effect Andromeda Graphical Downgrade

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
I don't find this surprising at all, considering BioWares evidently mediocre engine talent. Frostbite could allow so much better visuals even in a large scale game.
You absolutely right. Frostbite can do wonders in the right hands and BioWare just does not have them, same goes for like 90% of all UE games and only handful of game dev studios mastered this engine.

Tbh these screenshots Shinobi posted look very average when compared to the current greatest like Horizon or for a better example SWBF/BF1.
Arkham Knight on PC and on a technical level looks miles better than any other open world game released after it. And this game was developed on a old as fuck engine even though it was heavily modified.

I don't think that makeup is the issue here, proportions on in-game models are just all wrong and different from the real life base - the eyes and mouth are a lot bigger for example.
As far as I know, to actually get to work as animator in a game development studio, you just absolutely need to know human anatomy extremely well, and looks like there's not such people at all in BioWare.

Also, am I the only one who noticed that there's also almost a complete lack of audio and lip sync during conversations? I've seen this during mission playthrough with developers (!!!). How on earth they've missed such an obvious flaw?
 
These games and the productions the devs have to go through is why I vastly prefer stylized graphics in ambitious projects.

I just can't be immersed in the story when the NPC's look like this, it's impossible.

What do you think about Horizon? While the facial animations can definitely be iffy, the character models of the NPCs are in general really good in my opinion. The best out there in terms of modelling and detail.

Agent_4Seven: Arkham Asylum on PC defintely does not look better than Horizon in my opinion. It looks very good, yes, but Horizon is just more impressive.
 

Peterthumpa

Member
Everything about this game looks like they cut corners. It spent too much time in development and for some reason they had nothing to show for it for years, then suddenly they decide to release it with little fanfare and it doesn't look great. Seems like they hit a deadline and just put together whatever they could and just called it a day.
We have an industry insider here. Tell us more please.
 
Budget constrain. Game is super ambitious, with 1000 NPCs. Unless they hire a lot more animators and modelers, something gonna give.

Everything about this game looks like they cut corners. It spent too much time in development and for some reason they had nothing to show for it for years, then suddenly they decide to release it with little fanfare and it doesn't look great. Seems like they hit a deadline and just put together whatever they could and just called it a day.



It's not like this is some random NPC. It's one of the main party members, the one who appears the most in the marketing material. If this is the attention they paid to her, I can't imagine what the standard for the rest of the content is.

It also cannot be overstated how much talent they've hemorrhaged since EA bought them. The Bioware of today is very different to one we used to know, and it does not look like they replaced them properly.
 

Kurumi

Member
uRVexh7.jpg

LMAO. +1 for GAF.
 

Parahan

Member
Everything about this game looks like they cut corners. It spent too much time in development and for some reason they had nothing to show for it for years, then suddenly they decide to release it with little fanfare and it doesn't look great. Seems like they hit a deadline and just put together whatever they could and just called it a day.

Everything? Really? This is a quote from kotaku preview

Where older games felt as if Bioware were making a compromise between an RPG and an action game, it feels like they’ve gone full throttle in both directions this time around. Combat is thrilling, but you’re also going to spend a lot of time managing resources and equipping different things.

I think what started as a genuine complaint against 2011 like stiff animations has given way to full blown derisive conjectures. I hope no developer comes across comments like these that randomly insinuate they were somehow lazy despite spending years on the game.
 

StereoVsn

Member
Everything? Really? This is a quote from kotaku preview

I think what started as a genuine complaint against 2011 like stiff animations has given way to full blown derisive conjectures. I hope no developer comes across comments like these that randomly insinuate they were somehow lazy despite spending years on the game.

I don't think people are saying lazy as that would be wrong but there is certainly a level of competence that the game "feels" like it's missing from watching previews.

Mainly complaints have been about character animations (which are fair since we are talking about MC and major characters, not NPC # 785) but if you watch posted videos then you get a feeling that characters, conversation scripts, also do not sound great.

RPS also had a fairly worrying preview talking about terrible quest structure (sounded like DAI/MMO ones) and major issues with the UI.
 

cripterion

Member
My issue is the recycling of faces/hair, the generic look, it's like they have 2 or 3 templates per ethnicity and they just alter them via their own character creator.

This is the founder of the initiative, she doesn't look distinct, remarkable, she just looks like any other character you'll find along your ship.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Ok after watching a couple streams holy shit do the faces look horrid. Like to the point of being constantly immersion breaking. Especially the hair. Like the hair textures are clipping and popping in all the time and then sometimes the hair just breaks and aliases all over. Oh and the eyes too. I've never been more inexplicably creeped out by a characters eyes than I have by the bizarre eyes in this game. I'm not even sure what it is about the eyes they're just off somehow. How the hell did they screw this up this much?
 

Lt-47

Member
It also cannot be overstated how much talent they've hemorrhaged since EA bought them. The Bioware of today is very different to one we used to know, and it does not look like they replaced them properly.

Doesn't matter it not even same team. It's a completely new studio and it's their 1st game so even if nothing had change at Edmonton they (mostly) wouldn't be working on Andromeda anyway.

John Walker's preview has me worried but in terms of graphics I see nothing that could be considered a noteworthy downgrade.

Maybe he's right and the game is garbage but he also said the same of Witcher 3 so...
 
Screencaps of the female presets if anyone is interested:

Those... all look pretty bad. Does anyone have some screenshots of the character creation from Bloodborne, for comparison? I mean, I thought that was pretty bad too, but you hardly ever see your character's face in that game and there are relatively speaking hardly any conversations, so it's measured by different parameters. Even random NPCs in Horizon ZD look better than this.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Screencaps of the female presets if anyone is interested:

vrKISeR.jpg

None of those look as detailed as the default one.

Which itself doesn't look anywhere as detailed as the default male.

so I guess that's the one I'll be playing with.
 

cripterion

Member
Those... all look pretty bad. Does anyone have some screenshots of the character creation from Bloodborne, for comparison? I mean, I thought that was pretty bad too, but you hardly ever see your character's face in that game and there are relatively speaking hardly any conversations, so it's measured by different parameters. Even random NPCs in Horizon ZD look better than this.

Definitely, this is screen from a gaffer


It eclipses all of these

Screencaps of the female presets if anyone is interested:
vrKISeR.jpg

xI3hRPer.png


The only person with a believable face is dad Ryder somehow, he's the only one that stands out. The rest look like androids made in the EA Fifa factory.
 
The only person with a believable face is dad Ryder somehow, he's the only one that stands out. The rest look like androids made in the EA Fifa factory.

Yup. I think it's the weird glowing, fake, flawless, skin they have. It doesn't even look human. The lighting doesn't look good on the skin either. They look better during the character creation, but in game it looks really unpleasant.

Even Fallout 4 had better looking faces...

 

Elman

Member
Screencaps of the female presets if anyone is interested:

vrKISeR.jpg

This is what happens when you chase photorealism and give up halfway.

Better textures, higher polygon counts, shaders...it doesn't matter, the net effect is the same: this looks as a bad as Oblivion looks today.
 

Coreda

Member
Screencaps of the female presets if anyone is interested

Some of MGSV's variety for comparison, since someone brought up current gen models. Even without being as photorealistic as some games they're still excellent.

profileimagesapj4x.jpg


Will be interesting to see how flexible the ME:A character creator is.
 

cripterion

Member
Yup. I think it's the weird glowing, fake, flawless, skin they have. It doesn't even look human. The lighting doesn't look good on the skin either. They look better during the character creation, but in game it looks really unpleasant.

Even Fallout 4 had better looking faces...

Yeah and thing is as much as the faces and hair could suck in Fallout 4, at least it is highly moddable...
 
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