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Early impressions from RPS for ME:A. It's... not good

Mezoly

Member
Am I a shitbag for wanting Andromeda to bomb both critically and commercially so that we can get back to Kotor?

Sorry ME fans :(

Boiware makes multiple games Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and new Ip. If they wanted to make Kotor none of those games need to flop for them to make Kotor. I understand the similarity between Mass Effect and Kotor. But wishing for a loved franchise new entry to fail is too much.

I don't know who upset many people here on Gaf this week but it's been the most negative week in gaf for a long time. Obviously this is anecdotal and I'm not saying that Gaf is one person. I'm just saying there have been an increase of negative posts for various topics. Maybe it's not new and I just noticed it or just the topics that I followed had been negative. Anyway I guess I'll take a break lol.
 
Am I a shitbag for wanting Andromeda to bomb both critically and commercially so that we can get back to Kotor?

Sorry ME fans :(

Don't see what difference that would make. It's not like the setting in ME or DA prevent them from being good games. Bioware's just clearly lacking the talent (with many key persons leaving the company in the past years) and has been for a while. You want another KotOR? Then hope that CDPR or Obsidian get their fingers on it. Modded KotOR2 is already better than KotOR1 in my opinion.
 
It's not like Bioware hasn't fucked up in the past.
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But I'm stupid and excited for more space aliens going on space adventures and feel compelled to buy this game even if it turns out properly bad. I just feel like I need to play this game.
But I'll wait for reviews at least. The Korean 2004 MMO design criticism is my biggest concern. That's what made me go from liking to kind of hating Inquisition.
 

marzlapin

Member
I mean...How many people really go to bat for DAI these days? I see a lot of people who likes it who, in hindsight, seem to go "that game was sort of a slog"

I enjoyed DAI and I generally just don't participate in threads about it or Bioware because it's honestly exhausting. Why go to bat for something that has such an overwhelmingly vocal contingent against it? Anything I say about it doesn't matter, it just gets drowned out.
 

Jarmel

Banned
Patrick Weekes isn't writing anything for this game right? Which is a shame because he usually writes some of the best characters.

Yea I think so. He was definitely one of the better writers from the OG trilogy. Honestly he should have been made Head Writer as everything I've seen from him as been topnotch. Instead we got Walters and the Halo 4 guy.
 

CrazyDude

Member
Don't see what difference that would make. It's not like the setting in ME or DA prevent them from being good games. Bioware's just clearly lacking the talent (with many key persons leaving the company in the past years) and has been for a while. You want another KotOR? Then hope that CDPR or Obsidian get their fingers on it. Modded KotOR2 is already better than KotOR1 in my opinion.

I also feel like Kotor hasn''t aged too well either.

Yea I think so. He was definitely one of the better writers from the OG trilogy. Honestly he should have been made Head Writer as everything I've seen from him as been topnotch. Instead we got Walters and the Halo 4 guy.

Next Dragon Age will be his first head writer game. I am more interested in the next DA game than this, sadly.
 

blackw0lf

Member
Starting to think that the A team for story and writing are involved in The Old Republic, which has surprisingly good writing and storytelling.
 
For me this has quickly gone from "I'm not really excited about this game but I'll keep an open mind with the EA access trial."

To

"Geez this is really worrying."

To

"Wow, they might have to take the BF4 approach with this game" in other words, treating it like it's in full development and fixing a whole slew of problems for a year.

Edit: Also this pathfinder worship garbage on the stream right now.
 

marzlapin

Member
Yea I think so. He was definitely one of the better writers from the OG trilogy. Honestly he should have been made Head Writer as everything I've seen from him as been topnotch. Instead we got Walters and the Halo 4 guy.

That's exactly what they did, but on DA instead of ME. The ME team no longer being based in Edmonton might've been a factor there.
 

HeelPower

Member
Yeah I don't agree with you as far as Horizon is concerened. There's obviously a bit of jank here and there but majority of the game is pretty good:

SickHarmfulFrillneckedlizard.gif
ComplexLimpingBlackwidowspider.gif
DesertedVerifiableEuropeanfiresalamander.gif
TalkativeElatedArchaeopteryx.gif

Damn, that's really impressive.

I like how they're not over animated in their speech.People in reality aren't actually that animated when having a normal conversation.
 

WhyMe6

Member
Or... OR... people liked DA:I

Opinions are great... like the guy earlier in the thread that thought "Hey a negative preview, I can finally say I told you so!" despite plenty of positive previews. The people who enjoy prior bioware games will likely enjoy this game. People that didn't wont. That's the fun of having your own opinion. I don't think Hype has anything to do with it.

Well, I should point that I loved last gen's Bioware games (bar DA2). Hell, even my favourite ME is the first one, despite its jank and clunkiness, and that's even after replaying it years later. But I was let down by Inquisition majorly. I felt the bulk of positive reviews did not align with my experience at all.

So what I was trying to express was, obviously unclearly so, perhaps if you didn't find the ridiculously positive DA:I reviews to be accurate of your tastes that you should be considering these few negative impressions carefully.

And hype has a lot do with reviews. How many enjoyed DA:I but came back to it 6-12 months later and realised the huge flaws in its design or questionable quality in certain areas. Look at reviews for *certain* Zelda games versus hindsight for another example.
 
Are they obliged to make 1:1 conversion somehow?

Even Aloy is still kinda different from the model. Also remember, make-ups.

The model doesn't exist in isolation. They got actor-models for both the male and the female version of essentially the same character and yet BroRyder looks not only closer to the model, he also looks way prettier. It's almost as if BioWare felt the need to make FemRyder less attractive because apparently attractive women can't be competent.

FemRyder not looking super-attractive wouldn't be a problem if BroRyder wasn't. There's clearly different standards at work here and women are getting the short end of stick in ME:A.
 

Jocund

Member
I thought the whole point of the Pathfinder bullshit was that BioWare weren't going to lean into the CHOSEN WON garbage. Like, what's the use in playing a character BioWare claim is green and still give her a title that makes her totally and inexplicably known by every colonist in the galaxy.

Wrong.

It's aged like fine wine.

Plays so smoothly on mobile.

I think he's talking about the writing. And he'd be right. BioWare games have never had great scripts.
 

Peterc

Member
Like in movies, maybe they better put it in the fridge for a long time and started with something new. I don't think it would be bad, but it's not a successor like most will hope for.
 

HeelPower

Member
FemRyder not looking super-attractive wouldn't be a problem if BroRyder wasn't. There's clearly different standards at work here and women are getting the short end of stick in ME:A.

She looks like she had multiple plastic surgeries performed(on lips,cheeks and nose) and has heavy make up on.

They're arguably trying too hard to make her "perfectly" attractive.
 

A-V-B

Member
Oh my god this lip sync is bad. It's like they aren't animating how people would actually form their words, and are just applying some kind of automatic phoneme recognition across everything. And the phoneme shapes themselves are just... what is this? Why were they happy with this? It's killin me man :(
 

Mivey

Member
FemRyder not looking super-attractive wouldn't be a problem if BroRyder wasn't. There's clearly different standards at work here and women are getting the short end of stick in ME:A.
I think they just suck at modelling. Male faces tend to be more angular, while female faces are rounder. Part of that is on the skeleton, but mostly it's also fat distribution. I assume polygonal modelling makes angular stuff easier.
Point is, BioWare Montreal probably did the best they could. It's a fairly new studio, formed in 09. Maybe they get better with the sequel.
 
so basically...

it's a BioWare game.

No man. That's a disservice to earlier BW games.

I LOVE every BW game so far and this shit....I just requested a refund on my preorder. I was hyped af to play this but the first hour is SO BAD.

SO BAD.

Man. What happened??
 

jtb

Banned
I thought the whole point of the Pathfinder bullshit was that BioWare weren't going to lean into the CHOSEN WON garbage. Like, what's the use in playing a character BioWare claim is green and still give her a title that makes her totally and inexplicably known by every colonist in the galaxy.



I think he's talking about the writing. And he'd be right. BioWare games have never had great scripts.

How can KOTOR's writing have aged poorly when BioWare has been copying it beat for beat, trying (and failing) desperately to recapture the sense of wonder and innocence that game inspired?

For starters, KOTOR has a plot, which is more than you can say for just about every game BioWare has made in the past decade.

BioWare's writing has always been formulaic. But it's gone from being formulaic to bad and formulaic.
 
Using magic telescopes the various familiar races of Mass Effect were able to spot ”golden planets" in the new galaxy,
0384d956f17a85092b76f6c2eea0fdc0.gif


Not to discredit his impression of the game but this comes off as someone who was forced to play the game and would probably rather be playing Nintendogz.
 

Sycoraxic98

Neo Member
Who looked at this build and thought "this is what we want critics to see"?

I mean, this is the build going to consumers, not just critics. For $60.

Fiscal is a bitch, ain't it? I'm not saying that Bioware didn't feel like they finished, or anything else, but I'm sure in a scenario where Bioware felt they needed another two months, it was "finished enough" as of January to polish, stabilize, cert, and ship.
 

ZServ

Member
This is a video game forum, the gaming discussion side specifically, so obviously the main talk is gonna be about sexism and racism in the games industry.

Yeah, I was just pointing out that there are better ways to solve social issues than trying to do it through a gaming forum.

Then maybe people should stop posting horribly sexist pictures?

Kinda like photoshopping a character to look like a photoshopped picture of a specific photo from a photoshoot.

Wanting people to be more attractive/less attractive isn't really.. sexist, though. I mean, it's sexist if you're viewing it through the lens of like, that characters inherent value, I guess. Otherwise, it's just wanting something to be tailored to your interests more. Same as wanting a game to have X feature. Maybe that isn't how it looks from someone elses perspective, but that's the intent.

I genuinely don't see how this is relevant to ME:A? What in the world?

It's a series of examples. The discussion at hand is bigger than whether or not FemRyder is attractive or not. Additionally, you can view it as more perspective.

Mentoo™ doesn't invalidate the issue here.

Never said it did. But you're acting as if the situation is black and white, and it isn't. Racism/sexism/any-ism is a scale, not a boolean. #Trademarking something just comes across as you being rude for the sake of being rude.

It's pretty evident that people actually don't get it. And pointing that out isn't inherently an issue.

Asking people to view things from a different perspective is not an issue. Telling people that they need to view things from a different perspective is.

Again, the issue is that, well, no one asked if you found her attractive, players not finding Fem Ryder, who's traditionally attractive enough already, attractive isn't a knock against the game's quality. As she's not there for players to get their rocks off. And by that I mean, she wasn't designed so that players are supposed to constantly be staring at her, she's the self insert. She isn't meant for the male gaze, ffs the game is full of characters who are already.

She may not have been designed so that players are supposed to constantly be staring at her, but it's a BioWare game. Which means a lot of dialogue. Which means.. a lot of staring at her. As a reminder, the character can be customized, so for anyone who isn't satisfied with FemRyders look, that can be changed. With that said, I fail to see why people saying "I wish FemRyder was more attractive" is an issue with such severity that it demands several paragraphs on the internet. It's a throwaway remark in a throwaway conversation. Those people will buy the game, change FemRyder to be the waifu they never had, and enjoy their purchase.

There's nothing sexist about FemRyder's current design. So those people would be wrong, i've absolutely seen nothing of the sort suggesting that people think she is, so what are you talking about?

There's absolutely sexist aspects of FemRyder's current design. It's a scale. Prejudice exists in our culture, and the majority of the time it isn't intentional, or malicious. Every single person to ever exist, including myself and you, have prejudice of some sort. Just part of being human.

White men are not incapable of writing about perspectives that a)aren't their won and b)don't appeal to them. Wanna know why? Because minorities do the same all the time.

Please note that I didn't say they were incapable. I said that they may have more difficulty with it, which is true. If you're not a musician, you can still write music. It probably won't be as good, though. But, you also learn through exposure. The more exposed you are to specific cultures and ideals, the more you understand them and can represent them to other people.

Ignorance is why we're still getting cringeworthy photoshop jobs like that Ryder and Peebee thing in 2017.

I don't disagree. :)

There's a difference between "this characters look derpy" and "these female characters aren't pretty enough so here's a photoshop where I added shit from common beauty standards, like a v-shaped chin and eyeliner. MMmmm"

There's also a difference between trying to understand someones perspective, and dismissing them because of their perspective. I grew up in a rural area from the age of 9. I've met less than probably 100 black people in my entire life, as opposed to countless whites. I'm in a VERY racist area. The people aren't inherently bad, even if I don't agree with their views or mindsets. The reality of the situation, though, is that if you consistently dismiss people because they view the world differently than you, Donald Trump ends up president.
 

Jocund

Member
Doesn't look good. I'm really tired of studios not learning for their past games and mistakes. Damn shame.

It's even worse when they go on and on about how they have learned so, so much from fan feedback, and then the hot new game comes out and it's the same stuff, sometimes worse.
 
I mean, this is the build going to consumers, not just critics. For $60.

Fiscal is a bitch, ain't it? I'm not saying that Bioware didn't feel like they finished, or anything else, but I'm sure in a scenario where Bioware felt they needed another two months, it was "finished enough" as of January to polish, stabilize, cert, and ship.

The Peebee backwards gun shot is still in this build. Just saw it on the Giantbomb stream. Wow.
 
No man. That's a disservice to earlier BW games.

I LOVE every BW game so far and this shit....I just requested a refund on my preorder. I was hyped af to play this but the first hour is SO BAD.

SO BAD.

Man. What happened??

The team behind Mass Effect 3 Omega, which was one of the critically weak DLC releases are on this, I was a tad concerned at the time that was revealed.
 

Gen X

Trust no one. Eat steaks.
Weren't there a bunch of positive impressions from sites like IGN and Gamespot?

Weren't those from preview builds? Usually writers have to be a little optimistic before the final code as the game is still in its beta and could be improved. You can point out niggles but you can't slam a preview build or you won't get any more from the publishers.

The article linked in the OP is review code, IE finished profuct.
 
It's even worse when they go on and on about how they have learned so, so much from fan feedback, and then the hot new game comes out and it's the same stuff, sometimes worse.

I would like to know the focus groups they went to with this game and what was discussed. I know they did a email survey around 2014 but wasn't this game five years in development?
 

Laekon

Member
I've been watching the Giant Bomb stream and its really giving me mixed feelings. The main station was filled with really janky crap but as it gets farther into the first planet its getting better. The Mako/Nomad animation is horrible with the wheels constant moving through the body. The combat and overall feel seems like it will be worth it.
 
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