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

T

Tranqueris

Banned
Skyzard said:
Watching this on Twitch... writing is bad, animation looks bad, characters don't look great in terms of visual tech, combat looks meh... hope it gets a lot better....but I'm not getting hopes up.

Maybe it's the kind of game you enjoy because you put up with it all... or after a few hours...
Click to expand...

I think this is the stance I've seen a few people taking with it, "well maybe it'll get better after a while."
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
^ we can only hope...

It might be the sort of thing you develop more of a connection with after putting time into it... At least it's sci-fi... got to have some good parts, right? Might get invested in the theme and story after some time with it... But I didn't like what I saw on the twitch stream that had a seemingly big story part.

GodOnlyNose said:
Just wanted to reply to my own post and say yes it was crappy film grain, turned it off and the game looks a lot better.

Still looks very soft though, it seems like a visual effect, maybe it's the chromatic abbreviation? I don't even know what that means but I'll turn it off.
Click to expand...

It's probably FXAA causing it to look soft if it's not the engine, but you should turn of chromatic aberration anyway - gives nasty colour effects.
 
S

Stone Ocean

Member
Syranth said:
I think people want a game to be bad because they regret pre-ordering or don't want to spend more money on something. It's kinda like they are looking for an excuse to hit the ejection seat button. I go into each gamewith expectations in the middle. I rarely get disappointed.
Click to expand...
The opposite is also true, people rejecting criticism and concerns because the game they've been hyping for months can't afford to be shite.
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
Skyzard said:
Watching this on Twitch... writing is bad, animation looks bad, characters don't look great in terms of visual tech, combat looks meh... hope it gets a lot better....but I'm not getting hopes up.

Maybe it's the kind of game you enjoy because you put up with it all... or after a few hours... and you know, because sci-fi.
Click to expand...

It comes out in a week. It ain't gonna get better.
 
T

The Salt Life

Banned
Skyzard said:
It's probably FXAA causing it to look soft if it's not the engine, but you should turn of chromatic aberration anyway - gives nasty colour effects.
Click to expand...
Turned it off but IMO, and I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but I was just playing ME3 a few hours ago and that game looked sharper and better during cut scenes.


Everything looks like a crappy masking job of Photoshop, a bad mask around the characters face and blurring the background and it just blends in together pretty bad, it's distracting.


(I should add, none of my complaints should effect my time in MP because no cut scenes)
 
Z

Zyae

Member
I'm playing the trial. It's mass effect. If you like mass effect you'll like it. The vast majority of published previews are positive as well. This doesn't mean criticism is invalid but this seems like a closed feedback loop
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
Zyae said:
I'm playing the trial. It's mass effect. If you like mass effect you'll like it. The vast majority of published previews are positive as well. This doesn't mean criticism is invalid but this seems like a closed feedback loop
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm sure it's not perfect but the hate anything Bioware produces generates just makes it impossible to discuss.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
Inquisition graphics were amazing, at least on PC.


The eyes in this...the characters are all staring each other out with their eyes popping out. They look like androids.
 
D

Dingobloo

Neo Member
Titanoboa said:
What if I liked Mass Effect but need something more than just "more Mass Effect" to justify a purchase?
Click to expand...

Still wait, I wish I could tell you this is just more Mass Effect, but in adding in a ton of geography to the game (not necessarily just content, either just literal playable geography) , they may have had to compromise a lot of the enjoyable things about mass effect and turned a increasingly focused and frictionless series into a real slog.
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
HariKari said:
The hate for a follow up to... one of the most beloved trilogies of all time? Really?
Click to expand...
Yes? GAF enjoys little more than a good feedback loop of hate. Bioware since dropping the ball over ME3 and people disliking Dragon Age have made them easy targets.

I'm sure there's jank and I'm sure it's a little silly at points but the ridiculousness of trying to talk about this stuff unless you either hate it or love it is a little much
 
F

Floody

Member
firehawk12 said:
Well, assuming LA Noire was a freak accident, I can't help that it still looks weird regardless of context. And it's not like they don't know how many conversations there are in the game, particularly when it's clear that they spent more time working on some characters than others.

Don't get me wrong, I think Horizon looks great. And it certainly doesn't have the jank of Andromeda, but it could be better too.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree, it's by no means perfect, but as far as open world games go it's up there with the best.
LA Noire also had an insane amount of jank for the time too and that game was built largely around it's facial animation tech, which I doubt was the case with Horizon or most other open world game, so not sure what it really proves. I'm sure if someone built a open world game with that as a major focus they could probably compete with linear games, but it'd probably come at a cost to gameplay or length or something else just as important.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Dingobloo said:
Still wait, I wish I could tell you this is just more Mass Effect, but in adding in a ton of geography to the game (not necessarily just content, either just literal playable geography) , they may have had to compromise a lot of the enjoyable things about mass effect and turned a increasingly focused and frictionless series into a real slog.
Click to expand...
The Mako stuff was by far my least favorite thing about MA1 and I was glad to see it gone in MA2. I'm not shocked if it's an issue, unfortunately.
 
wolfhowwl

wolfhowwl

Banned
Titanoboa said:
What if I liked Mass Effect but need something more than just "more Mass Effect" to justify a purchase?
Click to expand...

From PC Gamer:

More than anything else, my early experience of Andromeda was defined by just how closely it mirrors the first game. This is a spiritual successor to the first Mass Effect in many ways, ignoring or undoing many of the ways the original series changed in its sequels. It's an RPG with shooter elements, not a shooter with RPG elements. It has free roaming elements and driving. And it closely mirrors the pace of ME1's opening, too, from the stakes-setting first mission to the extended space station walk-and-talk section to the first, introductory, relatively linear objective that you're given. The details are different but the rhythms are the same—so similar, in fact, that I think it's a fair criticism to say that BioWare is rolling out a structure of play that has had ten years to become overfamiliar.
Click to expand...

Even if the technical execution was better it still sounds like a tired aping of the first game.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
firehawk12 said:
Well, assuming LA Noire was a freak accident, I can't help that it still looks weird regardless of context. And it's not like they don't know how many conversations there are in the game, particularly when it's clear that they spent more time working on some characters than others.
Click to expand...

Compare the character models in LA Noire out in the world with what is in the cutscenes. Their particular pipeline only worked for extremely rigidly scripted conversations. You could't just make a character emote conditionally in a way that wasn't an entire prerecorded pose capture of the entire face.

This is partially the reason nobody uses it, because it is just too inflexible.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
Some of the cutscene dialogue isn't bad. Might be enough to keep you interested if it's not too spread out.

Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
DA:I is still one of the best looking PS4 games.
Click to expand...

Ah, was wondering if things were sticking out in this because it may have been a console stream that I'm watching. Some environments look good but with the camera so close to their faces (and frequently + randomly cutting in with an even closer shot) during dialogue...just...argh.
 
Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
Floody said:
It'd be kinda unfair to compare against a linear games were they can just focus way more resources on that stuff. Like whose expecting something on the same tier as Uncharted 4's facial animations from Horizon? It's probably not even possible yet, so comparing it against it's peers makes way more sense.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll critique the animations in this as much as anyone but I also don't think its entirely fair to put ME:A up against Uncharted or Horizon- games where they're much more limited in terms of the quantity of lip sync and facial animations, so they can have a lot of things done with more expensive mocap whereas big content heavy RPGs need to rely more on procedural generated lip sync and animations then go back over with an animator. I think a more fair comparison is something like The Witcher or even Inquisition. And from what I've seen, I think ME:A falls way short of TW3 and even Inquisition in some ways.

And that's the most disappointing aspect of it for me- BioWare really pushed the whole cinematic presentation of things with Mass Effect 1 and they've seemingly been working on ME:A for a good long while and it just looks really disjointed in some aspects like the animations, which isn't an insignificant thing when they're forcing the whole cinematic dialogues and so on.
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I don't get it. Horizon is a huge open world game with a ton of NPCs and dialogue. Why would it not be fair to compare?
 
A

aussiedude08

Member
watching some of the GB twitch and i dont know if they were trying to make the game like one of the SyFy movies that are so bad its almost good. or if all the bad animation and writing just sticks out more than it should.
 
M.W.

M.W.

Member
Yeah, MP is where it's at. SP is just...ehhhhh

It's only the starting area, and I would assume it will get better...I think my 10 hours will be all MP.
 
F

Floody

Member
Y2Kev said:
I don't get it. Horizon is a huge open world game with a ton of NPCs and dialogue. Why would it not be fair to compare?
Click to expand...

I'm saying it's not really fair to compare Horizon or other open world games to stuff like Uncharted 4 if you're referring to me. ME:A is a fair comparison to Horizon imo.
 
2

213372bu

Banned
A lot of people are forgiving/blatantly unaware of bad dialouge/contrived story/bad animations so it doesn't surprise me why so many people gave this glowing previews and didn't address it/slightly glossed over it.

Hard pass, especially with the amount of quality games that've been releasing lately.
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Floody said:
I'm saying it's not really fair to compare Horizon or other open world games to stuff like Uncharted 4 if you're referring to me. ME:A is a fair comparison to Horizon imo.
Click to expand...


No, here:

Jibbajabbawockky said:
Yeah, I'll critique the animations in this as much as anyone but I also don't think its entirely fair to put ME:A up against Uncharted or Horizon- games where they're much more limited in terms of the quantity of lip sync and facial animations, so they can have a lot of things done with more expensive mocap whereas big content heavy RPGs need to rely more on procedural generated lip sync and animations then go back over with an animator. I think a more fair comparison is something like The Witcher or even Inquisition. And from what I've seen, I think ME:A falls way short of TW3 and even Inquisition in some ways.

And that's the most disappointing aspect of it for me- BioWare really pushed the whole cinematic presentation of things with Mass Effect 1 and they've seemingly been working on ME:A for a good long while and it just looks really disjointed in some aspects like the animations, which isn't an insignificant thing when they're forcing the whole cinematic dialogues and so on.
Click to expand...

I disagree.
 
F

Flipyap

Member
Y2Kev said:
I mean focusing on small keyframing issues is sort of petty. I think it's more important to focus on crap writing and world building...
Click to expand...
Yeah, these issues are so significant, I don't know if the series can recover from this without a full reboot. This isn't something that can be fixed with a third act reveal. First impressions are key, especially in video games.

Andromeda, the galaxy, is a complete bust as a setting. Everything we've been shown so far (planets, species, technology) has been so much less interesting compared to what they've left behind, BioWare would have to pull some serious bullshit to make a sequel to this seem appealing. They'd have to present whatever cluster they go to in Andromeda 2 as a completely new setting, which would only make our introduction to Andromeda look like an even bigger dud. "But wait, THIS time the new (now old) galaxy will actually feel new!"
 
CassidyIzABeast

CassidyIzABeast

Member
Pee Bee's introduction is really bad for a character that's been featured so prominently. Just kinda shows up, says something about being able to help you, and then...nothing else seems to happen?
 
L

Lime

Member
Plywood said:
Bioware Austin made Dragon Age Inquisition. Bioware Montreal are the ones who made Mass Effect Andromeda.
Click to expand...

SRTtoZ said:
Austin is also SWTOR right? I really like the new story stuff in SWTOR as well.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. Edmonton was leading Inquisition. Other Bioware studios helped with the full production. Montreal is on Andromeda, Austin on SW:TOR. Edmonton is currently working on the new IP now (see Nirolak's hiring thread about it).

Patryn had a post about the delegation of projects at the 3 Bioware studios a while ago, can't find it right now.
 
MaKTaiL

MaKTaiL

Member
They should have pushed the release date to July/August. Releasing it too close to two other (successful) major exclusive games is going to hurt A LOT specially if they don't deliver the same quality the other two games provided. The comparison will be inevitable.
 
H

HariKari

Member
MaKTaiL said:
They should have pushed the release date to July/August. Releasing it too close to two other (successful) major exclusive games is going to hurt A LOT specially if they don't deliver the same quality the other two games provided. The comparison will be inevitable.
Click to expand...

EA can't let it slip out of the fiscal year.
 
R

Ridesh

Banned
-BioWare Edmonton Team A (Mass Effect trilogy main team) : Working on new IP
-BioWare Edmonton Team A-2 (Dragon Age) : Probably working on DA4.
-BioWare Montreal, new team with some Mass Effect trilogy leads (Mass Effect 2 Arrival, ME3 Omega and multiplayer): Mass Effect: Andromeda
-BioWare Austin : Star Wars TOR
 
butman

butman

Member
Who said GOTY contender? Check out the other games that have come out and are about to be launched this year.

9bERIla.gif
 
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