@zevvion: Yes, there were some moments of not awesome animation. The bad stuff in Andromeda is at least as bad, if not worse (seperated from any glitches) AND as I said you have to recognize the impact that Technologyhas on that. Animation is limited by engines, compression, meshes, etc. Newer games should animate at the very least with more detail so if you're saying that that's the advantage Andromeda has, it's a poor comparison because it's coming out in 2017, vs several years ago.

Just in a couple of hours I've seen a lot of bad to just plain awful, unnatural animations. Most of the previous games' failures were looking stiff. Fair criticism, but games have moved on. And you're not being honest with Andromeda, there is a very high densoty to it's crummy, bizarre animations.

EA/Bioware are clearly aware of Andromeda's short comings we've had very little pre-release footage up until a few months ago with a no show from all the big shows, imo it would have been much better to come out with a warts and all with big reveal like Fallout 4 side step the hate atleast until launch anyway.

@redcometrising: No of course not that is insane. But when giving critique it's often beneficial to remember that if you do so in a very simple group think like way often that leads to these horrible things. It's pretty much inevitable. The issue isn't the criticism of the animations. That is obviously legitimate. It's when that gets so large to completely overwhelm the balanced critique it was given in the first place.

I mean people often are very reductionist about this stuff. But its very presumptuous to assume animations are bad aka concenus bad game. Not that you or anyone can't think it's bad. It's more it can appear like the entire intention of the criticism is trying to fuel that group think. Of course there will be resistance to that. A group criticising one aspect of this product and treating it like it's somehow gamings biggest sin?

Even worse is that people who genuinely criticise the animations and actually are doing so not in some group think garbage get dragged into the mud. It's why people get so defensive about it honestly. Because people want to have legitimate conversation about this product from top to bottom. And speculative group think fueled by very little other than one aspect taking all the spotlight is frustrating. And ultimately it eventually loses itself as legitimate criticism imo.

@redcometrising: "respectful/civil uproar" now that's an oxymoron if I ever read one.

Criticism is fine, it should be welcomed, and certainly should be heard by the studio so they know what their audience expects. And yes the animations leave a lot to be desired but this Andromeda business is an entirely different beast then criticism now. This has become more of a witch hunt with hunting down individual employees and blaming them.

@redcometrising: Obviously nobody really gets to decide when a large quantity of legit criticism becomes dog piling on. But I'm of the belief that we wouldn't be having this conversation at all if it weren't for people choosing to give very limited opinions on subjects. Obviously there is a fair number of discussion in this thread, probably just as many people discussing have played some of the game for themselves as they have heard/read/watched opinions of it and haven't touched it. So it's all pretty speculative at this point until people dig past the 10 hour mark.

But I think it's just how fast people go to an extreme degree with something without trying to determine if something is a consensus or not y'know? Take the face animation stuff in Mass Effect as a perfect example. Because it's an avid criticism among so many different outlets, people instantly jump to the opinion that it's straight unplayable and bad. It's as I mentioned before somehow breaking gamings biggest sin. It's an afront to the name Mass Effect the list goes on. But those people don't stop to form any sort of an educated opinion. The rest of us including even the GB crew in their footage and many other outlets are busying trying to decipher how much of an impact the animation issues actually have on the overall impact of the game. Further more, on top of their being a consensus that yes, the animations are lacking and probably shouldn't be, there is also one on those who have played it rather enjoying the game play.

It's why this ends up coming off very witch hunt. You have a company that people hate in EA, people have criticized Bioware for a drop in production, they already have these narratives in their heads. They want to roll with it. And those of us who are genuinely out here looking for in depth coverage of the game, good or bad I don't care, I'd just like to see more comprehensive feedback, get left to have to deal with what essentially amounts to the equivalent of video game politics and labeling. Complete with harassment and bullying complaints now too.

And obviously ignoring these people is a first step in going forward. But I think more could be done. It's easy to have more thoughts on a subject but show up and feed that group think mentality without even realizing your doing it imo. And it's why I'd rather see people with complete criticisms who have played it, talk more about not just how the animations have impacted their experience but their entire experience as a whole. I obviously recognize that if your trying to really dig into characters or the story, and you find the animations jarring enough to disconnect you from the experience, absolutely that is fair criticism. But I think some of us are also looking to see what the numbers are like, in terms of people who find the animations to be bad enough to taint the experience, versus those who aren't bothered by it, or not enough to have that sense of disconnect.

@thepanzini: I think you make a good point about the minimal pre-release footage but it makes sense that they wouldn't want to focus on the conversations or the writing. That is the stuff people come to Mass Effect for and it's reasonable that they wouldn't want to show spoilers. Also showing two people talking to each other with dialogue wheels doesn't make for exciting promotional material. So I guess it could be either one, they either wanted to hide the janked up faces or they wanted to avoid showcasing story moments.

I do think it's odd that their first gameplay reveal was of a platforming section. I don't know what the reasoning was behind that.

I believe Brad thought it might have been the best thing out of the last generation, though he also loved RDR.

Austin on his Waypoint podcast had an interesting run in with this very issue. Otherwise normal person randomly went a little atomic, Austin called them out a bit (in his own personable way) and long story short, it was basically about the fact the emailer didn't want their favorite game series to die, so they went out of their way to defend it, and then went a little further to elicit a reaction. I think it probably goes a little deeper psychologically for everyone who gets all up in arms (and I'm certainly not innocent of it), but I think that's ultimately close enough to the truth.

@redcometrising: using a modern definition of oxymoron I am correct in stating that "respectful/civil uproar" is indeed an oxymoron as an uproar can not be respectful or civil but I agree with what you were attempting to say.

I wasn't saying you are witch hunting but rather this criticism of Andromeda has now grown into a witch hunt looking for particular employees to blame and harass. You asked "but who gets to decide when a large quantity of legitimate criticism becomes "dog piling on?"" and I would argue that when there is a wide fervour like the one we have with Andromeda adding more wood to the bonfire is no longer constructive.

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't provide your feedback in a civil and well constructed manor but the vast majority of Andromeda complaints seem to come from a guttural despise and wanting to see either god like perfection or complete failure that any critical criticism is lost in the woods. In this thread I stated I played about 5 hours and it is rough and I gave some points on why the opening is not great in the terms of storytelling. But I would argue now that vocal criticism doesn't help anymore. Not buying Andromeda though will speak the loudest.

Considering who instigated the abuse, I really don't think the threads and videos mocking the game can be blamed for what happened.

http://kotaku.com/scumbags-harass-woman-for-working-on-mass-effect-andro-1793410647?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

These jerks have been going after women in the gaming industry for years and they've long had it out for Bioware. They don't really need any excuse to do the horrible things they do, they were looking to do it anyway.

It's nice when people use the term "SJW" earnestly in the first sentence of their rant because I automatically know I don't have to read anything that comes after! Saves a lot of time

@redcometrising: I guess we'll disagree on a particular definition of uproar (I take uproar to have a disorder or chaos to it). But that is beside the point and off track. I am not saying your voice does not matter because you arrived later but I do believe because you are "late" you must bring different angle or be intelligently constructive with your observations of the problem.

And pet peeve of mine, free speech has nothing to do with this. Free speech is whether a government controls your ability to say what you want (unless your speech is only to incite violence or cause injury). Not whether a person on the internet thinks you should not post something because its bad taste.

My problem is that it gives me too much DA:I vibe which did not click with me at all. As it stands right now, I'm not willing to throw full price on that game yet. Maybe the future will change that.

Agreed, after playing two hours of the trial i agree with the criticisms and the article Rock Paper Shotgun did on it mirrored my thought 100%. Its a game that wastes the players time, and does it with a terrible quality for what it is. How a Mass Effect game ended up this way i will probably never understand.

I canceled my order, and feel like i dodged a bullet here. I'm not happy that it turned out this way as someone who has played all 3 ME games multiple times. But they audience they are going for with Andromeda is just not me, and that's fine. I have other games to play.

I do like the games story structure. From the trial it seemed like the quests flow better this time around. It is nice to have a larger area available for exploring.

Though I have to admit that I am also a bit astonished about the animations in this mass effect. Some arent bad but others look worse than the ones in mass effect 3. The face movement in facial animations just seems a bit off at times. It is hard to pinpoint the excact issue.

The one thing that is really annoying to me atm is that it seems like exploring planets means that i get a relatively long animation every time that i go scan a new planet. Though it could be possible to turn the animation off from the settings. Just didnt want to fiddle too much with the settings during the limited trial period.

In game where story, characters, and dialogue are king, I'm disappointed that I can barely pay attention to any of it because of how absurd and distracting the animations are.

It's just bad mmkay?

https://twitter.com/TypeANumber2/status/843424531880595457

I rest my case

@hero_swe: lol holy shit that is rough

I just want to know from people who have beaten the game (which is basically no one besides some press at this moment) how it feels compared to 2 and 3 when it comes to DLC. ME2 & 3 felt kind of awkward and incomplete without the DLC and I hope this game is not the same.

Whats the music and tone like? Is it more like the first game where its retro synthy stuff and the tone being a bit darker in terms of the story/exploration. An example being in the Bring down the sky dlc where you visit random outposts and read logs of attacks left by the victims.

Yeah but he gave it as an honor to the series as a whole rather than just for ME3. Edit: someone probably already answered that, didn't realise I was replying to a 1st page comment lol.

I think I've gone all the way around the other side and I'm tired of the anti-ME:A hate. Kinda of tired of being told I can't be disappointed in what I've seen of ME:A or at least that speaking of disappointment isn't okay.

@hero_swe: That's not really from the game, right?

If the game was free, then I'd happily play it through before giving my thorough, indepth analysis of it.

But, as it stands now, the game costs $79.99 + 15% tax in my area. This game will most likely constitute 20 hours of staring at npcs with terrible faces, and that is a big no-no.

We live in a post-Witcher 3 world. The bar for open world RPGs has been raised. Heck, even Breath of the Wild is now a reality.

Is that real? That's the first phrase that popped in my head. Look at the comments and people are asking the same thing. That's how bad it is. People have to confirm that it's real because it seems fake.

I played the trilogy. Some of the best games last generation. That was then, but that doesn't fly now. We saw the kind of jump that Witcher 2 had with Witcher 3. Andromeda is suppose to have all the elements that come together to create a strong narrative. Where is it? It's sure as hell isn't here.

@neurogia: That's the thing about this game. If I got it for free I would try it for sure, but at some point my time is worth more to me than even my money. This year has been a particular good year for games already, and there's already so many good games I've yet to play that I just can't waste time with even a mediocre game, let alone a bad one.

Hate? Lol. Maybe the game is just bad. 6.5 over at Gamespot yo

I think it's partially due to the fact that new entries in beloved series like ME are always treated with trepidation. There's always a percentage of the audience that have it in for a game for other factors (developer PR, previous track record etc) but I honestly think the reason everyone has their knives out for ME:A is because it breaks the tension. I don't want ME:A to suck, but I would rather it be the disaster people are painting it as that it be a bit disappointing and mediocre, which I suspect it might be. I remember feeling similarly about RE7, and then both my and public opinion flipped when that game turned out to be pretty good. There's just tension around these releases that everyone wants to break with either relief at it being great or catharsis that some imagined rank idiocy or incompetence doomed the game from the start. We'd rather our balloon get burst than deflated. A faint "oh well, that's a shame" just isn't psychologically satisfying.

That almost sounds like it could have been done with Source Filmmaker.

It's real

Real bad

Well, reviews weren't out when I made this thread. The thread is about the internet dog piling and becoming an echo-chamber over the face issue like that's the only thing going on in the game. As far as reviews go, I've seen 4/5s and 8.8s too. I've never really cared about reviews though, I'm curious about the bugs it has since that's factual, but everything else is just subjective, uh... yo.

The hate is coming from both sides...Manveer Heir who worked on ME:A is an open racist who Bioware were seemingly happy to employ. Maybe that's their revenge for the ME 3 ending? Kinda weird how few news outlets are actually reporting it, though.

He doesn't work there anymore and the word online is that he was causing some arguments within BioWare and underperforming. Who knows how true that is but he doesn't seem pleasant to be around in any case.

What. What is this. How does a multimillion dollar video game project with a 5 year development cycle result in something like this? Like, this is clearly cherrypicking an exceptionally horrible moment but based on all the feedback and reviews I've seen today it still seems pretty demonstrative.

@hewitt: Stop trying to make this a thing. The only people who have ever been concerned about Heir are dumb, white guy, MAGA idiots who've never had a meaningful conversation with a minority and who get apoplectic at the idea that they even have privilege. When you try to bring him up as a relevant part of a larger conversation about bioware or anything really, it just makes you look depressingly disconnected from reality and way to caught up in your own bullshit concerns about the world.

@banefirelord I'm not sure at what point cherry picking turns into a general issue the game has, considering how many instances of similar dialog have been floating around the internet for the past few weeks.

@simmant It's possible to think Heir is an ass regardless of your race or political affiliation.

@grimluck343: This is far and away the worst dialogue I've seen from the game so far by a wide margin (context: I've played about 4 hours of the trial and seen a lot of clips), hence my choice of "cherrypicking"...on the whole, the dialogue is just boring, not laugh-out-loud horrible like this. It's certainly demonstrative of a general issue of bad writing, but the game isn't nearly at that level of cringe on average.

Though, frankly, I'd almost prefer it to be constantly that bad because it would at least be entertaining, in a Tommy Wiseau-by-way-of-Diablo Cody kind of perverse way. As it stands, I've found it just plain-old flat and emotionless 90% of the time.

@grimluck343: @banefirelord:

The script, voice acting and directing work on the cutscenes all give birth to a lot of bad moments

@banefirelord Yeah that's probably fair. I think the wonky facial animations and spotty voice acting makes the dialog seem a little worse than it actually is on the whole.

While I'm sure that's a cherry picked scene... but man, that's rough.

The animatronic presidents in both the Hall of Presidents and the animatronic family in Carousel of Progress aren't as robotic as that scene. I'm not sure if the art-direction (Characters models kind of look like they'd fit in right at home in The Sims 7. They're realistic but also stylized. Big heads, stubby limbs - it has to be a conscious decision) makes the animation look better or worse.

I just saw the romance scenes and they're something you would expect to see on an Overwatch porn site

I went back to look at previous games and I'm surprised at how well the animation holds up.

The animations seem to be the least of worries for me. Everything I've seen has just had terrible, stilted dialogue.

When you pit this game up against Horizon, Zelda, Nier, and soon to be Persona 5... it better be a hell of a good fucking game to get my time. As it is a mediocre Mass Effect game simply isn't enough to draw me in -- even as a massive fan of the series and the original trilogy. (I actually didn't mind the original ME3 ending as much as some because a lot of it reminded me of Gurren Lagan)

ps: nice unnecessary "SJW" jab.

I think the animations are a worthy criticism but I'm also sooooo happy that the wider world is starting to take on this whole "let's all pick a random-ass company to dog pile on this week" thing.

It's been hurting the industry for a good long while now.

@lv4monk: I don't see what's random about it. Game companies want to make their release into an event. That gets everyone talking. And sometimes what they talk about isn't exactly what the game companies want.

But I'm not sure there is much harm except for fan egos. The companies want buzz, they get it. Even bad publicity is publicity.

If the companies really don't want all this chatter, they could work to minimize it instead of maximize it. In the immortal words of DMX: "[if] You don't start nothin' there won't be nothin'."

TIL renegade maleshep is basically Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men. I gotta do another playthrough.

It's not completely random. But it's not completely innocent either. Narratives get formed for certain companies, groups, etc and unwarranted flack can be sent to a degree that negatively impacts a games future, or even current development plans. I'm not saying this happened with Andromeda. Or that it's not sometimes also on the company as you mentioned. Sometimes this is the backlash to turning something into an event. But I always hated the "this game is an event" like aspect whether something gets well received or not. Why join some giant group think one way or the other without even trying to determine your own opinion first?

But I think No Mans Sky is a better example of a game that could of been hurt by this stuff. It was over hyped, over explained, and even advertised poorly. But what was released was given no fair shot. I'm not saying "hey man critics reviewed this poorly." I don't care about any of that. I'm saying hey man for a good long while people got super uppity when anyone tried to talk about what the game was doing as it was, if there was anything there good, and even discussion about it's future. If you didn't fall into the mindset of "this is a travesty what they have done to us with their false advertising" you were pretty much an irrelevant voice. That is garbage. That has got to stop. And it's no different for positive stuff either. People trying to have some talk about Zelda's missteps or issues or even how much it is influenced by other games or genres also get thrown into the wind of "this is a masterpiece greatest of all time." You pretty much have to wait for the storm to settle in some of those cases and I just think it' silly. This stuff rarely happens with movies. Sure people get uppity about a critic reviewing a movie they like badly, but you can find among social situations or on the internet legitimate discussion to be had about most films that are released. And even more so people are less critical of you if your opinion doesn't line up with theirs on that subject I find. It's a lot harder to do so about games, for whatever reason the "group think" like mentality seems more prevalent, and to a degree always has. You know Xbox vs Sony etc etc.

The randomness isn't about a game being unworthy of criticism and receiving it in full force, it's about the erratic spotlight the internet at large uses to decide which hot button issue is currently worthy of it's white hot rage. The random element here being whichever PR misstep is randomly chosen as the one worthy of "punishment" next. I don't think the idea that any publicity is good publicity works the way it used to. These days you're not just contending with word of mouth and sales, every other day seems like another harassment campaign and death threat.

Beyond sales and threats of violence it also just breeds a shitty online environment for discourse. The company becomes the enemy and two sides are formed. Oh, you don't agree with the level of hatred on display? You're on the other side, and thus the enemy.