17 minutes of Mass Effect Andromeda Gameplay Footage

The animations for Sarah Ryder are pretty comical in the first 20 seconds, but the dialogue and gameplay do not look so good. I feel like Bioware invested too much on their vision of a "light hearted" Mass Effect story and they are just trying so damn hard to make PeeBee the "quirky adventurer", but it just falls really hard instead. It is pretty disappointing to see see how much the player has to rely on cover to take down bullet-sponge like enemies. I know the open world will have less hall way segments like this, but it seems like they really limit the new mobility options. In general, this just seems like really generic gameplay with a bad case of dialogue and voice acting.

Thoughts?

It's been awhile since I was impressed with Bioware's storytelling, but I'll likely get this anyway. Still really like the Mass Effect universe even if the writing is a bit cheeseball.

Probably not the best showcase for the game but I think it's tough to say with such a short clip. Needless to say but I'm some soooooo tired of people bashing this game. You'd think that this going to be the worst game of all time with the way people shit on it frequently. I'm personally excited for it but yeah some stuff doesn't look great but not going to stop me from playing and enjoying it.

BioWare's been near the top of the Internet Dislike Bandwagon ever since Mass Effect 3.

Wow. Looking at those YouTube comments makes it seem like a lot of people have already made up their minds that they are never going to like this game. Instead it seems like they are sharpening their knives to attack it.

Is that a Mass Effect fanbase thing or just a YouTube cesspool thing?

I think I will like this game. Good action in a sci fi universe with rpg elements. It's made for me.

I think it looks fine? I mean it's a pretty small slice of what is probably a fairly lengthy game. Hard to form concrete opinions on it right now.

Seriously, the facial expressions and animations have been consistently horrid. Not that it's a huge deal to me or anything but man... come on lol Worse in motion.

Umm, seems fine to me.

That is some pretty horrid writing, even by Bioware standards. Facial animations are a mess, gameplay looks like pretty by the numbers third person shooting with abilities, graphically unimpressive, all that compounded with the lack of a likable main character makes this look pretty awful. Gonna be a fantastic year for video games, but this is not shaping up to be among those.

@donchipotle: I still don't get why people are so salty about Mass Effect 3. It wasn't the greatest ending of all time, for sure, but the overall game was pretty good, and frankly the DLC practices (withholding key plot stuff in Leviathan and From Ashes) were worse than the mediocre ending.

This also looks ok. It may not be spectacular but not every game can be Mass Effect 2 or the Witcher 3. A game can fail to be a masterpiece and still be worth while.

And I am kinda jonesing for some Mass Effect horde mode anyway.

the main takeaway I've gotten from everything I've seen of this game so far is that every single weapon in the game seems to do about 1/10th the damage it should do? Seems like every enemy takes so much longer to kill than it should.

So not-Shepard looks a little constipated at times. I would too if I just realized that I can't go number two in my super advanced space suit that was made in the year 2700-something.

There's some jank to this video, but I'm still into the idea of more mass effect. Really loved the multiplayer in 3. I dunno. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal that this looks weird.

First off, I really think they shot themselves in the foot with their choice of mission; they went with something that has far greater hand-holding narration than a normal mission would (by their own admission). they chopped out any footage which contained spoilers (busting both the gameplay and narrative flow), and the cut the music for "narrative reasons" which makes certain parts feel flatter than they would otherwise.

I think it looks great visually, the jetpack continues to seem fun (if ill designed, there's at least one shot of them landing on something you aren't supposed to, leading the game to freak a bit and slide you down, Skyrim style), and I'm glad to see a total powerhouse Krogan back at things like Wrex was in ME1 (some of those melee hits look great). However, it does raise some concerns:

1. Peebee got smoked at least twice during this clip, and it's supposed to be on normal. If that's representative of the squadmate AI, higher difficulties like Insanity may render your squad totally useless.
2. The non-combat animations still seem kinda janky; better than before, but I can't tell if that's just because I've gotten used to the jank or if they actually made some improvements.
3. Some bad lines/line reads, in particular the way that antagonist said "a triple share to whoever brings me their sweet implants" made me think the actress was bored when she said it. There's probably thousands of lines of voiced dialog in the game, however, so I expect a few clunkers; it's just a shame they chose a mission that (hopefully) has an above average amount of them.
4. Still not getting over the amount of reused shit in this game. The antagonist even has the same Avenger rifle plastered to her hand during the cutscene in the same way that Shepard has had since ME1. It's been five years since ME3! Come up with a better solution than "well we're not sure what guns you'll have so just slap the basic rifle on everyone and call it a day."

There's a lot of fun gifs that have come out of the last few videos as well:

My personal favorite, the ol' Sticky Avenger:

Lol. Female Ryder looks like a derp. Her mouth is so freaking huge she could swallow a damn gopher in one gulp.

It's funny how the animations and faces and voice acting aren't a turn-off for people and yet that's been the selling point of games like these for awhile. Besides Bioware's B movie storylines, that is.

I have never been into the ME series, not really the patience for how big the games are, but this looks bad.

I mean, it looks great. But I get hung up on things like bad dialogue and animations. And this seems to have that in spades. I get people are able to look past things like that for the gameplay (which isn't doing much for me) but a lot of this looks half baked. The way she commentates on everything and when you come across an obstacle she just outright says so and the robot tells you what to do. It feels like pandering. And whoever that evil lady is sounds straight from a Nickeleodon show

Post Mass Effect 3 the fanbase is beyond loony. I'll wait for reviews.

My big takeaway from this video? The female Ryder character model is absurdly skinny. She looks like a child with all of that armor and giant guns strapped to her. I understand that as a "Pathfinder" she's likely to be very fit, but like, damn yo, that doesn't mean she also needs to have a size -2 waste line. I thought female Spartan models were bad in Halo, but this takes it to another level.

So much talk about reservations with this game. I have none really. I'm excited about this game. The bullet sponge enemies I really disliked in Mass Effect 2 on hard; that was frustrating. That said, I don't think I'll have an issue with it in this game. I like a good challenge, but I'll probably play this game on easy, either first or only depending on how long the game is (if the game lasts around 100 hours or more, I probably won't want to play through it again). The dialogue/voice work seems totally fine; less than stellar animations here and there is really negligible. I didn't mind the animations, other than the first part where fem-ryder tries to keep her balance for a second at the beginning of the video. I'm disappointed they turned off the music, though did he? It sounds like there's music, just turned down. There hasn't been any footage shown from this game to deter me. I think a lot of the reservations come from people that hated ME3's ending and didn't love Inquisition, and so the skepticism is stronger.

What's up with the negative titles, at least let people form their own opinion from the footage. It's hard going into this clip with an open mind now.

The negativity surrounding this game pre-release is kinda funny to watch. I just don't see the reason for it. Just feel like a game as huge as Mass Effect will require us to really sink our teeth into it before making judgements. It's like the opposite of Fallout 4; the trailers had us salivating and making ludicrous claims about it's high bar of quality, only to be varying levels of disappointed after finishing it.

@bigsocrates: If Leviathan had been part of the main game, I maintain that people's impressions of Mass Effect 3 would have been very different. It was the revelatory moment and new bit of lore that was missing from ME3s base game, and it would have added that extra bit of epic.

They shot themselves in the foot by releasing it separately.

In regards to the bullet sponge enemies there is a new game plus to it that could address it a la Resident Evil 4-6, etc. Not saying it's not an issue but hopefully one alleviated by a new game plus.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek that is one awkward looking character! Not that BioWare were particularly great in the previous games, remember Chobot's model? Yvonne looked quite awkward too, I guess the male characters got a free pass because they weren't really trying to make them sexy.

Also, they really screwed up on their female characters models. The male models look like the actors playing them, but the female ones look terrible. The actress who plays Ryder is quite pretty, the model though...

So with all the hating on everything that's shown, I guess that means it's still the cool thing to hate on bioware. The video doesn't look amazing, but just average. Will be interesting to see if they're just marketing this game poorly or if the game is actually just average. Combat seems like itll be cool for awhile at least. And if they do the multi-player well again I could definitely get back into that.

@onemanarmyy: Agreed. Neutral titles would be much more appreciated. I don't need to know that the title creator doesn't think it looks good, but rather that it's just a new gameplay video. Something to tell me what the video actually is. Opinions can be saved for the body and comments really.

The animation gripes seem like small fry, I'm more concerned about story and dialogue because I think the gameplay at least looks ok but only the writing and story will keep me hooked. I'm seriously hoping the reason they have been keeping the story in wraps is that they want to keep it a mystery instead of hiding bad quality

Also that hyperbolic thread title is stupid

Faces and animations looked fine going by that video, have you people not seen what Bioware usually does the human face?

That footage has in fact removed the fears I had watching trailers, and the footage they gave Brad to show on the site. It seems like fun, sci-fi action with some good companion chatter; I didn't hear the terrible voice-acting, personally. It seemed totally passable compared to beloved RPGs like Skyrim, and let's not forgot how fucking awful Mass Effect is when you pick male Shephard. That is really wooden, passionless delivery compared to Jennifer Hale's brilliant style. This seems to be nicely between those two extremes.

I am now going to buy it without too much worry. It doesn't have classic written on it, but we've already had that with ME2 in about the best way possible, so it has no shoes to fill in my mind. I will enjoy it for what it is. I will of course happily report its negatives should they arise as powerfully as people are predicting/fearing before even playing it. Predicting failure is a sad, joyless game without merit, though I heed genuine worry far more closely than doom-mongering (the latter of which I don't suspect is happening here, but is still worth mentioning).

* The facial animations, however, are unequivocally bad. They look unusually exaggerated in the same way L.A. Noir's did, but shinier and waxier.

Looks like a BioWare game so I'll probably enjoy it despite its flaws.

Those cut-scene animations look rough, but I think the combat part looks great. The environments look stunning, and even the animations in combat have a sense of power to them. I haven't played a cover-shooter in a long time, so I have no genre-fatigue for that yet. I would have liked squad AI to hold their own a bit more, though. Plus, this game better not have every room boil down to Enter>Scan>Fight>Scan>Exit.

I can feel myself finding the AI annoying though: I was already not a huge fan of the AI in the first trilogy however here I actively don't like the voice. In general, the writing in this entire video was tedious but hopefully the final mission will be more interesting in context (since they said this was edited from a late-game loyalty mission).

I love Mass Effect, but everything Bioware have shown of Andromeda hasn't excited me at all tbh. For what it's worth I didn't think much of dragon age inquisition either. Maybe Bioware has just lost the charm that made me a fan of their earlier games? I don't know, I'll withhold my final verdict until it's actually released obviously, but what is up with all the derpy characters?

https://i.redd.it/ldcf5sof9uey.jpg

Left is Bioware, right is some rando and 15 mins in photoshop.

I'm still pretty excited by all this. I can forgive quite a bit in design and execution if I'm already drawn into the world. For people who are worried and are all doom and gloom, Mass Effect one was a game that tripped over its own dick constantly in terms of animation, cut scenes, script timing, graphic glitches, load times, and scripting breaks, yet its a beloved classic. Beware of bullshit internet consensuses. If you go on youtube or forums, the prevailing opinion is that Dragon Age: Inquistion was a massive flop and failure, which isn't remotely true in terms of sales or critical reception. But it wasn't the Withcher 3 so I guess its terrible and awful and deserves to be buried.

A BioWare game isn't a graphical powerhouse. Well, that's not shocking at all. I mean, yeah, some of the faces of their characters have been like one step above Bethesda's facial animations. That drink pouring animation in ME2 was fucking terrible. But really, who looks to these games as graphical giants? There are so many things in a BioWare game that I care about more than the graphics. Showing gifs of in-game animations is always less than useless.

@mezza: It just gets me that the main piece of information isn't the fact that there's a 17 min clip of the new game out there, but that someone on the internet thinks it's bad. The actual noteworthy information is relegated between brackets. :/

I watched it and it seems like more Mass Effect to me. The character is definitly fitting the quirky adventurous chick stereotype that keeps quipping and cracking wise, which i tend to dislike but oh well. Not every character needs to fit my preference. If i was a kid that grew up with the Disney XD channel and be into those real actor series like iCarly and the Sweet Life of Zack & Cody , i would probably less annoyed by it. Or even enjoy it? (shudder, generation gap feels real :D )

Maybe i would've preferred the game to stray a bit further from the known Mass Effect formula than it seems to do, but all in all, i don't see why this clip is a cause for concern. If you liked the previous Mass Effects, this seems to be in the same ballpark.

@colourful_hippie: agreed. this clip is fine.

Seems fine. I think you guys are being too hyper critical. Some of you at least. Only thing I agree with is that Sara's facial expressions are a bit rough. Could be better. Doesn't really matter to me personally though. This video was just to show the mission structure and more of the combat. If you think you got all of the story of the mission you're just wrong. I don't really need to see anymore of the game besides maybe the multiplayer.

Yeah, between the ME3 ending and many people playing The Witcher 3 after Dragon Age: Inquisition, I think people are looking at BioWare with a much more critical eye. I just wish they would release the beta that was promised, so people could at least see if they'll like the game for the co-op multiplayer content.

The real problem with the fem-Ryder character is her eyes. They don't seem to animate with the rest of her face.

For example, a normal person, when they scowl, will narrow their eyes. If suprised, the eyes will widen. That doesn't seem to be the case with her animation. No matter what she's doing her eyes remain the same. The practical result is that she's always got this kind of gormless look on her face.

It's wierd, because most of the other characters don't have that issue.

As far as everything else goes, I'll wait for reviews.

I'm pretty ambivalent to Mass Effect and Bioware games in general. I think if the gameplay holds up people who liked the original Mass Effect trilogy are going to find something to enjoy here, just from the few bits I have seen (like that recent combat trailer/demo thing).

However, in almost every bit I have watched of Andromeda the cutscene animations have consistently stood out to me, in a way that watching ME1-3 never really did. Maybe it's the enhanced graphics making the animations seem more awkward then they actually are by comparison, I just don't know. Also, I'm not sure if this makes me stupid, but it took me a second rewatch to figure out what happened in that first 20 seconds. Something about the editing was just disorienting. Then again, it's the only time I've really seen that happen while watching anything Andromeda related, so probably just an isolated thing. Read that video could have has been edited to avoid spoilers, so that's probably it.

Reminder about what was accomplished 14 years ago.

I get a weird vibe that people want this (and most Bioware games) to not be good for some reason. Personally, I think it looks good as hell, and I'll probably have a great time playing it. Mass Effect 2 is up there among my favorite games of all time.

Eeeh, it looks fine. As other have said, Bioware gets given an overly harsh critical eye. It does look worryingly hand-holdy though...

As for the faces, yeah they look a little weird - they are much more animated than anything bioware - or most studios - have done in the past, and making it more natural is going to be an iterative thing; give them a few more titles to get it right. The more complex the facial animation, the more weird/goofy it's going to look when it's not done perfectly.

Wait.... this looks pretty good, what are you looking at? I won't defend the sometimes awkward animation but this looks pretty great, and I'm assuming this is close to the beginning of the game so combat is sure to open up later.

It's getting pretty obnoxious how many people seem to WANT Bioware to fail and criticize them at every turn. Pretty excited for this game to come out, less than a fucking month holy shit.

Gameplay wise, that looked pretty puppy awesome to me. Sure some of the animations in story scenes were off but that's been what RPGs had for years. I'll change the look of my characters anyway so how Ryder looks is kinda whatever to me but I don't need video game characters to look like a Hollywood casting call.

It...seems fine? Like, I get that ME3 rubbed people the wrong way; I hated the ending too. But, I did really enjoy DA:I and this looks...fine. I'm excited for it, at least.

Bums me out that I'll probably never like another Mass Effect game.