Problems with the Faces

Wow can see what people are talking about. I bet the whole game doesn't look that bad though.

@malrock said:

This game is the gift that just keeps on giving...

"And this ladies and gentlemen is a fine Asari. She is posed in such a way as you can get a good look at all of her...now what do we starting the bidding at?"

Found this doing a quick search, figures why all the human proportions and faces look wierd. Bigger heads, shorter bodies, but also about the same width. I understand not always adhering to the 8 head rule but...

My attempt on "reworking" the infamous face of Foster Addison. Instead of replacing the iris, I darkened it a bit and added a soft shadow casted by the top eyelid, which seems to be the main issue (eyes being wide open aside).

@word2: Wow, I hadn't realized how crazy a difference that really is. I had presumed it was mostly Bioware being unfamiliar with Frostbyte, which I guess is technically true, but it's also true that this seems to be more of a death by a thousand papercuts issue than just some SSAO slider not being turned on or something.

@word2 said:

My attempt on "reworking" the infamous face of Foster Addison. Instead of replacing the iris, I darkened it a bit and added a soft shadow casted by the top eyelid, which seems to be the main issue (eyes being wide open aside).

The eyes should honestly be a simple texture fix, would make a lot of the other animation stuff less noticeable. If i buy this i will definitely be looking for the hi res eye texture mods lol.

Although I don't know if that will be enough to save her in particular. I'm pretty sure Addison was entirely generated out of the aether, design writing et all.

That's an interesting point. Depending on how they laid out the texture sets, there could literally just be one 1k image set with all the eye textures on it for the game that some artist can go over and tweak.

@oursin_360 said:

@word2 said:

My attempt on "reworking" the infamous face of Foster Addison. Instead of replacing the iris, I darkened it a bit and added a soft shadow casted by the top eyelid, which seems to be the main issue (eyes being wide open aside).

The eyes should honestly be a simple texture fix, would make a lot of the other animation stuff less noticeable. If i buy this i will definitely be looking for the hi res eye texture mods lol.

I mean DICE is essentially in-house EA since long. It would be incredibly weird if the problems are simply because Bioware were unfamiliar with the engine.

In the interest of bottom line a publisher should and would move resources around to make things like that work. People use outside tech all the time without problem.

Not suggesting I know anything factually about the situation but I have a hard time seeing it being just because of the engine they chose.

And from the streams and VODs I've seen it looks like there is a constantly high ambient lighting on everything, that likely doesn't help the look of characters in particular.

@honkalot: its not an engine issue, it is an art direction issue. From concept art, to modeling, textures and animation something fundemental was wrong from the beginning and never addressed or noticed. Seems like the focus was on environment art and technical effects rather than character design.

It's not like I'm still not interested in the game. But before the year Mass Effect was maybe my most anticipated game of this year, and now I will get to it after Zelda, and maybe after Yakuza and Nioh. Oh, and Persona. Still need to finish Resident Evil 7 too. Nier looks pretty good, too. It's just too good of a year that something not great seems lacking. When the facial animation, voice acting, and other small pieces get added together it just looks like a disappointment. This game could also really use a Keith David in it. The lack of good background music hurts too. That was so good in Mass Effect.

Now, to be fair with the comparison to Witcher, CD Projekt Red are an independent studio with enough funds that they can spend years designing and building a game to be the best they can get it. Bioware has EA telling them they want a Mass Effect and they want it by "x" date.

@rangers517 said:

I was going to come here to post something similar. I was convinced this was just how Mass Effect always was, so I loaded up 2 and naw dude.

The facial animation has never been great but there's so much more life in the .gif from ME1... the subtle eyebrow movement, how she tilts her head down and gives a little bit of a nod, how her eyes track where Shep would be in relation to her head. They seriously fucked something up with Andromeda. Hopefully it's just a handful of characters.

That's not to say the game won't be good. The gameplay looks fine. But seriously man in a game where you spend a huge amount of time in conversations with other humans this should have been a focus.

Wait... what? i wasnt listening

This might be the most unintentional funniest game ever made.

200+ people have spent five years on Andromeda they've had time, money and good tools its their second game this gen on Frostbite considering how good BF1 looks and sounds its amazing how little Bioware have progressed.

@crommi: Yes. But have your pupils ever done that? Try it, it'll hurt.

@thepanzini: It's important to remember Mass Effect has a high number of NPC's to have conversations with, so the attention is spread across a large number of faces, whereas BF1's handful of characters only really talk in the pre rendered cutscenes.
It's better to compare it to another modern RPG such as The Witcher 3, faced with the same problem there are also awkward animations in that games conversations as well, however they pull it off massively better than Bioware has done here.
Humans and conversations have been done in RPG's for a long time now, i don't remember any being this unfortunate to look at.

There's some new drama now because the character creator doesn't let you make white characters, which is a little weird. Although with the rest of the weird designs I'm not surprised this slipped through the cracks.

Edit: Now I regret linking this video because JESUS who has a voice like that??

@wynnduffy: Oh boy I'll just pass on all of that, Thanks.

@cikame: Yeah totally not trying to make a like for like comparision more the case that multiple EA studios use Frostbite its seems to be a very good engine achieving fantastic results across multiple studio's and games, a more apt comparision would be FIFA not only does it have 1000's of unique faces but adds 100's more every year and their animated to react what happens on the pitch.

Mass Effect Andromeda.gif

@wynnduffy lol that video's stupid, man. Never even mind the rants that sound like gamergate satire, you can see people with white skin right on that preset page. This video's some choice trolling.

I've never been so entertained by a game before it has even launched.

Now that I am playing the game myself, I must say the player face -if you create one yourself- looks decent. I don't know if it's just me excited about new Mass Effect game, but the game is awesome so far - I am at the point the pre-launch streams had to end. It feels like the old ME games, the faces are not "next gen" but if I didn't follow the discussion on the internet I would have no problem with it at all. Also the story is really interesting and already several threads make me very curious for where they'll lead. The only thing that makes me not so hot about the story is the reliance on ancient tech, again. Also I think it's awesome you can even re-make the other twin model, so you can get rid of both default ones before you start the game.

@the_last_starfighter: You're right. I withdraw my argument. ME is totally about that stuff, so for them to completely mess that up, is inexcusable.

Need a bit upgrades in animation.

Wow that video and everything that dude says is pretty awful. That said it is weird that there's such a narrow window on the skin-tone. It doesn't really go very far in either direction which is something he seems to miss. You can't make someone with very black skin or very lily white skin. I normally like making my characters moon-tan pale. I wonder if it's a bug.

@rangers517: I haven't had the chance to go back to the trilogy yet, but seeing this...is extremely frightening and saddening. ME1 imo looks WAAAYY better than Andromeda.

@hayt: you can make very dark skinned characters with certain heads. Can't go pale though. It's an oversight due to the many, many limitations of the creator they built.

@hayt: I'm guessing it's tied to your dad. The game generates Daddy Ryder based on the character you create, so I imagine making that work requires each preset to stay within a certain range.

@encephalon: that alt right conspiracy video bullshit aside, it sucks they take away customization options for a pretty non essential character.

"They made a mistake... lets not relive it" :p