We Streamed Some Mass Effect: Andromeda

After seeing that UPF clip Brad showed, I had to look over to see where this stream ended. Man, if only they went live for another 60 seconds.

Holy crap. That is some dismal voice acting and direction. Even without the weird animation quality, the performances are awful. It seems like bad voice-over is inevitable when a game is developed in Montreal. One of the Salarians even has a Montrealer accent! As the Turian slips in and out of that Quebec French accent.

Explanation for SAM (the computer in your "head"): Everyone can still communicate with him, it's just that the Pathfinder has a private channel that let's him communicate with you alone. You don't start the game as Pathfinder and only find out about this private channel once you become one.

How Brad could've gotten that really simple explanation so wrong is weird. Probably ate a banana before playing and got sleepy.

It feels likes they tried being more cinematic with the dialogue moments and it ended up making everything worse. You don't need that many camera cuts.

Reviews don't look great, but it seemed fine with the trial. Fingers crossed.

I really hope the rest of the game doesn't devolve into ancient alien threat like the prior games. The setup seems cool, the animations are very videogamey, and the combat... well I think I need to experience it for myself before passing judgement. It didn't look all that engaging, but I'm sure some of the abilities you get as you level that stuff up will provide some more diversity in the combat.

At this point, I don't know how I feel about the game. This'll probably be a wait and see sort of thing for me.

@7x_: Well you missed the point, good excuse to use that meme though [your ability to copy paste is second to none!] You should avoid this game, screw what someone who has actually played it thinks.

The heart is for emotional responses, not romantic. The tutorial makes that very clear so obviously Brad missed it.

this x10

Wow... Just... wow. This is some real janky jank.

Gonna have to take a break from the internet. This game reminds me of Dragon Age Inquisition where it wasn't impressive to me until far beyond 50% of the game..and then it closed very strong at the end and with DLC. I'm of the belief Bioware cares about making a good product and they will make good despite the technical hurdles of moving to a new engine and soft rebooting franchises. I guess it's rose colored, but I'm going to get this game and make my own conclusions.

I respect the GB staff opinion and they aren't wrong..but sometimes I think they get over indulgent and end up adding more to the internet rage machine than needed. As soon as they noticed this stuff they should know they aren't the only one's who will be making the same comments and perhaps could add perspective instead.

I mean, even if you have spent your entire life playing videogames you still don't have the ability in your brain to process something unless you are the one pressing the buttons, everyone knows that.

Ah internet, passing judgement before experiencing it yourself. Mid-way through first mission and quite blown away by the cinema-tics, as I had high expectations. Think this is going to be another Fallout 4 where the PC version is going to be superior [sorry to rub it in]. Character faces look great IMO although I haven't reached Citadel yet.

@skuupin: Also, that particular Krogan clan had already started becoming slightly more resistant to it (which might be related to Mordin's loyalty mission from ME2), which is what the gene therapy during the trip was enhancing.

@ouranou: Well I feel better about it if that's what is happening, I was just going on what Brad said.

Wooow shit this seems boring! I don't even care about the bad animations. But, good for me casue I have other stuff to play!

@lumbermancer: I thought the same. It seems to be fashionable these days to belittle the monumental achievement of Half-Life 2, but that game represents a level of technical and artistic synergy that puts to shame slapdash shit like MEA.

@skuupin: I don't know if the Krogan had their own ark but one tribe was included in the initiative for the same reason Krogan are always included--to do grunt work--and shortly after arriving broke off from the main group to escape what they considered further oppression. As for the Genophage, they say they used the 600 years in cryo en route to Andromeda to implement experimental gene therapy to raise their effective birthrate to 4%; an option not available to any Krogan population that didn't want to spend hundreds of years in stasis with the possibility of no improvement.

Also, as far as I can tell from the first few hours is that you are not exploring the entire Andromeda galaxy, only the Heleus cluster. This would be the equivalent of one mass relay stop in the Milky Way and the cluster is highly populated with nearby star systems.

The presence of the SAM AI is strange but at least in the first few hours it does appear to be a significant plot point. The story so far does not make it clear on whether SAM is "unshackled" or whatever that means but they do make it apparent that the whole project would probably be impossible without the AI. Also, it's worth noting that depending on the ending of ME3 SAM could very well be the last surviving Milky Way AI.

@skuupin: Yeah I was thinking the same thing about the Krogan ARK. Also if they left sometime before or after Mass Effect 2, then these Krogan still have the genophage. Also also (also), seems super weird everyone's okay with a fully sentient AI on the ARK. It's weird that the people who made the first game don't appear (on first blush, at least, because this might all be explained later in the story) aren't too up on their own lore. ...which is frankly odd for a Bioware game.

I've been looking around, people seem to have taken the bone of the facial animations and are running with it. If Bioware has managed to take the open-world systems of DA:I and incorporate them into a Mass Effect setting, that sounds great to me. But what kills my enthusiasm is the corny-ass dialogue that was written for nearly every character seen so far, the weak characterizations, the process of introducing every single character you'll be working with in what appears to be the first two missions, and the possibility that the new, mysterious ancient space maguffin will be a Forerunner-Covenant setup (really hoping the names on the enemies are an intentional writing/plot feint, but that's probably asking too much)

How far has facial technology advanced in 14 years!

Brad said that the Krogan had their own Ark. Is... is that right? As some one who once really liked Mass Effect, that makes no sense. Some individuals, or even a clan or something, but the Krogan were absolutely untrusted and still under the overview of the turian military. Wrex had hadn't exactly united Tuchanka into a solid, galactic citizen.

Also, how are they moving around the galaxy? I've ignored preview stuff, but mass effect ftl is actually quite slow. The citadel races rely on the relays to move large distances, and the use their own ship-based ftl to go between nearby systems. Clearly this galaxy has no relays so...

And look, Mass Effect has always been pretty poor technically. It's designs were neat, but the people and places were never top of their class. This game though seems less technically capable that DA:I, and that was a game that went with quantity over quality with it's art and characters. They've had years further to refine their use of the engine, so why does this look worse?

I can get past the faces, but Bioware showed they didn't care about their own universe in ME3, and this game doesn't seem to correct for that.

I'm tired of being angry about the garbage that was ME3, but why couldn't Joker date a space ship?!!? EDI didn't need a dumbass super advanced post cerberus infiltration body for them to work.

really https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j8gbngEN2w

Aside from barbie doll faces and broken animations, the writing is just as bad:

"We can do this."

....

1:59:40

"We did it."

"No, you did it."

Holy shit...

It's not meant to kick off the next trilogy, it's meant to be a standalone story. Or so Bioware has said, they'd probably make more of them if the demand is there.

Mass Effect: Andromeda Is Not the Start of a New Trilogy

well the architecture and interface look alright I guess

I thought the facial animation badness was overblown, but wow

@csl316: Indeed. They badassed up most of the ME1 characters for ME2, or in the case of Tali, made her more cute, and in ME3 they allowed everyone to be friendly with one another and corny for the Citadel DLC. Which I preferred personally. I hated that Garrus turned into The Punisher regardless of how you solved his mission in ME1, and Liara just plain changed her personality between games. But they were still way more energetic and lively than in 1, and by 3 they're pretty much just nice. I think there's hope for these guys yet, it just didn't show well in their introductory sequences.

Like, I think these faces suck. There's jank everywhere, characters pop into existence right in front of your eyes, it's all Bioware all the time. But if the gameplay is successfully improved(The jetpack dash looks very cool) and the story is alright, and the characters get better later on, we could still be looking at a fun game here.

after getting key binds setup and a couple hours in the SP, I'm loving it. On PC it looks great...

Oh shit, they got rid of squad orders?

I can forgive the face stuff, stilted writing, and generally empty feel. But the campaigns, especially on high difficulties, were super fun when choosing specific partners for a mission to combine powers and abilities. A biotic and tech person to support my vanguard shotgun bruiser as a slowly fought through a large combat arena felt like it gave me a ton of options with tactics. The combat looks solid and will work well for multiplayer, but I'm hoping Brad missed something.

I kind of wish people would stop immediately hating on these characters. ME 1 had a slow burn, Kaiden/Ashley weren't particularly memorable, Garrus kind of sucked, and Liara seemed like this wide-eyed amateur. Our fond memories come from stuff appearing in 2 and forward (well, aside from Wrex, but he didn't exactly... stay long with me). If they play their cards right, hopefully these characters develop and have arcs that make them as memorable as the original cast. It took awhile to get to where we were with the Citadel DLC.

Yeah, screw homosapian sex options. I only want to make love to sweet blue alien booty!

For something meant to kick off the next trilogy of games and be years in the making, Bioware really should have gotten some outside help for the animation and modeling issues with this game.

@skinnyluigi: Indeed. :)

I just can't handle the eyes, they are just staring at a straight line... WTF...

@juanmoretime: Unless it's two chicks! Then god's ok with it.

I'm not one to jump on the hate train, but MAN. I don't think it is excusable to release a game that is obviously not finished. They were aware of major problems in regards to animations and facial expressions for quite some time now and it was said on twitter that they won't fix it immediately after launch. Also, the fact that fixing your game after releasing it with huge patches has become the norm now is mind boggling to me and unacceptable under any circumstances other than if a bug that went undetected pre-release is discovered after the title's release.

All in all I don't think what I've seen from the game looks particularly convincing, even if you disregard the stuff people are complaining about. It looks weirdly generic and doesn't feel like Mass Effect.

I really hold the franchise to a high standard because I think the previous games are great and I want there to be more games set in the universe of the same quality, but it makes what has been shown of ME:Andromeda even more inexcusable.

I hope I'm just totally wrong and the game will be awesome... :/

Wow this looks bad

This game looks rough. Not just the graphical glitches or weird-looking characters, but the overall story. Attempting to capture the key points of the previous trilogy and Shepard, but doing it in such a transparent, haphazard way that makes the entire thing seem nonsensical and incoherent. Rushed introduction of characters, rushed and inconsistent introduction of the "pathfinder" savior role to give the main character a way to gallivant around the new galaxy, magic recreation of analogs for everything in the milky way.

I liked Dragon Age: Inquisition well enough, but this looks like a bastardization of concepts from that grafted on to Mass Effect in way too quick fashion. Environments and combat look good enough at least. Though even when still the character models almost look like cartoonized versions of ME characters.

Argh. Damn it. I LOVED ME1, and ME2 was so good I played it through completely twice in a row (and I almost never do that)! But I started ME3 at release... and it wasn't grabbing me. At all. It felt like an easy, paint by numbers, BIG step back in almost every way. Then I saw others saying the same, and saying the story and ending were even worse. I tried to slog through, but I eventually gave up - I couldn't enjoy it at all.

I also LOVED DA:O and HATED DA:I as well, so it seemed the changing of bioware to encompass all of the shitty parts of EA was having the expected effect, and I left it at that.

I'm aware the DLC and ending changes improved the ME3 experience for those who played it after all that was out, but I couldn't get myself to go back, not yet at atleast.

But, I can tell from this QL, along with the limp marketing and low excitement for this overall, that this is going to be a stinker. It looks WORSE than ME2/ME3, except maybe a couple hit or miss shaders and textures and such. The animation is bad again. I bet the combat and story will be easy, boring, and design-by-committee again as well. These are guesses based on gut feeling, but it's a STRONG gut feeling for me... this isn't going to be a good game, overall... that's my bet.

Ah! Well, unfortunately we'll have to agree to disagree on all aspects of existence then! Haha

Their walking animations... it's so bad!

@brad, when you hit compare, the name of the gun shows up on the bottom of the screen under the "Compare" text. Still looks, less than ideal, but I hope that helps!

The bad stuff would be kind of sort of tolerable. I just hope the writing starts picking up the slack. I'm three hours in or something and I'm yet to care about anything that's going on. That could get better, but the face stuff will be bad forever, which is quite the bummer considering staring at faces is like a fourth of these games, is pretty important in regards to caring about characters. It's harder to empathize with a character who just stares at you intensely like some creepy robot when you tell them something sad, you know? For a game like Mass Effect, it is a significant issue that can't be overlooked. It's literally in your face.

This seems crushingly dull.

Watching this just after finish playing Horizon, these char model face animations looks like 10 years old.

Any game that brings in Vinny to do some motion capture is GOTY in my opinion.

Playing this myself through Origin Access, the eyes thing is a real problem. And there's more screen stuttering than I would like. But the other graphical issues fade into the background quickly, and I haven't seen anything like what some of the real bad clips floating around have shown.

The voice acting is totally fine, and the writing seems like standard science fiction pulp; which is Mass Effect. I am mostly choosing casual or logical dialog options though. Combat as a vanguard is a lot of fun.

Haha!