Mass Effect Andromeda

[Bartimaeus]

 

More or less, yes. The game is not made by BioWare proper (i.e. the Edmonton company), but rather BioWare Montreal, a sub-company formed in 2009 to make crappy DLC. This is their first game. Yes, EA thought that handing over one of its biggest franchises to a brand new developer was actually a good idea.

 

Mind dropping me a reference to that?

 

 

Eurogamer reported it as far back as late 2013. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-08-mass-effect-4-teaser-images-released-by-bioware However, it's a thing that I've been "hearing about" everywhere rather than seeing evidence proper of, I admit.

 

One of the notable holdovers is Mac Walters, who was the lead writer for Mass Effect 3, and who is the director for Andromeda. (Drew Karpashyn, in comparison, was the lead writer for both Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.)

 

 

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

 

This clip isn't as funny as the others, sadly. Just cringe - poorly voiced dialogue, bad writing, and terrible, terrible animations.

so many anime avatars circlejerking

 

the irony

 

To be fair, while anime isn't exactly known for its writing prowess, I am pretty darned sure you can find ones that are better than that.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Raithe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNkl6V-mMDM

[Volourn]

"So the game isn't even out yet but you can already assure us that it's a "bad, poorly made game" and "a new low point for Bioware"?"

 

It is up to EA/nu BIO to convince us that the game is worth playing and buying. They have failed to do that. It looks awful. PERIOD.

[Malcador]

Seems like something to get on sale, at least.

[Gfted1]

Mass Effect: Andromeda PC Benchmarked On 24 Different Video Cards.

[213374U]

"So the game isn't even out yet but you can already assure us that it's a "bad, poorly made game" and "a new low point for Bioware"?"

 

It is up to EA/nu BIO to convince us that the game is worth playing and buying. They have failed to do that. It looks awful. PERIOD.

 

Whether you are convinced by the marketing is a wholly different matter. Looks to me that, for the first time ever, you aren't, and it shows.

 

The game may be bad alright (mediocre is the vibe I've been getting, personally), but it won't be as bad as the collective circle-jerk makes it out to be, that's simply not possible. It's rather amusing to watch, really. It's as if all these people suddenly forgot the frequently cringe-worthy dialogue of previous ME titles, the Shepard Rape Face meme and the fact that he literally limps his way through the whole of ME2 -- not to mention the really bad bugs and ****ty consolified UI that plagued previous installments.

 

If I didn't know how the bandwagon mentality works, I'd be tempted to think that it's a directed thing.

 

But hey, I'm not here to piss in your corn flakes. You want to hate on a game you haven't even played? Have at it.

Edited March 20, 2017 by 213374U

[Raithe]

Heh, actually one of the things that amuses me is that a lot of the flaws people seem to rail about for ME: Andromeda at the moment are ones everyone seems happy to accept for the last few Skyrim games.

 

Some awkward facial animations, a few graphics glitches, shallow elements, a bit of an odd UI, very up and down voice acting and dialogue....

 

Okay, it's not what you'd hope from a Bioware game, but at the same time, can't we have similar standards between games and their reviews?

[ShadySands]

I don't care about all the bad press. I just upgraded my video card yesterday just for this game

[Mamoulian War]

Well if you are used to higher standard of previous BW games, especially voiceover. It's harder to get used to lower standards of ME:A.

 

If you are used to lower standards of Beth games, well you at least know, that it would be almost impossible to go any lower :-P

[the_dog_days]

Oh boy. If you enjoy MEA, more power to you. I've looked it up and MEA had a 40 million dollar budget. In this day and age 40 mil for a full 3D open world AAA game is a shoestring budget (unless you're doing copy and paste stuff like Ubisoft). This title was an after thought to BioWare and in everything but the combat it plays like it.

[kirottu]

I don't care about all the bad press. I just upgraded my video card yesterday just for this game

Absolute madman!

 

When are you going to make "lets play ME:A" thread?

[the_dog_days]

I’ll be the first to admit that when you’re down on the surface of the planet with a gun in your hand the game has moments of brilliance, but its brought down by convoluted systems (crafting is a four step process; find minerals and scan them, find old tech and scan it, return to the ship and use research points from scanning old tech to research schematics, then go to the crafting window to craft the item using materials found), awful bugs, and straight up crap that they just forgot to program (absence of the options to quick save at all and manual saves turned off during main quests aren’t intentional game design, but oopsies). The worst part is, from what I’ve been hearing all the crap they oopsed are unlikely to get patched in later.

 

If you just have to play this game I highly advise you to wait a couple of months to iron out bugs and see if (hopefully) some of the missing features get added into the game, but mostly because I think EA is going to pull a Titanfall 2 and cut the game price down within the next three months because it’s not reviewing as well as they’d hoped.

Edited March 20, 2017 by the_dog_days

[majestic]

 

"So the game isn't even out yet but you can already assure us that it's a "bad, poorly made game" and "a new low point for Bioware"?"

 

It is up to EA/nu BIO to convince us that the game is worth playing and buying. They have failed to do that. It looks awful. PERIOD.

 

Whether you are convinced by the marketing is a wholly different matter. Looks to me that, for the first time ever, you aren't, and it shows.

 

The game may be bad alright (mediocre is the vibe I've been getting, personally), but it won't be as bad as the collective circle-jerk makes it out to be, that's simply not possible. It's rather amusing to watch, really. It's as if all these people suddenly forgot the frequently cringe-worthy dialogue of previous ME titles, the Shepard Rape Face meme and the fact that he literally limps his way through the whole of ME2 -- not to mention the really bad bugs and ****ty consolified UI that plagued previous installments.

 

If I didn't know how the bandwagon mentality works, I'd be tempted to think that it's a directed thing.

 

But hey, I'm not here to piss in your corn flakes. You want to hate on a game you haven't even played? Have at it.

 

 

This thread made me pre-order ME:A two days ago.

 

There's a certain fun irony in this board in particular complaining about the shortcomings of ME:A's animations and graphics. What happened to "graphics don't make a game" mindset that we, umh, superior serious gamers should have?

 

Anyways, I'm back to Call of Duty. Errrr. :look:

[ShadySands]

I thought the graphics are actually quite good in general which is part of the reason why the animations are so jarring

[the_dog_days]

I thought the graphics are actually quite good in general which is part of the reason why the animations are so jarring

The environmental graphics are amazing, but the faces are bad on a level I've never seen. I kept an open mind (despite the bad animation) right up until an lady NPC spun around from a computer console (about three hours in) and my immediate impression was that Mass Effect just turned into a zombie horror game.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

IGN, pretty funny ...

 

My wife’s reaction as I sealed the deal with human biotic commando Cora was to state, matter-of-factly, that, “This is porn. And it looks weird.” She’s not wrong on either count – especially since male Ryder appears to have painstakingly removed every hair on his body below the neck –

 

Sounds like his wife has bad taste in porn tbh.

[Azdeus]

This thread made me pre-order ME:A two days ago.

 

There's a certain fun irony in this board in particular complaining about the shortcomings of ME:A's animations and graphics. What happened to "graphics don't make a game" mindset that we, umh, superior serious gamers should have?

 

Anyways, I'm back to Call of Duty. Errrr. :look:

 

They've set a previous standard, and they have to atleast live up to the previous game if not surpassing it.

 

 

 

[Agiel]

I don't care about all the bad press. I just upgraded my video card yesterday just for this game

 

Well, take heart in the fact that your card will probably allow you to utterly beast the next big things of the next 2 years.

[Volourn]

"But hey, I'm not here to piss in your corn flakes. You want to hate on a game you haven't even played? Have at it."

 

My bad. I should know better. I need to play a game 7x  before being allowed to cast judgement on it.

[Zoraptor]

Mass Effect: Andromeda PC Benchmarked On 24 Different Video Cards.

 

Another game sponsored by nVidia with massive and utterly pointless amounts of tesselation specifically to asterisk with AMD cards? OK, that's about as surprising as an AMD sponsored game with huge amounts of async compute to asterisk with nVidia cards but I do wonder if the money is worth it just to annoy x% of your user base.

 

If you just have to play this game I highly advise you to wait a couple of months to iron out bugs and see if (hopefully) some of the missing features get added into the game, but mostly because I think EA is going to pull a Titanfall 2 and cut the game price down within the next three months because it’s not reviewing as well as they’d hoped.

 

Titanfall 2 reviewed fine, its problem was being released within weeks of another MP focussed game from the same company (Battlefield 1) and since it is primarily a MP game it needs to have a decent playerbase to promote further sales; hence the discounts. Pretty much everything I've heard on Titanfall2 has it as being a good game.

 

 

 

There's a certain fun irony in this board in particular complaining about the shortcomings of ME:A's animations and graphics. What happened to "graphics don't make a game" mindset that we, umh, superior serious gamers should have?

 

 

There's a bit of a difference though between lo-fi graphics and 'bad' graphics. Something like Stardew Valley has a graphic style from the early 90s, but it is a consistent style that works with the game and game play. System Shock 2 has shonky animation married to basic models, but is also 17 years old and has good gameplay and atmosphere. Certainly the problem with MEA looks to be that it's way, way down the uncanny valley with some people (not universally/ mostly women, to be fair) who look like they were extruded from plastic and faces with completely unconnected muscles/ expression sets. It's also the 4th game in the series, you'd expect improvement. Plus also also it will, whether fairly or not, be compared to the best games out there for animation and models. It certainly doesn't look like it compares favourably to, say, TWitcher 2 in that regard, let alone its sequel.

 

(And no, I have no idea how Bethesda gets away with ocean wide, puddle deep games that have deep technical flaws because they're still using the same basic engine as Oblivion did 11 years ago and won't or can't fix their issues. It's inconsistent but in the end massive sales numbers have a quality all of their own)

[sorophx]

the hell is this

 

Bioware can't live without drama

[HoonDing]

"the hell is this"

 

fake news

 

Game might be 'terrible' it still phoned in a 75 on Metacritic which is better than 95% of eurotrash rpg.

[Malcador]

Oh man, imagine how Star Citizen's launch is going to be

[Lexx]

The quality of the game will be visible already a long time before any official "full release" (if such a thing will ever happen anyway, as they are currently are just rolling out updates every once in a while).

 

Squadron 42 on the other hand, that's going to be interesting.

 

 

Truth told, the stuff going on with Andromeda now doesn't really surprise me. They didn't really presented a lot of the game before, and that's usually a sign of the publisher trying to hide things.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Lexx

[Agiel]

Think I may find myself in a Dragon Age 2 situation for this game where great improvements in a certain area (ironically enough character models and animations, which were a big step up from Origins) are offset several-fold in others (poor environment art, re-used areas, bad encounter design, and regressive RPG systems) to make a game one of the few I actually loathed. It seems the effort to deliver on the initial promise of the big open environments to explore with the Mako from Mass Effect 1 will be overshadowed by the bad animations, uncanny valley faces, and poor writing this time around.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Agiel