Mass Effect: Andromeda - Autism reaches outer space

Phazael said:

Start a new female character and use template 3 to build off of. Make her look attractive (its possible). Then, look at what the in game engine does to the face shape and textures in game. Hell, compare the early version of Ryder to the derpy one they changed to at the last minute....

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Eh - the models are bad, but I chalk that up to bad models, not SJW crap. And even if it is, it's subtle and just comes off as cartoonish - I was fine with the graphic style in SR3/4 and it comes across similar to me - yes, in SR3/4 it was an intentional choice and in ME:A it's because they either overshot performance and scaled back and/or diverted to cartoony at the last moment - but I'm OK with it. Shrug.

Mass Effect: Let it die already

The look of it actually shocked me a little bit. I thought "this looks like a 10 year old game".

I'm not really shitting on it for that specifically. But I don't think it was even a choice. I think any actual artistic talent that they had at bioware is long gone and they honestly have no choice in the matter but to make it in unity. And I'm happy to shit on them for THAT.

For example, you can SEE the player character layer that they tossed on top of the game world. It's jarring. And for a game about "immersion" it completely wrecks it. I have to guess that the character is higher resolution or something than the game world so they thought it was a subtle thing... or I dunno. But you look at it and you can see the seam. Being able to see the seam is rarely a positive thing.

Phazael said:

What exactly do you think this guy did on the game, given how much he was publicly masturbating over his agenda in relation to Andromeda?

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He was a gameplay designer. His responsibility would have been to help design the mechanics behind all the systems in the game. As far as I know no one really knows specifically what his area of responsibility was but it certainly was not writing or anything connected to the story.

He's listed under Gameplay Designer, not under the writers.

Vaclav said:

Eh - the models are bad, but I chalk that up to bad models, not SJW crap. And even if it is, it's subtle and just comes off as cartoonish - I was fine with the graphic style in SR3/4 and it comes across similar to me - yes, in SR3/4 it was an intentional choice and in ME:A it's because they either overshot performance and scaled back and/or diverted to cartoony at the last moment - but I'm OK with it. Shrug.

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You cannot be serious there. And the part about it being because of performance rather than gross incompetence is absurd too.

It's one thing to like playing a game despite it being objectively bad, but you're crossing over into apologist territory here.

Yeah, I don't know why he keeps using that argument. I'm pretty sure I bought and played more games this year so far than what he described of his own purchases, and that's all the more reason to call ME:A out for what it is.

Well, I put about 6 hours into it yesterday. I don't completely hate it. I'd say like a 6/10? Maybe that's being generous.

I dislike the Mako, I've pretty much always hated how characters move in the Mass Effect series so that quirkiness is still present, and when you get down to the first planet the game just gets to be a slog of doing simple fucking quests with somewhat decent (certainly not great) combat.

The crafting/drop system already seems fairly shitty. The mining from the mako is seriously a shit idea as far as I can tell. The fucking thing isn't radiation proof? What year is it again? How do these fuckers fly anywhere in space?

So we've got a semi-open world with gates and a bunch of boring quests. Not a great look.

Another oddity is it seems the game's animations/pop in get LESS polished as you go along. I didn't really notice things too far out of whack until further along and then it just seemed like a mess of pop in, bad texture swapping, funky animations, you name it.

The real crime here being this is supposed to be a AAA space rpg from a AAA company and what you have here is something extremely mediocre. It's not a 3/10, it's playable and I didn't completely hate my time with it, but there was absolutely none of the sense of awe and wonder you get from playing a game like Horizon.

This game feels like it was put together by the numbers, following a blueprint of DA: I and the previous ME games and a whole heaping of bad direction.

It's strange but I think I actually preferred the first ME over the rest of the series, I've never even played very far into ME3 but I did do some of that multiplayer. Took me years to beat ME2 and the best part about that game by far was the DLC that Bioware refuses to put on sale years after the fact.

After playing site 2 of Eos, BioWare can go fuck right off.

"Hai, ummm, you can play CoD shtyle. You can jump jhet arouns, and it'll be whicked aweshome!"

*hiding in a building just so I don't get my ass shot off*

Yeh. AWESOME.

I love the burning video card. Hahaha.

Vorph said:

You cannot be serious there. And the part about it being because of performance rather than gross incompetence is absurd too.

It's one thing to like playing a game despite it being objectively bad, but you're crossing over into apologist territory here.

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Say what...? Almost every single game has some better videos that it's got during development that get toned down later "due to performance". That's not being apologist, that's understanding the industry.

Remember Watch Dogs 1 pre-release vs. final? That was chalked up to "performance issues" forcing them to tone down the graphic fidelity.

I see no reason to not believe the same might not be the case here - RPGs are notorious for stressing engines more - it looked MARKEDLY better than DA:I in the prerelease (the only other FB RPG I think, right?), and now it looks within the ballpark of DA:I (I'd say slightly worse characters - but it's not a drastic difference. The environments however are miles ahead of DA:I)

Seriously, the game looks 2016-17 when it comes to the world design/world art - it's just the character models where it falls flat, which WERE amazing in pre-release videos... which tends to indicate something made them change at the last minute, being that it brought it back in line with the only other Frostbite RPG, it seems pretty logical that they were biting off too much to chew with the PR vids. Sure, it could be some SJW conspiracy theory - but I'm a believer in Occam's Razor.

[And no, you've probably not bought more games than me recently - 4 titles were asked, I answered only for those 4 - among some of those not listed I bought recently were TR20th, Dishonored 2, RE, Berserk, XCOM2 (plus rented Bioshock Collection, WD2) - as well as some digitals I bought for "slow times"]