The Mass Effect Thread

[Your Mom]

Soldier

[Lint]

On 3/16/2017 at 19:15, Jasonmufc said:

Lots of the review in progress and trial players have painted a very very dodgy picture of Mass Effect. Bad animations, bad voice acting, bad looking characters with soulless eyes and weird bloated faces complete with other weirdness. It has put me off quite a bit, certainly not going to day-1 this now.

Think I read somewhere Bioware will have a launch day patch addressing the animations

[Your Mom]

That would be nice. I love the game either way but it could do with some fixing up

[King Ellis]

I went Technician because, as before, love me some Overload.

Also, was intending to do FemRyder (Is this a thing?) but all the presets look like mutant frogs.

[JasonM]

1 hour ago, Lint said:

Think I read somewhere Bioware will have a launch day patch addressing the animations

The biggest issue is the uncanny valley all the characters seem to be in. With either ridiculous facial expressions, or none at all, with characters just staring blankly into space with only the mouth moving.

I mean, it's kinda dire that they managed to mess up facial animations so badly when they have done perfectly fine with DA:I and ME3 years earlier.

To further elaborate, the issue is that the eyes are the window to the soul, even in inanimate textures. And by extent, the eyebrows and surrounding facial muscles make up the biggest part in being able to show emotion as a human being, it allows you to show anger, sorrow, fear, frustration, sadness, and every other emotion under the sun. In the absence of that, you get the uncanny valley where you know there is something wrong and your mind automatically reacts with confusion and at times disgust.

Right now, as seen in trailers and footage from the pre-release preview builds everyone gets to play, there seems to be a near total lack of finer facial animations. Which means all characters tend to just stare ahead of themselves, with only the lips moving and sometimes the eyes darting around aimlessly. There's little to no eyebrow action, people don't squint unless they're blinking, people don't raise, lower, furrow their eyebrows. it's just a soulless husk that speaks to you. That's not even talking about the random weirdness like the main character seemingly smiling when disarming someone, and the head/face never moving a single muscle.

This is something that their previous games DID have, it's something they are knowledged with, they've never been great at it like Naughty Dog, but it's something they certainly can do well enough. But this game, it has none of it.

And you can't just zero-day these issues with a patch either. Zoidberg walks you can easily fix by adjusting the skeletal rules in the engine. But the facial features, that would mean they'd have to go into the engine and alter every single situation, of which there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands in such a vast game as this. It's a fundamental flaw, something a patch simply cannot fix.

What makes it even more the headscratcher than it is, is that the aliens seem to have very good animations from top to bottom, with only smaller issues and hiccups. Only the humans and humanoids like Asari are stuck with the problems. So it's obvious they put in effort to animate the finer facial details for all the other ones.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Jasonmufc

[Your Mom]

Yeah I mean I am for sure enjoying the story but I can admit it does not look good at all

[apsham]

4 hours ago, Lint said:

Think I read somewhere Bioware will have a launch day patch addressing the animations

Last I saw there was a Twitter message stating that fixing them wasn't in the initial set of plans and they hadn't discussed past the first set - but maybe it has blown up enough that they went into overdrive.

[Monkey D. Lars]

Need to get back into the combat system, keep getting murdered on Insanity XD 

[Lint]

On 3/18/2017 at 15:27, New Year New Srar! said:

Yeah I mean I am for sure enjoying the story but I can admit it does not look good at all

Well, for me, a good story can get me past graphical issues.  Hell, I still play GTA:SA and Bully on my PS4 because the stories are pretty good

[JasonM]

9 hours ago, Lint said:

Well, for me, a good story can get me past graphical issues.  Hell, I still play GTA:SA and Bully on my PS4 because the stories are pretty good

A good story can get me past graphical issues*

*If the character didn't cross into the uncanny valley because they look off into space and they have dead stares.

I can play games like KOTOR just fine, even though the characters have like 3 emotions that circle around at random. Andromeda seems to have 0 facial emotions, unless 'Shellshock' is the one they were trying for.

And since games like Mass Effect have so many conversations that include straight on close ups of those blank faces, I really can't get over those issues because they are too pervasive.

E.g. the friggin trailer

Edited March 20, 2017 by Jasonmufc

[Monkey D. Lars]

If you can't get over it, you should wait for a patch if they ever release one to fix it. Or else, well, I don't think you should bother because I usually spend 100 hours in one play through. That would be a hell if you're annoyed by something  

They should've teamed up with the guys that do the faces for NBA 2k.

[JasonM]

well i'll still pick it up because I LOVE Mass Effect something fierce, but well i'm certainly going to wait until the prices drop under 25 bucks and hopefully most of the issues are patched out. But like I said, I think the lack of facial animation is something that will probably stick around.

[Ruki]

3 hours ago, LarsLars said:

If you can't get over it, you should wait for a patch if they ever release one to fix it. Or else, well, I don't think you should bother because I usually spend 100 hours in one play through. That would be a hell if you're annoyed by something  

They should've teamed up with the guys that do the faces for NBA 2k.

I'd be surprised if they didn't.

[Your Mom]

You could slap me in the face then tell me that was Mass Effect and I would still give you $60, Probably give you another $20 if you slapped me again and called it "DLC"

[Ruki]

1 minute ago, New Year New Srar! said:

You could slap me in the face then tell me that was Mass Effect and I would still give you $60, Probably give you another $20 if you slapped me again and called it "DLC"

This is my favorite post.

[Benji]

Very first impression - the character customisation sucks. The presets are hideous and you only make them worse by changing them. I just went with default Sara in the end.

[Benji]

I have such a crush on Suvi

[Benji]

Man, this game really doesn't want you going out of bounds. Did it once on purpose, then did it a second time right after by accident and it crashed the game

[Your Mom]

6 hours ago, Benji said:

I have such a crush on Suvi

Me too! The only thing I don't like so far outside of the customization stuff which I don't really care about is basically being forced to play a Sudoku style mini game a bunch of times. Like I can do it but it takes me forever and is not fun.

As usual though I love everyone in my party even the ones not in your squad. I can't think of a single character on the ship I find boring 

[Benji]

Just finished (what I assume is the first trip to) Eos. So far it is a solid 7.

Spoiler

The animation is a step down from ME3 (especially Sara, I feel like her mocap actress must have been smiling in her "default" state so everything she does she and says contains a creepy smile), but it's nothing game breaking, just a little off-putting. The actual action sequences have been good, battles are fun but a lot tougher than ME 1-3 (the cover system doesn't work as well as it should), but generally I am enjoying them. Just obtained two of the characters I think are most likely to wind up as two of my regulars.

My one big complaint is that it suffers from "empty world syndrome" like so many other RPGs. I don't know why developers insist on trying to make games open world, especially barren planets. The sections where I have been largely corridored have been significantly more fun than the exploration of planets with like... three actual people on (not even exagerrating, I spent a good four or five hours exploring Eos before any other people besides enemies appeared outside of one random human, Peebee and the Krogan dude, the latter of whom only appeared in those final two hours).

I know it sounds like I am not enjoying it, but that's largely because my expectations of Mass Effect are so high.

 

2 minutes ago, New Year New Srar! said:

Me too! The only thing I don't like so far outside of the customization stuff which I don't really care about is basically being forced to play a Sudoku style mini game a bunch of times. Like I can do it but it takes me forever and is not fun.

As usual though I love everyone in my party even the ones not in your squad. I can't think of a single character on the ship I find boring 

Eurgh, the sudoku thing confused me for ages because I didn't realise the controls were at the bottom, so I kept pressing X thinking that would scroll through options, but that is submit, so I just kept fighting a random enemy over and over wondering what was going wrong

The squad is cool. I love the lady Turian and Cora. I didn't take Liam with me but he seems a nice enough addition who I'll probably take on my second trip to Eos (assuming there is one because dialogue insinuated it).