Mass Effect: Andromeda

Good. I bet it'll still get some DLC but not enough to justify a pass tho.

Already preordered!  ^^

And Sledge, they're probably thinking about Fallout 4, which had a season pass but ended up with many more DLCs then they had originally planned.

Nice. There is def going to be a lot more build diversity. 

Ok my worries about the skill system have been addressed with this video and I can't wait for this game to come out now (I already have it pre-ordered but was still wary on the skill system). Looks like I can have my Infiltrator and Sentinel builds so I'm happy (though there are a few missing skills that would make it even better). Also love the fact that weapons aren't restricted anymore, a Sentinel build with a Shotgun is going to be freaking amazing.

It is very nice, they you can basically build an old class and then put a splash of something you wish it had. I'm def investing in weapon usage and going solider route, but I'll probably add some biotics and that flame thrower in.

Oh I'm definitely going the Sentinel route with a shotgun (which will probably be the only points I spend down that route), Biotics and Tech abilities are amazing when used in conjunction. If Tech Armor was in this it would be even better but I'll have to substitute Barrier for it and sadly there is no Reave but I can learn to live without it (that ability was broken in ME2, high damage and it healed you for a portion of said damage). I also wish Incinerate was still in but I guess the Flamethrower will have to make up for it. I'm going to be like a kid in a candy store when I get my hands on these ability trees.

That electrical conduit upgrade for assault rifles looks nasty.

I was looking at this article a little while ago:

http://www.vg247.com/2017/03/16/mass-effect-andromedas-animations-have-already-reduced-it-to-a-laughing-stock/

It looks like the facial animations are a bit out of whack.

I'm a bit surprised this has become such a big deal. Mass Effect isn't really known for their facial expressions. They get away with it on the alien races, hell, Shepard was like one of the 4-5 human's you dealt with in the original series. The graphics got better, and the face tech didn't. They clearly didn't mocap. Its mostly the eyes that are the problem. It doesn't bother me too much. I'm sure there will be a patch a few weeks after launch to patch it up.

I noticed this in one of the early trailers that the female Ryder looked funky in the face, and I just accepted it as the character model. Anyone that will be making freaks and abominations as their characters have no room to complain.

I never had a problem with the face animation in the previous ones.  That's the hardest part to recreate in animation, so I'm kinda used to it. 

And so excited to get home from class tomorrow to play!  *squeee*  Sledge, you need a review for it?

I'd love to read your review of the game. I still haven't played the first 3 tho. lol. I'm about one afternoon away from beating Rise of the Tomb Raider before I start playing Mass Effect 1.

I don't care that I might've spoiled something for myself, but this became the only way ME:A was going to make me preorder it.

So, early thoughts.  Started it last night, will get back on tonight after class.  And no class Wednesday. 

Story-wise, a good start.  I'm definitely intrigued and want to keep going.  Graphicly, I don't know.  I honestly do think the facial animation was better in ME3.  And I can't tell if it's the game or my video card, but there's some weird effects going on with the reflections that make it look odd.  For a lot of it, things look really good.  But some things actually look animated.  Not sure how else to describe it.  I'll be replacing my video card either tonight or Saturday, so I'll be able to see then. 

Anyways, totally getting into it! 

I was watching some random vids and character models look a bit whacky to me. Not just facial animations but alot of body movements look very stiff. Are you enjoying the combat?

Ok, second look.  I figured out what's been bugging me a bit. 

1: While the facial animations are ok enough for talking, it's the EYES that are off.  Either the character is constantly blinking or NOT blinking.  Plus, the eyeballs never stay steady, they jump around a lot.  I don't know if that's fixable in a patch, hopefully it is.  It is distracting right now, but hopefully I'll get used to it.  Though, it is rather sad that the facial animation is BETTER in ME3.  Not sure why they would step back for that, but if it is patchable, I'm willing to wait it out.  The body animations are on par with ME3, so I'm rather used to them by now.

2: The VA is only half good.  What I mean by that is many VAs do a good job, including FemRyder.  (don't know about male Ryder yet)  But many others are just....bad.  Poor pacing, very stilted and stiff.  I don't know if it's bad direction or just not good VAs.  I lean towards bad direction because one of those that doesn't sound good is the VA for Liara T'Soni, and she's great in the first trilogy.  (no, she's not in it, but you run across a few logs sent to one of the other characters)  That's more distracting than the facial animations for me.

With all that being said, the story is very good, I'm totally invested in my Ryder, so looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!  Unfortunatly, real life is getting in my way with that pesky 'job' and 'school' that I'm signed up for.  Damn you, RL! 

As for combat, I still suck at aiming, but I'm getting better!  Don't like how they handle cover, hoping I can get the hang of it since it's not a good idea to stand there and let bad guys unload a clip on you while you're trying to hit them!  Tactical cloak is still the best power ever.  Of all time.  Being able to sneak up on bad guys and drop them before they can return fire is very satisfying. Still getting used the HUD as well, but that's not unusual for me.  It always takes me a while to really get the hang of where to look for my information I need.  Overall, combat so far is fine, interested to see what the new powers can do.  *evillaughalaKrankor*

Oh man, now I'm going to stare at everyone's eyes when I start the Mass Effect Trilogy. When I get around to playing Andromeda the eyes will creep me out even more.

On 3/22/2017 at 7:52 AM, Dubird said:

 I lean towards bad direction because one of those that doesn't sound good is the VA for Liara T'Soni, and she's great in the first trilogy.  (no, she's not in it, but you run across a few logs sent to one of the other characters)  That's more distracting than the facial animations for me.

It sounds like she just casually read her script off a piece of paper and got paid. That was probably the worst voice acting I've heard so far. I don't really have an issue with the rest of it.

The facial animation is definitely because of the eyes and eyebrows. Some of the characters look fine most of the time, but the unnecessary side to side eye movement is baffling. As for the jerky motions of some of the characters, I think that's more do due with some type of placement bug. Prescripted scenes do fine, but on the fly interaction is when the animations can go crazy. I even saw a guy teleport across the room once because I interacted with him from the side. Something was definitely up with who ever designed this. They often try to hide it with over the shoulder cam POVs... and when you rotate the cam to the side they look so lifeless.

I'm not sure how I feel about this open worldness. Its probably because I just started and its so different. In previous games you had memorable landmarks like the Citadel and Omega to start out with. I'm also not too fond of some of the design choices. The jump would be cool if you didn't have to rely on it for everything, even small obstacles that impede your forward movement. I was killed during my first big fight because some ground pipes got me stuck. Shit like that is my biggest pet peeve. The dual purpose buttons on consoles don't help. You can use O to climb over things, but it doesn't always proc and O any other time is a dash, so you just dash face first against the wall. Triangle is to interact but also melee, so if you don't line up with something right, you can punch the air like an idiot. The platforming is pretty neat, and the jumps and dashes do help you get to cover faster when you're under duress.

The story itself is interesting. The one thing I've always loved about mass effect is how interesting the side quests are because there is so much voice work put into them unlike other games that resort to text boxes for nonessential tasks. I do miss the renegade/paragon system though. I guess I'm so use to being a prick, Ryder's optimistic, carefree personality makes me cringe. I already miss Joker too.

The combat is good. I went with Scrapper, and I'm currently using the solider profile. I love the Biotic charge, and the melee in this game is brutal. Its a great way to clean up some low levels. I'm rocking that Carnifex II Pistol. Damn thing hits like a truck and can 2 shot almost anything because of its lethal accuracy to get head shots from long range. The slow fire and small mag are worth it right now. Team AI is better than in previous games so far. But I had a chuckle when the female Turian on my squad went down immediately during a big fight... just like Garrus always did to me.

The only movement issues I have while playing is due to either A: hitting the right key on the keyboard (some of the things require me to use my pinkie, and for some reason, I always have trouble placing it ) or B: driving the Nomad.  And that's not a knock on the Nomad, I just suck at it.  I'm pretty much as horrible a Nomad driver as I am a Mako driver.  I always imagined the crew members drawing straws and whoever loses has to go on mission where my Shepard had to drive. 

Here's a video someone did about what bothered him about the animations, and he's pointed out reasons for some of the things that make sense.

One thing he doesn't mention is that the eyeballs have no shading. The white around our eyes is not completely white. There can be slight color on the edges because of blood vessels, and there's shading from the eyelids as well. That shading doesn't really touch the eyeballs in Andromeda. So the creepiness sticks out even more in some lighting situations.

There's also the issue that there's very little body movement. There's occasionally an arm movement, but the dialogue tends to be characters standing almost perfectly still, no arm or head movement. It's like watching two mannequins swaying slightly in the wind talking to each other. We don't hold our heads still to talk, we tilt it, move it, turn slightly to the side, etc. It's puzzling to me how Bioware could go from ME3 animations that aren't perfect, but with subtleties that humans have, to demon-eyed mannequins. I don't know if it can be fixed in a patch (though I really hope so), but it's not going to stop me from playing. I'm enjoying the story and the exploration enough that I'm still going to play. But actual immersion is not going to happen with the animation the way it is.

Compared to the Mako, the Nomad is amazing. I could do without the 2WD/AWD swapping, but at least the damn thing doesn't flip over every 3 seconds. 

5 hours ago, Dubird said:

It's puzzling to me how Bioware could go from ME3 animations that aren't perfect, but with subtleties that humans have, to demon-eyed mannequins. I don't know if it can be fixed in a patch (though I really hope so)

A: It's a different team from the one that originally made the ME trilogy hence why we went from stuff that was well ironed out to having issues like this. There's going to be a lot of growing pains for this team if Andromeda ends up being a series of games (which I'm suspecting it will) but they'll eventually get it right (the first ME wasn't without its own animation issues and look what that team went on to build).

B: It can easily be fixed but I highly doubt it will be. This requires a lot of reanimating (and in some cases remodeling) that I'm sure the team isn't looking forward to doing (not to mention the patch size when it is done). They'll probably fix the more glaring issues with a hot fix somewhere down the line but I highly doubt they'll fix everything.

http://www.vg247.com/2017/03/24/former-bioware-animator-explains-why-animations-in-mass-effect-andromeda-are-the-way-they-are/

The link above is a pretty interesting read. What I gathered from it (and this was a former Bioware employee) is that they were to lazy to go the extra mile and just prioritized what they thought players would see over what they wouldn't. Goes to show you even the best developers don't want to go the full 10 yards.

As for my actual thoughts on the game, I don't have many at the moment. I haven't put enough time into it to actually have any (I'm pretty much still in the prologue section, debating if I should hold off playing this until I beat Horizon or not). My only real opinion is that the preset character models for female Ryder suck if you want to customize your character. I couldn't for the life of me make a character that I thought looked good and had to go with the default look and god forbid if we try to customize that look(I always play through as a female first then male, I'm weird that way). Really starting to wonder if the good 3D modelers were on vacation during the development of this game (the enemy alien models look amazing though, props on that) because ME3 had better looking characters then this game.

I was telling Sledge, after playing as 2B in NieR, all these female character models are pretty ugly to me. I don't think I want to romance any of them. I tried to customize my twin not to look so weird. I don't know why its hard to get a decent female face that doesn't look like bad plastic surgery. The hair styles don't help because they all look like wigs, which goes for the males too. 

Now that I've made it past the first planet, the story has really picked up and got me excited... although I really miss renegade... I REEEAAALY miss it. I'd like to tell some of these assholes how it really is. The few times you get a smart ass response, you're generally smacked back down by the NPC. Ryder lacks the grit Shepard had... I get he/she is a different character, but man they really put the "green" aspect to the forefront. I do like SAM a lot though, his voice acting is great.

Well it is kinda hard to beat android perfection (plus it is a SE title and they're known for their modeling chops)

I'll say this about Andromeda, you can really loose track of time while you're playing it. I ended up playing it for 6 hours yesterday and didn't realize it until 11 last night when I finally looked at the time. I have to say it's been a long time since I last had a game do that for me (ME3 to be exact). Bad animations aside the game is really fun though I do have some issues with the combat system (it doesn't feel as polished as ME3 and I'm definitely not liking the cover system. Gunplay is also not as smooth as I'd like it). Even though I didn't think I'd like it I'm loving the total freedom to customize Ryder as I see fit. I'm an Operative with the Sentinel Profile active and loving every minute of it, Tech Armor is so much better in this game then it was in ME3 (plus a Sentinel with Tactical Cloak is broken beyond hell). Story wise it's not too bad, a little boring but I'm still in the beginning stages of the game (I've only completed Eos because I've been sidetracked by side quests, god damn OCD is real in this game). Don't know how I feel about this whole Remnant tech we've been finding, feels like they couldn't come up with a better idea so they recycled the Promethean bits from the first trilogy and just changed the name.

I'm with you on missing renegade. I've found myself more then once wanting to punch some of these idiots in the face and take control of the situation to show them how shit really gets done. God I'm really missing my Fem Shep now, the Nexus would be finished and we'd have the whole system colonized by now if she were in charge. I do like Ryder, she/he is a very interesting character who just kinda landed into this position by a series of bad events but this whole rookie aspect has to go. I will say this I love Drack, he's like a much older and grittier version of Wrex with more of a "I don't give a fuck" attitude.

I just fought a gigantic boss as a side quest, and finished a planet after Eos. Now I'm really pumped. Eos was really boring and uninspired feeling. This game takes a bit to pick up, or maybe that's just for people like you and me that has to finish every little thing possible before moving on.

I've learned the cover system is just a temporary solution as you play further. I use a lot of dash and stay pretty mobile. I've seen AI that messed up my biotic targeting with some type of smoke/cloke field, so the fights get more interesting as the game progresses. I was using nades, but I started investing in the turret because it pulls aggro like crazy. 

The turret is pretty cool, was using that last night and it was super helpful!  Don't like that when I switch profiles it goes away, though.  I love the Overload/Lance combo, does some serious AOE damage when you level them both up, but I can't choose those and the turret since I always keep tactical cloak.  Ah well, I least I can swap out profiles on the fly, that's pretty handy!  I agree the cover system sucks.  I'm a sniper, and when I can't orient myself correctly in cover, it kinda throws my aim off.  But being able to craft a sniper rifle that does plasma damage is damn cool.  It limits my range, but I can one-shot things and it's awesome! 

I just finished the Kett stronghold on Eos, which was tough because I had trouble finding the damn alarm system to turn off.  I ended up cloaking and just running around until I found it.  And then, just when we had cleaned out most of it, one of the fuckers turned it back on!  The enemy AI is better than previous games, so it does take some rearranging of tactics, which is annoying and nice at the same time.  Nice because having to rethink things on the fly and switch out profiles makes combat much more interesting, but annoying in that sometimes I just want to clear the room and have it STAY cleared!  ><  Still, I'm slowly getting the hang of it, and at least it's not boring. 

The open world aspect is an issue for me.  Not that they put it in, it's fun to go exploring, but that's the issue.  I get distracted easily, and when I'm having fun scaring my teammates with my horrible Nomad driving and finding new things on the map, it keeps distracting me from the main quest.  And while it would be cool, I'm kinda glad they didn't put in a 'building settlements/home' aspect because then I'd never get things done! 

On 3/24/2017 at 7:16 PM, Strider Hiryu said:

http://www.vg247.com/2017/03/24/former-bioware-animator-explains-why-animations-in-mass-effect-andromeda-are-the-way-they-are/

The link above is a pretty interesting read. What I gathered from it (and this was a former Bioware employee) is that they were to lazy to go the extra mile and just prioritized what they thought players would see over what they wouldn't. Goes to show you even the best developers don't want to go the full 10 yards.

Yeah, I saw that too.  From what I get out of it, the development team didn't put in the extra time to actually smooth and correct the animations.  The potential is there, it just wasn't followed up on.  That's why I'm hoping they can release a patch later that fixes it.  It won't be anytime soon, but it would be nice to get decent animation that I'm gotten used to in the previous games.  And while ME1 had problems, at least the animations were less like mannequins and the eyes were much better.  Kinda sad that ME:A has taken such a huge step back in terms of an animation aspect that's critical to proper immersion.