[CrowbCat] 5 years + $40M = Mass Effect Andromeda - General

Honestly someone needs to make a similar video just highlighting all the terrible writing in this game. ~10 hours in so far and I've yet to come across an acceptable scene in terms of facial animations, I've encountered countless bugs and the writing is either leaving me cringing from interactions or confused from lore points. This game is lucky it's the gameplay peak of the series. The fans aren't, though. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52019308]There's also well animated stuff videos like this leave out.[/QUOTE] Well animated? No, not exactly. The vast majority of the scenes are up to acceptable mass effect/bioware game standard, but nothing so far has stood out to me as particularly well animated. Just competently well animated.

[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;52019513]I'm just asking because it seems like you're defending the game as not being as bad as everyone says it is, yet everything I'm looking at makes it look like a bloody abortion. I just need examples of shit that happens in the game that's good, charming or even coherent.[/QUOTE] Because it's not an "abortion" implying the worst possible. I don't find being hyperbolic actually helps a discussion. Is it great? No, and you stuffed words into my mouth to that effect. Do I think it's good? It has its moments but by and large? No. Is it an abortion? Also a no, I get it, you and everyone else watched videos, what you've seen is absolutely more valid than my experience. This discussion occurs after every video this guy puts out for titles I'm interested in.

[QUOTE=megafat;52019398]At least New Vegas had the excuse of being fantastic.[/QUOTE] New Vegas was done in 8 months with an outdated engine while Bethesda was doing its best to fuck Obsidian up.

fucking hell there are RubberFruit videos with better lip movements than this game

I really enjoy Andromeda and I had my expectations very low. I am playing as Male Ryder and haven't even in the beginning had any animation issues. So far my game is flawless with only EOS planet being the problem of having only 60 fps.

[QUOTE=d00msdaydan;52019047]If EA wanted Respawn to run out of money so they would have to be bought out they wouldn't let them make a Star Wars game[/QUOTE] I can't think of a single reason why they wouldn't let Respawn work with the license. Star Wars is arguably EA's strongest property and they're throwing RFP's out like crazy. Besides, when EA attempts to buy Respawn they'll try to turn them into a Star Wars studio like Visceral anyway. [QUOTE=Hidole555;52019690]fucking hell there are RubberFruit videos with better lip movements than this game[/QUOTE] This is what happens when almost all of your facial animations are procedural and you don't have the time to touch up on things later.

[QUOTE=Hidole555;52019690]fucking hell there are RubberFruit videos with better lip movements than this game[/QUOTE] [t]http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/233/386/f4e.png[/t]

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52019357]There's other scenes that are better but yeah fair enough. Crowbcat videos kill honest discussion. Sloane later in the game is well animated and acted and has a good scene but nah, not in the video, not worth taking about.[/QUOTE] You mean the exile whose conversation was, while abridged, one of the first notable scenes of the entire game that was shown to sell the game to the world, which probably makes it one of the more polished scenes in the game compared to most others probably? And even then the disarm interrupt from that very scene still remains one of the core criticized animations of the game, though that seems to be from the very same trailer rather than the current state it's in.

[QUOTE=J!NX;52019321][t]http://thumbs.gfycat.com/OrganicExcellentAmbushbug-poster.jpg[/t][/t] 10 years and it hasn't progressed graphically at all[/QUOTE] arguably they've gone backwards.

[QUOTE=Talvy;52019099]Titanfall 2 is TF2? I'm already confused enough by all the other initials.[/QUOTE] It's abbreviated as TF2 at the end of the Colony Reborn trailer, Respawn's doubling down on it now

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52019357] Crowbcat videos kill honest discussion. Sloane later in the game is well animated and acted and has a good scene but nah, not in the video, not worth taking about.[/QUOTE] Stop with this shit. The sole purpose of this video is to bring attention to a badly made game. It doesn't matter if some parts of it are well made, it's still unacceptable.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/LeV2eki.png[/IMG]

"Crowbcat videos are just cherrypicking!" I can agree with that on some of his videos, but come on man, this video is [b]20 minutes[/b] of bugs, horrible animation, and bad VA. There were probably a hundred reasons shown why you shouldn't buy this game in the video, at the very least not letting EA get your $. Even if it's just a 20 min cherrypicked example of bugs in a 15 (not sure how long) hour campaign, it goes both ways. You might not get any bugs, or those bugs could pop up anywhere and consistently in that playtime. Your enjoyment of the game shouldn't be RNG. And that doesn't excuse the terrible animation and voice actors which are going to be consistent for every single person.

Am I honestly hearing the Final Fantasy 13 excuse about Andromeda? "It gets better later on after the first 15 hours of gameplay, I swear."

[QUOTE=damnatus;52019995]Stop with this shit. The sole purpose of this video is to bring attention to a badly made game. It doesn't matter if some parts of it are well made, it's still unacceptable.[/QUOTE] Preach, brother. Not necessarily talking about HumanAbyss, but in general this kind of attitude of "I lowered my expectations for this full price $60 AAA title with 5 year production cycle and you know what, it's not super terrible, it's actually tolerable! I manage to have fun with it!" gets on my nerves.

[QUOTE=gudman;52020127]Preach, brother. Not necessarily talking about HumanAbyss, but in general this kind of attitude of "I lowered my expectations for this full price $60 AAA title with 5 year production cycle and you know what, it's not super terrible, it's actually tolerable! I manage to have fun with it!" gets on my nerves.[/QUOTE] Nah, we're just spoiled of AAA franchises being handed to the main team and not the C team.

[QUOTE=damnatus;52019995]Stop with this shit. The sole purpose of this video is to bring attention to a badly made game. It doesn't matter if some parts of it are well made, it's still unacceptable.[/QUOTE] So speaking hyperbolicly is acceptable? I've dealt with this over his other videos, yes, I get it, my experience isn't what I'm talking about though, I know it isn't representative, I'm not even trying to argue it is. I never said the game was great, that was someone else putting words in my mouth. I never defended the game as anything other than average and have only tried to say the hyperbole isn't helping. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=gudman;52020127]Preach, brother. Not necessarily talking about HumanAbyss, but in general this kind of attitude of "I lowered my expectations for this full price $60 AAA title with 5 year production cycle and you know what, it's not super terrible, it's actually tolerable! I manage to have fun with it!" gets on my nerves.[/QUOTE] Like I don't know what I have to say, because I literally said shit was unacceptable in this thread Yeah, there are unacceptable elements of the game. I wanted to play it myself as a diehard mass effect fan to see what was, and wasn't bullshit for myself. I played the trial and was surprised that it wasn't pure garbage. Meanwhile, as I'm feeling that people are posting videos of things that I haven't experienced(that constipated walk is hard to duplicate for me) and nothing I say or think can even be considered to stand on it's own. That's kind of my annoyance as much as anything. When these videos come out, people who haven't played it are fully empowered to dismiss my opinion as a person with experience. Sure, I can admit this product isn't great, I don't even know where I implied it was. I'm just annoyed with the hyperbole his videos always drive.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52020255] Like I don't know what I have to say, because I literally said shit was unacceptable in this thread Yeah, there are unacceptable elements of the game. I wanted to play it myself as a diehard mass effect fan to see what was, and wasn't bullshit for myself. I played the trial and was surprised that it wasn't pure garbage. Meanwhile, as I'm feeling that people are posting videos of things that I haven't experienced(that constipated walk is hard to duplicate for me) and nothing I say or think can even be considered to stand on it's own. That's kind of my annoyance as much as anything. When these videos come out, people who haven't played it are fully empowered to dismiss my opinion as a person with experience. Sure, I can admit this product isn't great, I don't even know where I implied it was. I'm just annoyed with the hyperbole his videos always drive.[/QUOTE] Hence why I said that I don't direct my frustration with the sentiment at you, you made your point pretty clear as I see it. But I'll be damned if what I described is not common.

There's really no use defending this to be honest (and this is coming from someone who put 50 hours into andromeda and enjoyed his time with it), it truly looks pretty bad and this extreme amount of cherry picking doesn't do this game any favours. I feel he should have just focused on picking on the bad facial animations and the questionable writing, because that's really something the game has problems with. What he does though is just go around picking through as many videos as possible picking any glitch that he possibly could find and makes it seem like that's the norm and the game is broken. You could do this with any game possible, hell I am pretty sure I could make one of my favourite games of all time, the witcher 3, look like a broken mess if I cherrypicked the glitches enough. Every person is obviously going to have a different experience with their game, personally I managed to play through andromeda without experiencing any major glitches like that. Maybe I was just lucky.

[QUOTE=kilerabv;52016490]Bioware got the same QA as Bethesda now?[/QUOTE] No, because [I]Bethesda[/I] actually managed to have better everything than the people whose style they were copying. If they'd managed to pull of the 4-option dialogue as well as Bioware does I'd say FO4 is a better Bioware game than Andromeda is as far as non-gameplay or graphics stuff goes (because the shooting seems to be pretty solid and the game is very pretty imo). [editline]a[/editline] That said, there's only really a few times that I went "oh wow lmao that facial expression was terrible" while I was playing the trial and, funnily enough, in the three hours I played of it before reaching the part where it prevents you from making story progression, I only noticed it in the parts where people've uploaded videos of it and made .gifs that got spread around. The animations are really only comically bad every now and then. The faces are pretty shit though. They all look off to me and for the first time in a Mass Effect game I couldn't find anyone I actually wanted to bang. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52019357]Sloane later in the game is well animated and acted and has a good scene but nah, not in the video, not worth taking about.[/QUOTE] Tell me more about how 1% of something being good somehow makes 100% of it worthwhile. That's an obvious exaggeration but a flake of gold being added to a pile of dirt doesn't make it suddenly a shining example of beauty. [editline]a[/editline] I've only played the trial but literally the only characters I've decided I actually liked were the protag's dad, [sp]which doesn't particularly last too long[/sp], and SAM.

You have to admit, as bad as this game is it surely brings a lot of entertainment without the need of even playing it. Some favorites: It's unreal how bad that hand is. [URL=http://cubeupload.com/im/x3Qrxs.gif][IMG]http://i.cubeupload.com/x3Qrxs.gif[/IMG][/URL] The face she fucking pulls here: [URL=http://cubeupload.com/im/C4fPbX.gif][IMG]http://i.cubeupload.com/C4fPbX.gif[/IMG][/URL] I can't even describe this one [URL=http://cubeupload.com/im/863K7c.gif][IMG]http://i.cubeupload.com/863K7c.gif[/IMG][/URL]

[QUOTE='Ninja Nub[NOR];52019434']while i get where you're coming from, first impressions count for a lot, and you can't really excuse a game being a trainwreck for the first few hours, because that might turn a lot of people off before they get to the good stuff[/QUOTE] People need to stop basing their first fucking impressions on stupid YouTube videos. I haven't seen a hyped up AAA game release without a massive witchhunt in years, and it's due to videos such as these. They highlight/overexpose the flaws and ignore the positive aspects entirely. The only game I can think of that avoided this was Witcher 3 and that's because CD Projekt Red has a massive following of overzealous fans. Not saying it was a bad game obviously, but there were plenty of issues at launch very similar to the ones ME:A is having. If you want a good first impression of a game, watch the first part of a walkthrough or something, or better yet, play the beta before the game releases. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Canuhearme?;52019477]What are some of the fantastically written and well-directed scenes in the game? Like, I just watched the Two Best Friends Machinima video for this game and it seems like hot, buggy garbage. I need examples of scenes that were written, animated and acted well.[/QUOTE] Any of the talks between Ryder and his companions/ship crew are great, I know because I have fucking played the game unlike you from the sounds of it. There is a scene on [sp]Voeld, the ice planet, where you are liberating Angara from a Kett facility, and there are plenty of well directed scenes, and Jaal has great dialogue/animation.[/sp] Oh and believe it or not that entire scene I just mentioned wasn't in this clearly very detailed CrowbCat video; weird. I'm not far enough into the story to name more story scenes, but I have seen plenty of great scenes so far. There is also tons of chatter in the nomad between whatever companions you took with you, and it's all well written from what I've heard myself so far.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52020255] So speaking hyperbolicly is acceptable? [/quote] Nothing hyperbolical about this. The amount of bugged and/or badly made sequences people are posting makes it hard to exaggerate to be honest. EA needs the bad PR from this so they learn not to assign a team of interns (or whatever happened) to an AAA project.

[QUOTE=J!NX;52019321]10 years and it hasn't progressed graphically at all[/QUOTE] I'm all for smashing this game into the ground where it deserves it (first Mass Effect game I have no intention of buying near release), but this is a stretch to say the least. The original trilogy definitely appears to have better, or at least more polished animation work and (arguably) better art design, but it's, by modern standards, lacking in a lot of aspects such as polycount, shader quality, texture resolution, and especially lighting/shadow quality. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Wafflemonstr;52020433]People need to stop basing their first fucking impressions on stupid YouTube videos. I haven't seen a hyped up AAA game release without a massive witchhunt in years, and it's due to videos such as these. They highlight/overexpose the flaws and ignore the positive aspects entirely. The only game I can think of that avoided this was Witcher 3 and that's because CD Projekt Red has a massive following of overzealous fans. Not saying it was a bad game obviously, but there were plenty of issues at launch very similar to the ones ME:A is having.[/QUOTE] I remember there being a huge shitfit about Witcher 3 prior to release due to the graphical downgrade from E3 2014. What quickly redeemed it upon release was the quality of the writing and remarkably high quality animation by open-world game standards. Downgrade or not, it still ended up being a well-written, well animated, remarkably good looking game. It certainly had bugs, but there's a difference between a bug like Geralt's face model disappearing and simply poor animation work, which Andromeda seems to have in relative abundance based on my time with the trial.

[QUOTE=d00msdaydan;52019956]It's abbreviated as TF2 at the end of the Colony Reborn trailer, Respawn's doubling down on it now[/QUOTE] It also runs on a modified version of the Source engine...

[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;52020627]I'm all for smashing this game into the ground where it deserves it (first Mass Effect game I have no intention of buying near release), but this is a stretch to say the least. The original trilogy definitely appears to have better, or at least more polished animation work and (arguably) better art design, but it's, by modern standards, lacking in a lot of aspects such as polycount, shader quality, texture resolution, and especially lighting/shadow quality. [editline]27th March 2017[/editline] I remember there being a huge shitfit about Witcher 3 prior to release due to the graphical downgrade from E3 2014. What quickly redeemed it upon release was the quality of the writing and remarkably high quality animation by open-world game standards. Downgrade or not, it still ended up being a well-written, well animated, remarkably good looking game. It certainly had bugs, but there's a difference between a bug like Geralt's face model disappearing and simply poor animation work, which Andromeda seems to have in relative abundance based on my time with the trial.[/QUOTE] I recall there being a bit of a shitfit over the graphical downgrade but that lasted for what seemed like a week at best, and was rapidly washed out by posts fawning over the graphics and comparing it to other games. Here's a Witcher 3 vid from 2015 showing "funny" moments. Many of the bugs in this vid are present in Mass effect Andromeda, and are common in ALL open world games, yet ME:A is being shit on for it. [video=youtube;Uc6RnI47vTI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc6RnI47vTI[/video] I agree that The Witcher has, for the most part, fantastic writing and animation and these bugs don't indicate the overall quality of the game; but in the case if ME:A, the bugs in this video indicate the entire quality of [I]it[/I]? Also here's a video of a pretty important moment from Mass Effect 3. [video=youtube;b7_yOcRr95Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7_yOcRr95Q[/video] Watch that and tell me that it looks amazing from an animation standpoint. I personally never saw any problems with the scenes in the previous Mass Effect games, and actually loved them, but it's not like they were better than ME:A as you said.

Why the fuck did this have to happen to Mass Effect? Like, there are inexcusable lazy parts of the game that, even if they were rushed, or an amateur did it, at least there would be heart to it.

[QUOTE=Wafflemonstr;52020726] Watch that and tell me that it looks amazing from an animation standpoint. I personally never saw any problems with the scenes in the previous Mass Effect games, and actually loved them, but it's not like they were better than ME:A as you said.[/QUOTE] Amazing? No. But throughout that entire scene I saw [B]consistency[/B]. Characters clearly looked at one another, Wrex's headbutt had weight (and appeared to actually connect with Wreav), little details like Wreav's lips growling add character. Shepard is poorly animated compared to everyone else in that scene, but honestly it seems like any MaleShepard that's NOT the default has worse facial animation. It also varies from scene to scene. Some scenes are poorly animated, of course, but then we get things like this IN A DLC OF ALL THINGS. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NONzv-Q900[/media] The problem seems to be less than Andromeda suffers from some poor animation and bugs, as most games do to some degree, but rather that Andromeda seems to have these issues more frequently than it has any right to (and, indeed, more frequently than prior entries in the series).

[QUOTE=Wafflemonstr;52020726] Here's a Witcher 3 vid from 2015 showing "funny" moments. Many of the bugs in this vid are present in Mass effect Andromeda, and are common in ALL open world games, yet ME:A is being shit on for it.[/QUOTE] Even if the bugs weren't there, it's the animations that are awful. And with a game that's strength is supposed to be in the writing and character interaction that's a really big negative. Hits not connecting in fights, dead or completely opposite facial expressions during statements (like female Ryder smiling while talking about her dad's death). It just looks so bad.

[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;52020756]Amazing? No. But throughout that entire scene I saw [B]consistency[/B]. Characters clearly looked at one another, Wrex's headbutt had weight (and appeared to actually connect with Wreav), little details like Wreav's lips growling add character. Shepard is poorly animated compared to everyone else in that scene, but honestly it seems like any MaleShepard that's NOT the default has worse facial animation.[/QUOTE] Even the normal Shepherd had rough facial animations, the custom ones just looked even worse somehow. My custom Ryder in ME:A actually looks far more normal, and borderline fantastic, facial animation-wise, than the default Ryder interestingly enough. I'll agree that the headbutt looks way better than that Krogan fight scene in ME:A(mostly due to the proper sound effect), but Wrex clearly doesn't connect and the camera work just makes it look like he does. Like look how far to the left he has to jerk his head to look at Wreave, who only took like one step to the side after the hit. The lip animations are lazy, and are no better than the ducklips in ME:A that people keep making fun of(which actually look great from the front, they just look bad from the side).