Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

[norolim]

Also why are all those alien species all comfortable with the same amount of gravity and breathing the same air composition on places where they all mix together, like the Nexus or Citidel? Human astronauts lose muscle mass in space, look at series like the exapanse where they make the guys who live in the asteriod belt long and thin and when they are captured by earth they can be subjected to torture just by exposing them to gravity. Also the Earthers in the series can knock them out with one punch.

Yet in Mass effect all the alien races are as strong as each other basically, all handle 1 G pretty well and breathe the same mix of air despite them all evolving differently on different planets. Only the Quarians are shown different in any other way.

[...] Also what about diseases?

The Expanse is much more of a hard sci-fi setting than MEA, so naturally you expect much more realism. Andromeda is a space fantasy, so you have to let more shit slide, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to tell the story they want to. Like the whole colonisation thing: not possible in the way described in this game. Even if people found a second Earth with perfect gravitational and atmospheric conditions, they wouldn't just be able to land on it and start copulating, because the moment they breathed the air, they'd be doomed. Microorganisms would kill them all within hours, days at most.

It all comes down to expectations - the authors or creators shouldn't ask you to manage them. You shouldn't be required to suspend your disbelief in order to find a fantasy world credible. Tolkien believed that in order to create a good setting one needs to achieve "the inner consistency of reality". He went on to explain that it's easy to say the sun is green. The tough part is to construct a secondary world in which the green sun is perfectly credible. And that's where Bioware fails miserably.

Of course, what Tolkien describes is an ideal. A goal for every creator of "secondary words" to strive towards. And it becomes more difficult the more fantastical the creation is. The audience can evaluate those worlds, based on how close they get to that ideal. Of all the games I played, I think Planescape Torment guys did the best job in that regard. The setting was ridiculous, but I never questioned its credibility. I might also be idealising, because I last played this game over a decade ago.

 

[J1M]

I sense heavy director's cut incoming.

It's pretty pathetic to see how consistently these "professional reviewers" have complaints about the planet scanning speed and the sudoku puzzles. It's not just a few of them, either.

And yet, using a small amount of brain power they would quickly see that they don't have to slowly scan the whole planet, they can stop scanning, use their eyes while quickly spinning the planet, and select the point of interest without even scanning.

Additionally, these "35 minute sudoku puzzles" can be easily bypassed with a consumable, which is explained on the screen for the entire 35 minute duration that they are bad at simple logic.

Andromeda has a lot of flaws, but the only problem with these two parts of the game are user error.

 

[MRY]

With space opera, the compact with the audience is, "I will give you a kind of outer space that you wish existed, and you will ignore the fact that it couldn't possibly exist." If people don't like the fantasy a space opera offers, they'll pounce on its absurdities. If they do like the fantasy, they won't. (Perhaps the same formula is true for all fiction, or even non-fiction.) The green sun example is trivial because the green sun offers nothing. People were perfectly happy to read about jungles on Venus populated by humanoid aliens even when it was obviously ridiculous, and they were happy not because it was "a secondary world in which the jungles on Venus were credible" but because young men found it fun to read about some ~John Carter wooing ~Deja Thoris. The "credible" brand of genre fiction has its own merits and demerits, but it's not the only kind that works.

 

[Explorerbc]

You've seen Cora and Vetra sex scenes, now share my pain and look at this weird shit. Looks like a discounted Avarar sex scene. But this time instead of space cats they are having sex with pink space rabbits:

Leaving the aliens aside, why are these scenes so cringey?

I mean this isn't just me being a basement dweller right? Those dialogues sound like someone picked lines from a bunch of romantic chick flicks and randomly threw them together.

Now obviously watching a bunch of game characters make out while you press buttons is in itself quite embarrassing, but couldn't they write something better than this?

 

[RPGMasterLvl2]

http://www.pcgamer.com/ex-bioware-animator-responds-to-mass-effect-andromedas-animation-woes/

http://www.animstate.com/round-table-mass-effect-andromeda/

Gwen: I thought it was funny that people are piling on animators for these glitches, when in reality the animators are probably blameless. On a AAA project of this scope most of the smaller cut scenes are never seen by the animators. Instead you create a system for designers to use and trust the designers to script everything properly. For instance, you will create a “mood” system so that a character can be happy, sad, or angry. Then you trust the designers to set the mood of the NPC during that scene. You give the designers a stable of placeable background NPC characters that have idles basic behavior, and you trust the designers to place those characters in logical places. As an animator you spend most of your time either on hero scenes (scenes that are entirely animated by hand) or working with animation programmers to make sure that the gameplay systems are air tight. You make sure that when a character is running up a slope they lean forward, and you work on the blending between different locomotion animations – that sort of thing. All the glitches I’ve seen online look like technical bugs and/or implementation bugs. I’m not saying the animators are blameless – everyone is responsible for making the game AAA quality and everyone is responsible for beating the drum when things are not shaping up in game. However, as a technical animator I can’t help but look at these bugs and think they look like ik problems and scripting errors.

https://twitter.com/GameAnim/status/844961601732018176

To lay blame on either of those two people would be wrong. Criticize their work, that’s fine- as creators we often welcome critique as a way to better ourselves and the product we provide to gamers. But with an endeavor as large as a conversation system, for example, it’s important to know that it takes a large effort to execute, time to execute it, and if it falls short of our expectations as gamers, we need to be OK with that being the beginning of a learning experience for the developers that will ultimately provide better results over time.

Yeah gamers you need to be OK with spending $60 to back someone's work experience! Holy shit! The things these people come out with.

"Yeah, ok. That building fell and killed dozens of people in the process but our inexperienced foreman got really valuable experience out of it! You have to be ok with that!"

 

[J1M]

BioWare aren't limited to costumes and makeup as were the producers of Star Trek, Babylon 5, et cetera—and yet in their only truly original modern IP, virtually all of the aliens are Foreheads of the Week, hominids with human-like features and shit glued on. The hanar are the one exception.

The saddest part is that you can tell they are very proud of this design, because this species is on about half of the planets. You can almost hear the dev commentary about wanting to focus on 'quality over quantity' for new races, but knowing deep down inside all they could come up with was a race of slug-humans.

 

[Vorark]

Oh god it's getting Oblivion-style LARPing articles now: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-21-how-to-actually-enjoy-mass-effect-andromeda
...

When you have to self-impose rules in order to have "fun" in a videogame, you know it's beyond salvation. Game over.

 

[pippin]

Yeah, the original trilogy kinda looks like the simple days in comparison. You knew you were going to kill shit and bang chicks. Now you're lucky if the characters look like... something.

 

[madrigal]

I heard that the reason for the bad animations is to get around UK's extreme pornography laws.

For an offence contrary to section 63 of the Act the prosecution has to prove:

1. That the image is pornographic; and
2. That the image is extreme namely grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character; and
3. That the image portrays in an explicit and realistic way any of the extreme acts set out in section 63(7).

The bestiality sex scenes are definitely pornographic, grossly offensive and disgusting, however nobody could describe any of that shit as being realistic.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

It's like Codex is having a beach party while M/S Bioware is sinking offshore

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

They have to be the worst selective review quotes for a title, that weren't ironically picked.

This trailer is better...

 

[DemonKing]

I always wonder who the fuck can stomach "romancing" aliens. Even Asari in the original trilogy were unsettling but this takes zoophilia to a whole new level.

IRL I can't even stomach the thought of screwing the vast majority of my own species...

I'm pretty sure if you put your typical SJW in a room with an alien and turned on the mood lighting they would be clawing at the door trying to escape in microseconds.

 

[Taskityo]

I keep thinking this game's failures have more to do with EA Corporate practices bleeding into their Studios, such as Bioware's largely untested offshoot in Montreal that made it, and perhaps unfocused/newbie leadership, loss of folks from the previous games, EA pushing deadlines/dictating game design for 'mass market,' etc. In the end EA can be safely blamed for destroying the 'soul' of studios they buy up until they are just a soulless brand name to slap on things. I'm interested in knowing how many units this game even sold - without the army of Steam players that buy 'crafting games' or 'walking simulators,' they're relying on Origin and Console (so far its getting slammed worse on console).

 

[DemonKing]

I just read an old review of Mass Effect 2 and was reminded that the voice actors included Martin Sheen, Yvonne Strahovski, Tricia Helfer and Seth Green. The original had Keith David, Marina Sirtis and Lance Henriksen. ME3 also added another Battlestar Galactica graduate in Michael Hogan. This is smart casting as they're using talent which is already associated with well-known sci-fi shows or other shows with geek credentials. Basically the casting is saying if you liked these sci-fi shows then this is the game is for you.

MEA has one chick from Game of Thrones.

Either the budget for Voice Acting went way down or they simply lost the plot.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

 

[MRY]

I just read an old review of Mass Effect 2 and was reminded that the voice actors included Martin Sheen, Yvonne Strahovski, Tricia Helfer and Seth Green. The original had Keith David, Marina Sirtis and Lance Henriksen. ME3 also added another Battlestar Galactica graduate in Michael Hogan. This is smart casting as they're using talent which is already associated with well-known sci-fi shows or other shows with geek credentials. Basically the casting is saying if you liked these sci-fi shows then this is the game is for you.

MEA has one chick from Game of Thrones.

Either the budget for Voice Acting went way down or they simply lost the plot.

It is madness to encourage developers to prefer famous people for voice actors. A giant waste of budget. It's not that famous people are necessarily bad, but there has always been a core of superb voice actors who cost a fraction and do at least as well if not better. I am sad that I'm old enough to remember Skyrim being mocked for Patrick Stewart, only to now see ME:A being mocked for not having celeb voices.

 

[Chamezero]

 

[Iznaliu]

Given Trump's Obamacare replacement, Trump's Bioware replacement will make games with microtransactions and ads that make Fallout 4 look like a masterpiece.

 

[Beastro]

The new alien design, the pink thing, is really bad. I never thought much of the original Mass Effect aliens like Salarians and Turians, but next to this new thing they look cool and original.

It's just a mess, and it looks like it's from a completely different series, not Mass Effect.

Looks like redone Turian.

 

[Gepeu]

Them sexy lips, though

If there's alien life out there, you know it has sexy lips.

 

[salaciousbcrumb]

Any of you guys seen the new animation improvements from the patch in the infamous gun grabbing scene?...

Spoiler

 

[santino27]

That's amazing. :D

Not the guy melting into his chair... that's pretty normal for Bioware quality. I meant that someone made a non-hideous Ryder.

 

[Kev Inkline]

What I don't understand is why a Trans character has been shoehorned in this game after being put in DA:I. Dragon Age I may understand, but the Mass Effect saga was initially designed as "realistic", yet social minorities such as trans, lesbians and gays are being portrayed in great numbers.

While having nothing against them they are not nearly as common as these games make them out to be. I know hundreds of people and out of all of them, two gays and one lesbian.

http://www.newnownext.com/mass-effect-andromeda-gay-romance/03/2017/

Mass Effect: Andromeda will feature a sexy gay romance when it debuts later this week, but some fans think that Bioware’s attempt at LGBT representation didn’t go far enough.

I think it's ok that they'd say it has stopped to be a game, and has become more a some sort of romance simulator, I think both audiences would be happier. Also, I think this game seriously belongs to the general gaming, as was suggested.

 

[mastroego]

Gaming journos first find creative ways to glorify the game, even as they're forced to numerically rate it less than 10/10 [while still giving it honorable grades anyway, which would imply the game can stand on its own at the very least].
Then they act like it were a normal and valiant thing that a computer game transmutes for some reason into a creepy "romance" and gross bestial sex simulator (what the levitating FUCK)

THEN they play the part of the players' friends and confidants, acting like it's a given and a known fact (which it is) that the game is an utter mess [you'd think they'd pointed it out themselves to begin with!], providing advices about how to extract some fun out of it [how about advising to save money, which would be your fucking job?].

 

[Cyberarmy]

This thread stopped delivering!!! I demand new, fresh space horrors!

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