Mass Effect Andromeda: Shitstorm Edition - RIP Biowear

Bioware for some reason lately loves greasy faces and character models. They shined like crazy in DA:I and its no different in ME:A apparently.
Also it might be a little unsettling because their facial animations just kind of snap into action. Like there's no transition from one expression to another. Also the facial animations themselves don't look like anything a person would actually do.

The frostbite engine used for DAI and Mass Effect Andromeda has flaws which add a strange sheen or shine to skin textures.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=1521748
 
Why do all the character models look so fucking.... I dunno, off?

I can't really put my finger on what, but something about these is deeply unsettling to me. They look last-gen, and have this weird sort of plasticky quality that makes them seem unnatural. There's something weird with the proportions of the faces, too. It's not quite so noticeable with the male character, but that Asari's face is too wide for her physique, and has a weirdly shallow chin. The guy doesn't escape this either, with a bad case of lightless mouth syndrome and hair that looks like some sort of slicked-together mass. It makes them look clunky and awkward.

I keep getting this feeling that either nobody on the team knows how to do human faces, didn't give a shit, or was actively trying to fuck up, and I don't know which possibility is more fucking surreal.
Frostbite adds a weird sheen to textures, and Bioware- even when they had people who knew what they were doing- was never particularly good at animating. Ends up creating awkward, almost nightmarish looking shit. Hell, they've never been good at making models themselves, but the models in something like DAO or ME1 at least look passable. Not great, but far from terrible.

Now we just have chucklefucks who think adding random, unnamed chick NPCs in the background of a cutscene is 'fighting the patriarchy' and more important than making decent models/decent animations, so it's all gone to hell.
 
Frostbite adds a weird sheen to textures, and Bioware- even when they had people who knew what they were doing- was never particularly good at animating. Ends up creating awkward, almost nightmarish looking shit. Hell, they've never been good at making models themselves, but the models in something like DAO or ME1 at least look passable. Not great, but far from terrible.

Now we just have chucklefucks who think adding random, unnamed chick NPCs in the background of a cutscene is 'fighting the patriarchy' and more important than making decent models/decent animations, so it's all gone to hell.

Francis York Morgan (of Deadly Premonition fame) has a smile that's been outlawed in several territories.

Q2HBi7w.jpg


York's creepy death-grin is less nightmarish than some of the faces I've seen from promotional trailers so far.
 
Isn't she one who hates the "gameplay" parts of games and wants a way to skip through combat and mechanics to get to the dialogue wheels faster?

That's the one.

They also hired Manveer "openly hates white people" Heir, and whatever the fuck this is:

Why+bioware_63d071_5829072.jpg


...On balance, that image nicely sums up my concerns about Bioware as a whole, really.
 
That's the one.

They also hired Manveer "openly hates white people" Heir, and whatever the fuck this is:

Why+bioware_63d071_5829072.jpg


...On balance, that image nicely sums up my concerns about Bioware as a whole, really.

I will never understand this new trend of handing genre fiction off to writers who seem to honestly just hate it.
 
I will never understand this new trend of handing genre fiction off to writers who seem to honestly just hate it.

You just reminded me of another one. Sam Maggs.

m33BNUX.jpg


You might remember her better as Virtual Rape girl.


There's an interesting commonality with most of the "newer" writers that Bioware's hired: Aside from the fact that they're pants-on-head crazy, they're all fucking nobodies with almost no previous works of note.

Hepler, for example, has only a single novel under her belt, and it's a dismal failure.

Ditto is true of Sam Maggs.

Why would you hire someone completely untested? Espeically when the previous writers all had fucking lengthy previous lists of work?
 
You just reminded me of another one. Sam Maggs.

m33BNUX.jpg


You might remember her better as Virtual Rape girl.


There's an interesting commonality with most of the "newer" writers that Bioware's hired: Aside from the fact that they're pants-on-head crazy, they're all fucking nobodies with almost no previous works of note.

Hepler, for example, has only a single novel under her belt, and it's a dismal failure.

Ditto is true of Sam Maggs.

Why would you hire someone completely untested? Espeically when the previous writers all had fucking lengthy previous lists of work?

My guess is Bioware has become such a fucking embarrassment in the industry that they can't attract decent talent anymore.
 
My guess is Bioware has become such a fucking embarrassment in the industry that they can't attract decent talent anymore.

That and EA has by all accounts been turning the place into an awful game mill like they did with Bullfrog, Maxis, Pandemic, etc, etc, etc.

They more-or-less bought the studio to build a WoW killer, and put most of the A team on the Old Republic. That's actually why ME2 was such a departure from the tone and style of the first game - it was being developed by an entire B studio of mostly rookies. Then the development of the Old Republic was by insider accounts so hellish and full of publisher interference that a lot of the senior staff either left or were "re-assigned" to different Bioware projects before quietly making their exit. When the MMO inevitably failed to unseat WOW as king of the MMORPGs, downsizing took out the rest of the original talent.

At this point the vast majority of "Bioware" never worked on a Bioware game before 2012, or maybe 2010.
 
That and EA has by all accounts been turning the place into an awful game mill like they did with Bullfrog, Maxis, Pandemic, etc, etc, etc.

They more-or-less bought the studio to build a WoW killer, and put most of the A team on the Old Republic. That's actually why ME2 was such a departure from the tone and style of the first game - it was being developed by an entire B studio of mostly rookies. Then the development of the Old Republic was by insider accounts so hellish and full of publisher interference that a lot of the senior staff either left or were "re-assigned" to different Bioware projects before quietly making their exit. When the MMO inevitably failed to unseat WOW as king of the MMORPGs, downsizing took out the rest of the original talent.

At this point the vast majority of "Bioware" never worked on a Bioware game before 2012, or maybe 2010.

That actually explains a lot, including why the lunatics got in charge of the asylum.
 
That actually explains a lot, including why the lunatics got in charge of the asylum.

I think of it more as lunatics being useful idiots for moronic EA suits whose main takeaway from the ME3 ending controversy was "stop hyping narrative choices so much" and "amp up the alien sex simulator aspect of the game".
 
I think of it more as lunatics being useful idiots for moronic EA suits whose main takeaway from the ME3 ending controversy was "stop hyping narrative choices so much" and "amp up the alien sex simulator aspect of the game".

I still won't buy it but I might have to watch a let's play or something if only to learn what Krogan cock looks like.
 
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