BioWare Uses Stock Photo for Tali in Mass Effect 3

[superbowlbound]

This article is insulting. Why does she have hair? Also weren't the Quarians reptilian. Also why is this so lazily done, I would have preferred that they didn't reveal her face.

And to the author, after 2.5 games of waiting this really does diminish the experience. I assume you picked this up without playing the other two games or are getting a large payment from EA.

 

[Matthew Dubin]

"Statements like the above make it hard to understand exactly why people are upset."

Then why do you hand pick the least intelligent, simplistic, and emotional statements you can find when attempting to make a point? It's becoming increasingly hard to take articles like this seriously when they read like forum posts that dismiss things as non-issues based off the weakest rantings of a couple people. Much like how Kotaku called everyone homophobic for disliking the gay sex scene, despite comments mostly expressing disapproval of the awkward dialogue, animations, and how they re-used the same body model of Shepard on Cortez (Same back moles and build).

Truly, Greg, I'm sorry that you're unable to comprehend why some gamers would feel insulted that an easily Googled stock photo image was manipulated in under 15 minutes to be used as the basis for a character who's been cloaked in secrecy for 5 years. It's one thing to pay homage to something. It's another to half-ass originality by slightly manipulating someone elses' work. Do you give praise to every Deviantart page with a recolored Sonic the Hedgehog too?

 

[Pendragon9]

Nonononononono.

Whoever wrote this article, YOU. ARE WRONG. Using a stock photo and editing it poorly in photoshop IS THE LAZIEST THING YOU COULD DO WHEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO REVEAL A CHARACTER'S FACE WHO WAS PREVIOUSLY HIDDEN FOR 2 ENTIRE INSTALLMENTS.

You had a gigantic budget Bioware. What the HELL happened? You couldn't spare a little money from your drug pile, so you tasked your no-talent lackeys to search google? Ya lazy pricks. I'm expected to pay 60 dollars PLUS twice that cost just to experience the entire game in DLC, so when I'm paying hard earned money, you better damn well spend a little effort and make a unique character model. This IS NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION. You aren't entitled to my money, I'm not an "entitled gamer" as this crappy site so callously throws around as a rather misinformed buzzphrase, and you are certainly above this Bioware, or should I say you WERE above this.

Of course, this doesn't ruin Mass Effect 3. No. EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME RUINS IT. This entire game is a horrible final entry into the trilogy of what used to be an okay franchise. And this broke the camel's back with an iron piece of straw that you devs copied off of google images.


Go on, I know I'm gonna get banned or possibly warned for this because WE CAN'T GO AGAINST GLORIOUS BIOWARE OVERLORDS. guess we're already one step closer to thought crimes.

 

[Jaleel Brown]

How...how could anyone actually be okay with a major gaming company using a poorly edited stock for the face of a character that's been shrouded in mystery for 5 years? Bioware has been teasing and teasing this for years and THIS is the best they could come up with?

Not to mention that it goes against their own established lore. Humans are supposed to be the only sentient race with hair. Humans are considered to be uniquely weird looking by most races. Quarians were already described as "hard bodied" in a fashion similar to turians. And now we're supposed to suddenly believe that they're slightly altered humans? How can you drone on endlessly about how important story and setting are for games...then turn around and pull something like this

This is Bioware looking the community in the face and saying: "Hey, we don't really give a shit. You'll buy it anyways"

 

[beniki]

Kind of hard to defend EA BioWare at this point. Having just read an article about the corporate and back biting nature of the company now, and on the back of a pretty bad Day-1 DLC idea, the rather incomprehensible decision to cut out a large number of player choices on a franchise which sold itself on it's continuity, the really annoying mess I had just to buy a copy of SWTOR, and now this...

Tali was a main character. Not a throw away extra. Stock pictures should not have been used for her. If you're really not going to put the work in on one of your more popular characters, at least hold a fan competition for it.

This whole games reeks of disinterest from the developer, which is entirely unfair, as I'm sure the artists are passionate about Mass Effect. A great shame, and something which has tarnished what would otherwise have been the gaming event of the decade.

And for people saying we're complaining too much... no, we're complaining the exact right amount. These are silly moves by EA BioWare, and they deserve to get called out on them.

 

[Arina Love]

just off from my play (15h in) and ME3 is already effing suck. Dumb ass dialogue dumb ass story they halved dialogue involvement and apparently many of choices (previous and current) don't count for sh*t story is on rails and you can not make significant impact on it. i was hopeful till the very end and was disappointed.and now all this? Bioware is dead for me.

 

[LordOfTheDance]

Bioware is getting really good at penny pinching is seems.

And people said EA was a bad thing.

Psh.

 

[cahtush]

The worst thing is the hands, they just photoshoped away 2 fingers. They didint even bother to put some space between the remaining 2, you know like the quarian have had in every game?

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

... why is everyone so upset about this?

I mean - I could see the one thing (see the Irridium spoilered conversation at the beginning of this thread) but that is preventable.

Was it lazy? Yes. But then, considering the sheer massive amount of speculation on Tali's face, there was nothing they could do that would actually work. I mean -

Spoiler

It is the Space Elf issue? Or the photoshop issue?

Cause I've never minded Space Drow Tali. I think we would have learned by now that all romancable aliens ignore science in favor of Hotness. See Asari. And, weirdly, Drell.

As to the photoshop issue... meh. It isn't the best Tali picture, but it isn't the worst either. A google search will reveal far, far worse.

I mean, people have been circulating a DIFFERENT fake Tali's face image made with a real person's face in photoshop for years. A few people on this site even use it as an Avatar. Why is that one cool, but this one is hated?

Really guys, are people just looking for excuses to be upset now?

 

[thiosk]

oh- my - god.

someone photoshopped. BIG WHOOP. I photoshopped a stock photo once. Didn't pay for it neither. jokes on somebody.

The point remains that tali is totally the one i wanted to tag in ME1. Photoshopped photo or not-- either version works for me if this is an online alien dating site shepard found the photo on. I didn't do the ME2 thing-- i heard you could tag her there. I won't bother with ME, despite how much I liked the first one, because I just really don't want to install origen. even if it means I CAN tag me some tali tail.

This is a perfect example of people on the INTARNETS needing to get out of their houses. The fury and rage directed at video game companies by all these manchildren is really quite embarrassing.

 

[icnfde]

Really guys, are people just looking for excuses to be upset now?

Why do you post here if you cannot read English? This isn't an attack, because practically everything you questioned has already been answered in this thread, including the far, far superior Tali fan-art.

 

[CruisingForBiddies]

Why is this even news? It literally makes no difference to the game whether they altered a stock image. Its a bit lazy sure, but not a big deal. People need to stop being such children.

 

[Nimcha]

Meh, stupid thing to do by Bioware. I don't know the reason why they decided to go with a stockphoto, but it can't be a good one.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter if it's a stock photo or not, people were going to rage anyway at what she looks like.

 

[Piecewise]

allow me to do another rage dump real fast.

The hand doesn't look like a quarian hand. The quarians have these really thin pointy fingers with much more space between them. You also forgot all the plotholes/continuity problems that arise from revealing what she looks like through a poorly photoshopped stock image:

1. She's depicted as having long flowing hair, but her suit is skintight up her neck, the back of her skull and up the side of her face. She'd have to be bald to be able to wear that. So did she decide to wear a wig just for this photo then?

2. You can see her eyes and nose behind the mask, and even though you don't see the whole face you can see enough to know she'd have some weird alien proportions. And yet in the pic she looks like a normal human with lines on her face.

3. The picture is taken outside in a field with the sun shining on her. She's clearly on the surface of a planet without a suit. What happened to the whole "quarians wear suits all the time because they have no immune system and they can easily die of diseases?" Why would she risk her life just to take this photo?

4.When the fuck would this photo have even been taken? Why would she bother to stop by some nice looking planet and take a photo with her suit off when the games have made it clear that she's pretty fucking busy ship repairing and galaxy saving.

5. When exactly did shephard even get this photo, there's no mention of it at any time before its revealed, and there's no indication he's had contact with tali outside in game interactions.

The whole image is just this one massive turd staring at you. There's no way you can fucking rationalize it's existence or her appearance in the context of the game's universe. Bioware could've put in the few extra man hours to model a face based off what you could already see and make a head without a mask for Tali, so you could see it, you know, at that one part where she takes her mask off and faces shephard. Instead they just took a dump on some image they got after 2 minutes of google searching.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Oh, so we're "entitled"?

We pay them our hard earned cash, and we're entitled when they don't provide a quality product?

GG sir, you have officially earned the title of "dumbest person on the internet". Please come up to the stage and accept your dunce cap.

I think you earned it all by yourself.

Tell me, where in my post did I use the word "entitled"? Show me. Quote my previous post with it bolded.

Oh, wait, you can't - because I never used that word. Nor did I imply it. Of the two of us, YOU were the only one to use that term.

My question was - how is a shit photo have anything to do with game quality? Have you PLAYED ME3? It is the most fun I've had in the Mass Effect franchise - ever. It has the best parts of ME1 and ME2 - I have never been happier.

Do I think the photo is shitty? Yes. They could have done better. But, since my chance of getting the photo (see Irridum's spoiler section) is nill (no way I'd ever make that decision), I don't particularly care. If I want to see a better picture of Tali, I can do an internet search.

Was it lazy? Sure. So was importing the planet scanner and not actually using it. Is it a deal breaker? No! Why would it be?

You can cry symptom all you like, but if the gameplay and story are good, who cares about a photo?

 

[samus17]

Does anyone else notice that they didn't even photoshop out the knuckles for the missing fingers they edited out?

LAZY WITHIN THE LAZY-IT'S A LAZY-CEPTION

BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

 

[lacktheknack]

Let me explain how this all works to you guys.

1) Something, anything, in a Bioware game is revealed to the public.

2) Shitstorm rages for weeks.

3) Between 95 and 99% of this is a bunch of crybabies wailing about anything they possibly can owing to a deeply unfulfilling life at home.

I stopped reading there because I can easily counter that with: "95 to 99% of the people defending this sort of thing are mindless consumer drones owing to a deeply unfulfilling life at home and absolutely everywhere else [citation needed]."

Here's how it really works:

1) A company puts out a product full of lazy copy paste jobs, uninspired art, story and gameplay.

2) The game gets hailed as the second coming of Christ.

3) People rightfully point out the many flaws and exaggerate them, just like everybody else exaggerates the quality of the game.

4) "YOU'RE JUST MAD BECAUSE YOUR MOMMY DIDN'T LOVE YOU YOU NASTY TROLL!"

Then stop exaggerating. I can't hear the valid criticism through the "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH".

OT: I've never been less underwhelmed by a controversy before. Ever. Even the whole "Tali's Sweat" argument was at least completely outlandish, this can't even have that honor.