Dissing Mass Effect Andromeda because it has diversity and equality

[BloatedGuppy]

A still image in place of animation. Here, let me help a bit.

The irony of an accusation of cherry picking when you are suggesting this video is representative of every frame of animation in the game is precious.

Also notable is that the animation problems demonstrated in the video are across multiple characters (very few characters escape them, really).

ALSO notable is the characters attractiveness and/or resemblance to her model has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of her animation. Andromeda has epidemic animation problems that cover the entire game, and are not limited to the humans. There's a Krogan fight in the game that looks like a WoW cinematic from 2006. The game had insufficient pre-launch polish and hand crafting in its dialogue scenes. It has nothing to do with "FemRyder needed to look more like her model". That assertion is so PAINFULLY stupid that it's giving me a headache that someone actually needs to refute it.

By all means, do try and turn this into a "Does Andromeda have bad animations Y/N" argument and pretend I somehow fall on the "no" side of that ledger, when I've cheerfully condemned the animations from the moment they first appeared. I just don't pretend they're limited to FemRyder, or that "the game has bad animations" is in any way related to Bioware being "sexist" against attractive women and a SJW conspiracy to ugly up the female characters. Go back and read the fucking post at the top of this page and try and remember where this debate started.

I'm not even sure why I'm bothering, honestly. This is some flat earth level conspiracy peddling.

 

[Casual Shinji]

There's nothing wrong with her face, proportions or animations that haven't been duplicated across the entire Bioware library since they began making "cinematic" games.

Yeeeeeah, I don't know. There's something there that makes her face just not gel 80% of the time. It could be because she has this perpetual smirk, or because the animation rig was not properly fitted for the model. While the entire game is loaded with bad facial animations the effect of it seems to hitting her the hardest. Probably because she's the main character and you're constantly looking at her. And that while most of the preset FemRyder faces look fine/good. Which is the opposite to MaleRyder, who's default face looks good, but the presets look like ass. I feel sorry for anyone who wants to play as a custom MaleRyder. Good luck trying to make anything remotely decent out of those mutants.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yeeeeeah, I don't know. There's something there that makes her face just not gel 80% of the time. It could be because she has this perpetual smirk, or because the animation rig was not properly fitted for the model. While the entire game is loaded with bad facial animations the effect of it seems to hitting her the hardest. Probably because she's the main character and you're constantly looking at her. And that while most of the preset FemRyder faces look fine/good. Which is the opposite to MaleRyder, who's default face looks good, but the presets look like ass. I feel sorry for anyone who wants to play as a custom MaleRyder. Good luck trying to make anything remotely decent out of those mutants.

I respectfully disagree. 80% of the time her face animates "fine" (which is not to say "good", just "fine" by Andromeda standards). There are some moments of extreme jank with her that don't seem as dramatic on Scott, but by and large her face is functional. Addison is bad in every scene, as is Cora (whose bulging eyes and strangely puffy cheeks are far worse offenders than anything going on with Sara Ryder's face). I expect the reason you see more issues with her than Scott is because her implementation came later in development, and as is already abundantly clear the game shipped before its polish phase. She probably just went out the door with more rough edges.

I'm perfectly willing to indulge any argument that says "Sara Ryder's face animates poorly/feels off" because this is true of virtually every character in the game. I'm not willing to indulge an argument that says "the game is poorly animated because Bioware SJWs sabotaged all the pretty women to spite male gamers". And honestly, nor should anyone who wants to appear largely sane.

 

[stroopwafel]

Man, Jayde Rossi is hot, how could they fuck this up so bad? With a movie I can understand having a diverse cast and not just super models but with animated dolls why make them deliberately ugly? It definitely reeks of the developers trying to 'prove' something here.

Either that or they really just can't animate for shit. Don't know which is worse.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

So are they sexist against attractive women?

The idea that the default Sara Ryder is some ghastly mutant too ugly to be endured is honestly kind of depressing. It's a fairly strong argument for the "preteen boys are still gaming's loudest demographic" stance.

The problem is that she isn't just ugly (and modeled after a pretty beautiful model), it's her animations. They're uncanny, like she's a kind of flatworm that imitated a human figure. That's why people hate her 3d model. She doesn't just look like ugly, she looks wrong.
"Oh, but the previous Mass Effect games had terrible animations as well!" Yeah, nice to see Bioware embrace those like a parasitic infestation. "I don't care about my malaria, it makes me stand out!".

 

[sXeth]

So are they sexist against attractive women?

The idea that the default Sara Ryder is some ghastly mutant too ugly to be endured is honestly kind of depressing. It's a fairly strong argument for the "preteen boys are still gaming's loudest demographic" stance.

The problem is that she isn't just ugly (and modeled after a pretty beautiful model), it's her animations. They're uncanny, like she's a kind of flatworm that imitated a human figure. That's why people hate her 3d model. She doesn't just look like ugly, she looks wrong.
"Oh, but the previous Mass Effect games had terrible animations as well!" Yeah, nice to see Bioware embrace those like a parasitic infestation. "I don't care about my malaria, it makes me stand out!".

The hair kind of sucks from a modelling standpoint too. Anything but short (or hyper-gelled like the male) hair is a notorious tough one to do in vidyagames, but it contributes to some of the off look to the game model. Its also not really a "stylish" cut that looks good on an adult, which might be a character choice (from what I've seen, Ryder is kind of a dork), but if thats what they were going for, why start with a super-model instead of a character actor or whatever.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I respectfully disagree. 80% of the time her face animates "fine" (which is not to say "good", just "fine" by Andromeda standards). There are some moments of extreme jank with her that don't seem as dramatic on Scott, but by and large her face is functional. Addison is bad in every scene, as is Cora (whose bulging eyes and strangely puffy cheeks are far worse offenders than anything going on with Sara Ryder's face). I expect the reason you see more issues with her than Scott is because her implementation came later in development, and as is already abundantly clear the game shipped before its polish phase. She probably just went out the door with more rough edges.

Well, it animates fine in that it moves. I mean, her mouth opens and shuts accordingly when she speaks and her eyes look at what they need to look at. But there's something so off-puttingly off-key about her. More so than any other prominent character. Yes, even Cora. Sure, her face kinda smacks of plastic surgery, but the way it moves at least feels (more) organic. The way FemRyder looks at things makes it seem like she has a glass eye. I guess it varries from person to person, but to me she looks like she's recovering from a stroke (or in the midst of having one).

I'm perfectly willing to indulge any argument that says "Sara Ryder's face animates poorly/feels off" because this is true of virtually every character in the game. I'm not willing to indulge an argument that says "the game is poorly animated because Bioware SJWs sabotaged all the pretty women to spite male gamers". And honestly, nor should anyone who wants to appear largely sane.

This wouldn't make any sense anyway, since no developer wants their protagonist to look ugly, unless it's plot related. And also, when FemRyder got revealed she looked a-okay. They obviously designed her to be a pretty lady, but something went wrong when implementing the animation rig to said design. There were loads of ugly designed people in The Witcher 3 and they have nowhere near the creep factor in their face as FemRyder. She's like Miranda from ME2, but somehow worse.

 

[Redryhno]

This wouldn't make any sense anyway, since no developer wants their protagonist to look ugly, unless it's plot related. And also, when FemRyder got revealed she looked a-okay. They obviously designed her to be a pretty lady, but something went wrong when implementing the animation rig to said design. There were loads of ugly designed people in The Witcher 3 and they have nowhere near the creep factor in their face as FemRyder. She's like Miranda from ME2, but somehow worse.

I think part of it is the engine. ME2's engine kinda gave everything that sorta classically terrible looking(in ways) sci-fi feel and you find out pretty early on that Miranda was literally designed to look the way she was in-universe. There's a reason she looks the way she does and you can come to terms with her appearance in that department. Also they used more than face-to-face camera angles(not an ass joke, however nice people do or do not find it). Andromeda sorta focuses on the faces and doesn't have people facing away from the camera all that much to give you that voice actor immersion factor.

With the updated Frostbyte making the environments looks stunning(they're one of the few things in the game you can actually say look good), the faces just couldn't keep up. And you look at the tech they've got when even five years ago the omni-tools had a slight fuzzy look to them compared to how slick everything looks now and it just highlights what they couldn't update to the same point.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Man, Jayde Rossi is hot, how could they fuck this up so bad? With a movie I can understand having a diverse cast and not just super models but with animated dolls why make them deliberately ugly? It definitely reeks of the developers trying to 'prove' something here.

Either that or they really just can't animate for shit. Don't know which is worse.

They're a rookie development team whose main earlier credit was ME3's multiplayer, which doesn't have animated faces.

You can gives rookies as much time and money as you want, but at the end of the day they're still rookies. Don't assume malice where inexperience is more likely.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

This wouldn't make any sense anyway, since no developer wants their protagonist to look ugly, unless it's plot related.

Thing is, as was stated before, the men tend to look alright. At the very least I don't recall any of the male characters falling into the valley quite so hard as the ladies do.

You can't even blame the engine for this. Frostbyte has it's issues, but it's not impossible to avoid the pitfalls ME:A's characters fell into. Having a heck of a time finding them, but I did see some female characters that WERE designed to not rise above average in looks in that engine, and they weren't half as hard to look at as FemRyder tends to be.

So that leaves us with either incompetence, or people with an agenda. Neither one paints a pretty picture.

 

[Casual Shinji]

This wouldn't make any sense anyway, since no developer wants their protagonist to look ugly, unless it's plot related.

Thing is, as was stated before, the men tend to look alright. At the very least I don't recall any of the male characters falling into the valley quite so hard as the ladies do.

You can't even blame the engine for this. Frostbyte has it's issues, but it's not impossible to avoid the pitfalls ME:A's characters fell into. Having a heck of a time finding them, but I did see some female characters that WERE designed to not rise above average in looks in that engine, and they weren't half as hard to look at as FemRyder tends to be.

So that leaves us with either incompetence, or people with an agenda. Neither one paints a pretty picture.

The dudes look terrible, too. Seriously, the only male (human) characters that didn't look like shit were default Male Ryder and Ryder Sr.

And obviously it's not the Frostbyte engine, because Inquistion ran on that and it looked perfectly fine (for what we're used to with Bioware).

 

[GrumbleGrump]

Did anyone mention that lesbians blamed the plastic surgery woman (I think Kora?) of appropriating the butch hair cut?

I don't know if someone mentioned it, but fuck me, that was retarded [https://heatst.com/gaming/outrage-after-mass-effect-character-revealed-to-be-not-gay/]. I love the fact that there's people who attach so much of their identity on something so superficial.

 

[votemarvel]

I think part of it is the engine. ME2's engine kinda gave everything that sorta classically terrible looking(in ways) sci-fi feel and you find out pretty early on that Miranda was literally designed to look the way she was in-universe. There's a reason she looks the way she does and you can come to terms with her appearance in that department. Also they used more than face-to-face camera angles(not an ass joke, however nice people do or do not find it). Andromeda sorta focuses on the faces and doesn't have people facing away from the camera all that much to give you that voice actor immersion factor.

The Mass Effect 2 engine was the Unreal Engine 3. The same one ME1 and ME3 used.

The same engine that the first four Gears of War games used. The same engine the Batman Arkham games used. Hell as issues went the facial animations of Arkham Knight were not considered an issue, they were considered at the worst 'acceptable.'

So I do find it funny that last generation engines can seemingly do better than current gen tech. Unreal 3 from 2004.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Man, Jayde Rossi is hot, how could they fuck this up so bad? With a movie I can understand having a diverse cast and not just super models but with animated dolls why make them deliberately ugly? It definitely reeks of the developers trying to 'prove' something here.

Either that or they really just can't animate for shit. Don't know which is worse.

They're a rookie development team whose main earlier credit was ME3's multiplayer, which doesn't have animated faces.

You can gives rookies as much time and money as you want, but at the end of the day they're still rookies. Don't assume malice where inexperience is more likely.

This right here. No need to look for a conspiracy once you find out how Bioware Montreal's portfolio looks like.

It raises a different question though: Why would EA allow BW to delegate their C-team to make another entry of their most important IP currently? I'm trying to think about less obvious reasons than "quick cash grab".

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

This right here. No need to look for a conspiracy once you find out how Bioware Montreal's portfolio looks like.

It raises a different question though: Why would EA allow BW to delegate their C-team to make another entry of their most important IP currently? I'm trying to think about less obvious reasons than "quick cash grab".

It's basically the EA death spiral. Alienate veterans and hire newbies to make until they fuck up sufficently enough to disband the studio.

 

[Don Incognito]

So that leaves us with either incompetence, or people with an agenda. Neither one paints a pretty picture.

Honest to fucking god, by simply making the suggestion that it was due to "people with an agenda", you are furthering the narrative that gamers are paranoid internet neckbeards. Jesus tap dancing Christ.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

So that leaves us with either incompetence, or people with an agenda. Neither one paints a pretty picture.

Honest to fucking god, by simply making the suggestion that it was due to "people with an agenda", you are furthering the narrative that gamers are paranoid internet neckbeards. Jesus tap dancing Christ.

Again, given that the dudes turned out relatively alright in comparison to the ladies? Not so much paranoia as it is pattern recognition, especially given the audience Bioware has been trying to court in recent years.

Then again, given that Bioware seems to be hiring artists and writers from wherever Marvel got their current batch, it IS far more likely that it's mind breaking incompetence running that ship these days.

 

[Dalisclock]

Man, Jayde Rossi is hot, how could they fuck this up so bad? With a movie I can understand having a diverse cast and not just super models but with animated dolls why make them deliberately ugly? It definitely reeks of the developers trying to 'prove' something here.

Either that or they really just can't animate for shit. Don't know which is worse.

They're a rookie development team whose main earlier credit was ME3's multiplayer, which doesn't have animated faces.

You can gives rookies as much time and money as you want, but at the end of the day they're still rookies. Don't assume malice where inexperience is more likely.

This right here. No need to look for a conspiracy once you find out how Bioware Montreal's portfolio looks like.

It raises a different question though: Why would EA allow BW to delegate their C-team to make another entry of their most important IP currently? I'm trying to think about less obvious reasons than "quick cash grab".

I've seen news stories in the last day or so that indicate EA/Bioware may have outsourced the facial animations to another studio entirely, which points towards incompetence rather then any sort of intentional "SJW conspiracy".