We jumped on Horizon: Zero Dawn for that cut-scene pretty quickly, so in the interests of keeping things fair, this Mass Effect: Andromeda clip that's doing the rounds probably deserves a post. If nothing else it had your humble host in stitches of laughter, so maybe it'll brighten up your day:
Between the awkward pauses, bizarre animations, and detached voice acting, we reckon there's a pretty good cut-scene here β well, if the graphics weren't so ugly anyway.
In the case of Aloy's adventure, Brom's controversial cut-scene turned out to be very much an anomaly, so we're hoping for the same here. Even in our final 9/10 review, though, we called Guerrilla Games on its sloppy facial animations. But compared to what BioWare's serving up here, Horizon looks next-gen β heck, maybe even next-next-gen.
And let's not even get started on the weird walking animations (apologies for the bad language):
https://twitter.com/Prowler5X5/status/842125423819513859
But hey, at least someone was able to make a great '90s sitcom parody, right?
Worried? We are a little bit.
Comments 68
Well, it looks like the first game felt to play.
It is absolutely worth remembering that people freaked out (myself included) over that Horizon scene, and it didn't end up representing the game at all.
Animations aside, I think the rest doesn't look great either. It's all a bit uncanny.
@Octane The eyes look completely wrong. Horizon was real janky, but it's in a completely different universe to these Mass Effect clips.
@get2sammyb I was less worried about the acting than the writing in Horizon.
It was as ham-handed as I worried. I sold it knowing there would probably be DLC.
@Octane everyone has bizarre body and facial proportions.
@TheGZeus Really? I think the writing's pretty good in Horizon in general. I wouldn't call it ham-handed at all, though it does have its moments, I agree.
What would you consider a well-written game?
"Hobby SFM animators would be shamed for that quality"
I'm a hobby SFM animator, and I will say with full honesty that my skills are worse than that video clip.
@get2sammyb Witcher 1 and 3 are solid. Morrowind is pretty good, at least the important NPCs. NieR Automata is good, though the Japanese is slightly better. The English localisations of Dragon Quest games are better than the Japanese ones, much of the time! They're intentionally corny and over-the-top, so I think the God Eater games get a solid 7/10. Dead Space 1 is art.
Hell, if you count the codex entries Doom 2016 was fantastic!
My problem with Horizon is the dialogue doesn't do the story any justice. The lore and plot are great, but the characters just vomit their life story at the smallest question, then just never matter again. They natter on forever. It's like they took the character history document and replaced third-person pronouns with first-person. I ended up turning voice volume way down and skimming the text "shutup X shutup X..."
A glaring example is the prison warden who spends an eternity saying "I don't conform to gender norms. Bye!" As a transwoman I was severely annoyed that their idea of inclusivity is to just put a character in the game, have them say a few paragraphs, then basically vanish.
Onebof the main characters has an arc so generic I saw it from his first appearance. "I like to party irresponsibly! A tragedy will put me through the five stages of.grief, then I'll be redeemed somehow".
I'm not sure I've ever seen a game make blinking look so unnatural.
It's the McGregor walk!
This would have looked okay a few years ago but the bar has been raised so high in facial animations, that it looks really naff and cheap.
Animations in Horizon were fairly solid (especially Aloy) it certainly top notch compared to Fallout, any Ubisoft game and whatever the hell Bioware thinks this passes as animation. And judging by RockPaperShotgun's early impressions, the overall game isn't up to snuff with awful inventories, wafer thin plot, dull side quests and stereotypical characters.
@adf86 I think Inquisition had decent animation.
I just thought the game was disaster of archaic mechanics.
@TheGZeus Got that not too long ago but I found the first few hours to be a bit of a grind, games like Witcher and Horizon have raised the bar now.
@TheGZeus I guess that's fair, yeah. I think your post kinda sums up just how bad the standard of writing in games is, though, because even though I generally agree with every point you made, I'd actually still argue that Horizon is one of the better games we've got.
Alas, I'm taking things off topic now. As you were...
@get2sammyb agree 100%
@adf86 I've never gotten past the intro of a BioWare game after NWN. I hate their idea of combat.
I forced myself through hours of Baldur's Gate waiting for it to get good. NWN was passable, but just made me wish I was playing actual DnD. Everything else I've tried (at least one from every franchise) has made me angry for days.
This is something I've really feared when we got this kind of tech. The uncanny valley is so easy to hit now.
But games are getting better guys....right? Big budget? A game we aint seen much of prior to launch? Reviews before launch day?
You know whats bad? This began work a good few years back. But games take so much money and so much time to make these days because of the ever louder moaning of consumers, that by the time something comes to release it looks like crap.
@irken004 πππ
I remembered one of the NPCs in ME3 not blinking at all during a part where I had to pick a dialogue choice. To be fair I think both ME2 and ME3 had animation issues too, even though I've only spent a few hours on the campaigns. Maybe, it's just not something BioWare's good at.
Odd walking?!... Pre order cancelled.
@irken004 nailed it
Well there are some strange things happening with the animation after watching the first leaked game play videos I hope they fix that run/walk one it just dose not feel right
She walks like a big stupid jellyfish.
I'm really starting to think of skipping this. I can put up with a lot from Mass Effect, but between this, the micotransaction gouging, the tacked on multiplayer being given more focus (thanks, EA), the characters looking to be incredibly moribund, the first 13 minutes being "wake up and scan some pipes", and the RockPaperShotgun comments... yeah. I'm going to wait for a sale at least.
@BLP_Software Don't really follow that argument. Every (big) game that comes out this year started development three or four years ago. There's no game that started development this year that could've set the bar. Besides, it's not as if the games are finished the year they started development. EA was still working on this last year and presumably early this year as well.
Then again, this is just the acting and the animations, something that could absolutely ruin a game for me, but maybe other people will enjoy it. You can't expect every game to be 10/10. Budget doesn't guarantee quality, but sometimes a game lacks polish and it could've used a bigger budget to iron out the kinks.
For a game that apparently has thousands of lines of dialogue (as per a recent article on PSQ) they really need to do better than this. Looking at that mess every 10mins or so is a deal breaker for me im afraid.
Setting aside the animation and horrid looking faces, a lot of the early impressions regarding the writing and characters are pretty negative and that's REALLY worrying as it'll probably make or brake the game.
EDIT: Speaking of the writing.. potential spoilers I guess
https://webmshare.com/Dm0Nz
What the hell??
Those eyes are the stuff of nightmares!
The walking animation brought tears to my eyes, brilliant. And the lip-babbling + crazy eyes animation, haha!
@TrueAssassin86x
It'll get high scores.. IGN will give it a 9 at least. Then a week or two down the lines I think the cracks will show.
The animations is bad for AAA games by big publisher, the youtube link is funny though
@Lurker That's really from the game? not from alpha or something? Wow, the animation is really bad .
Wow this is horrible the emotions. That walk is shocking i thought they said that a delay wont be a problem....
First patch 10GB to fix this.....
@TheGZeus Since you played God Eater and liked the story, have you ever played Soul Sacrifice Delta? That game had amazing lore and characters. The story is also pretty good. I honestly think that SSD is the only MH clone on the Playstation that has great writing. God Eater kinda goes second, with Freedom Wars and Toukiden falling behind for their nonsencical plot, especially for Freedom Wars' plot being heavily rushed. Of course, atleast they are not as bad as RO: Ace's story.
Oh and as for Horizon's dialogues, yeah they still needed a bit of work. Though most RPGs tend to have that problem. An example of this is, personally, Trails of Cold Steel. The game is fun but the dialogues are so dull and nothing interesting. The characters and story aren't horrible but it just feels clichΓ©d. And since skipping the cutscenes requires holding the O button, I have never pressed the O button so much in my whole life. Other games that also has that typical "Shutup X" are Toukiden, Digimon and Oblivion. Love those games but the dialogues, man.
Remember when people talked about more than a games visuals?
@GamingPenguin Yeah because most people are talking about a game's animations here.
I'll wait for the full review but to be honest, I really want to see a full 90's sitcom of every Bethesda, Ubisoft and BioWare game. That would be better than a NG+ mode to me.
Yeah I have actually cancelled the order and will wait for reviews, after seeing crap like that. Instead I might get NieR now after finishing Zelda.
Guys, just check out that twitter account with the walking animations, the gifs people posted there had me rotfl'ing so hard! You can always count on the internet, my favorite piece of news in a while, haha.
That part is where I stopped playing the trial last night. Want to know what my breaking point was? The male Krogan that had an effeminate, snooty butler voice. You can't. F*****G. Do. That.
@get2sammyb a professional game journalist, doesn't know animation is part of visual design and development....
I thought Horizon Zero Dawn facial animation was fine while this looks awful, I think I'm gonna wait till the game drops.
@GamingPenguin A snarky Internet commenter can't seem to understand why people would discuss the presentation in a medium named video games...
@get2sammyb I still think it will be a lot of fun and hopefully they can patch or the rest of it as a whole is better than some animation issues π
Patches will help but doesn't bother me at all. The main problem with the generation is the games have been real pretty but lacking content. Example the order, infamous second son, assassins creed unity . as long as the gameplay is sound I can live with animations. When half life came out the animations were terrible bit still great gameplay
I love the homage to Iwata on that clip though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F535Xpu0NDE
@johnny30 I played The order and i loved the game short but great fun. I can understand that one still want a sequel though.
Infamous that game was fun and i made a nice amount of hours on that one i dont agree on that one lacking? My biggest complaint was that the last powers (which are awsome) that you get are kinda useless because the game in finished.
@Flaming_Kaiser the order was too short if I buy a game 50+ I expect at least 40 hours . same for infamous really short story with very little side content where infamous 1 + 2 had loads of content
Jeez those look bad.. the writing also has me worried. Definitely waiting for reviews now.
This looks so bad...
The animations are a shambles. Even ME1 conversation animations didn't cause this degree of unease. Heck, even Half Life 2 facial animations look more natural, and thats about 10 years old. On top of that, the dialogue delivery is not great. I really wanted it to be good. I've watched hours of live streams. I'm not sure it will get much better. Shame. We need good sci fi operas.
@johnny30 ...you're expecting good gameplay from a BioWare game?
They make CYOA games and just slap combat in there somewhere and don't care if it works.
@johnny30 I'll take quality over quantity. I didn't pay 60 for Doom, but I would have.
@TheGZeus fair enough I wouldn't spend 60 on 10-15 hour game . bioware used to be good before it got overthrown. Remember the days of star Wars the old republic but yeah most bioware games are good. Dragon age inquisition was awesome but I guess likes/dislikes are down to opinion
@johnny30 I have played as least one game from every BioWare franchise and gave up early on all because they were all cluster forks, mechanically.
Inquisition wasn't any better than Baldur's Gate, it was just shallower.
Moronic AI, spam-tactic combat out of 1990... I was in shock. I got to the intro boss and deleted it. The combat in that game is a sin.
http://i.4cdn.org/v/1489659825854.webm WTF???
the more i read and see of the game, the more my enthusiasm wanes. i'd already a few concerns with all the talk about exploration.. maybe it's because i didn't play ME1 so i don't know if that had less of the sense of narrative urgency that ME2 and ME3 had cause by the threat to all intelligent life by the reapers, but so far ME:A looks like a game that doesn't know what it wants to be, with a lot narrative fluff for the sake of it. RockPaperShotgun's first 5 hour preview was particular scathing.. i'll probably not cancel my pre-order, but after a 55hr+ binge on horizon so far i might wait a few weeks before starting on this.
Just wait for it to go on sale the gameplay looks like inquisition which was acceptable, hopefully by then they'll have patched it up.
it looks really odd...but If the writing is as god as Bioware's usual I will forget about it, I really enjoy talking to NPCs in their games. Inquisition's animation were a bit off (not this much!) sometimes but still conversations with Solas or Dorian had me really interested.
Bioware should be ashamed.
@johnny30 You only gave three examples that came out at the beginning of this gen though. While I agree with you to an extent, a ton of stellar games have come out on the PS4. Bloodborne, Outlast, Yakuza 6, Yakuza 0, Steins;Gate 0, Disgaea 5, Hatsune Miku Project Diva Future Tone, Nier Automata, Nioh, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, etc. etc. There are plenty of great games that have come out in the past four years. I really hope Andromeda is good because I'm a huge space nut and think we absolutely need a series doing Space Opera. But Bioware really should be ashamed of these animations, and they don't bode well for the rest of the game.
@Feena The writing is arguably the worst part of these meme clips. "Sorry, my face is tired from... Everything." π
@GamingPenguin
It's not out yet, we cant play it. This is advance footage, in an article about funny animations. What else do you expect people to talk about? If you'd like an opinion on gameplay here's one:
http://www.appy-gamer.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=4&articleid=89360750&source=sms
It's not looking any better.
@get2sammyb That's something I would say either to confuse someone or... be suggestive.
It's just ...WHAT???
@get2sammyb lol the innuendos.
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