Mass Effect: Andromeda Pre-Release Thread

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I wish Bioware Defense Force types would take this line more often. While it's obvious that Bioware no longer has any interest in making games intended to appeal to the 'core gamer' demographic, that hasn't quite filtered down into the public consciousness yet. If there were a hundred more message board evangelists out there shouting, "If you're cis-het scum or a Trump supporter, i.e. fascist, Bioware does not want you as a customer," that could shave years off the amount of time until EA pulls the plug. (Although posts like that here won't do much good, for obvious reasons. But maybe there's still a handful of people on GAF who aren't drinking the Kool-Aid and inexplicably haven't been banned yet.)

In what way do Bioware make games that don't appeal to the core gamer? They're an exemplar of cookie cutter, trend chasing, audience expanding developers. With every game they attempt to cater to a larger and larger group of people, smooth out as much jank as possible, put on their best AAA gaming face and hype it up with cinematic action movie trailers. At this point nobody could seriously be expecting some sort of 90's CRPG from Bioware, they've been releasing a string of babby's first RPGs since KOTOR. It's not core gamers they're alienating, they're the ones buying 5 million copies of all of their games and wearing N7 hoodies on the bus. The people getting mad are the GamerGate brigade.

 

[coldcrow]

Looking forward to a RK47 LP.

 

[Jarmaro]

Might be an unpopular opinion around these parts, but Kotor 2 really do need that restored content mod to become the better game. The game without any patching is incredibly buggy and prone to game breaking issues, which comes as no surprise with what is known of its development. Id wager a lot of people who thinks Kotor 1 is better simply hasn't gone back to kotor 2 ten years later and played it with the mod.

I finished kotor 2 three times, it fells as if I finished three slightly diffrent games. It was that buggy. I remember playing kotor 2 right after 1, and after finishing 2 I thought kotor 1 was bettter. It's just how it is. Infantile, stupid, but overall more enjoyable.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't think the issue is that BW can't make her conventionally attractive. It's that they don't want to.

I find that somewhat interesting actually. Also the nerd rage it's provoking here and elsewhere. Especially as it's certain to have face customisation so you can craft your very own Melania clone.

 

[Lambach]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

 

[Kuattro]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

It's not like it's the first time. Miranda looked like Yvonne Strahovski's corpse if she had drowned and spent a couple of days under the water. And the same thing happened with the reporter that rides with you in ME3, whatever her name was.

Curiously, Mark Vanderloo looked exactly right, and Zaeed didn't look that bad either.

Maybe Bioware artists are misogynists (or ugly women).

 

[Drax]

Probably the latter.

 

[imweasel]

Jayde Rossi is a beautiful and very attractive woman, but the model looks more like ugly ass Anita Sarkeesian.

Maybe Bioware prefers the androgynous (ugly dyke) look, so that the player can roleplay her either as a woman or as a "woman" (a tranny). The devs at Bioware are just a bunch of leftist SJW weirdos after all.

 

[Mark Richard]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

Mass Effect's people look like fish-eyed mutants who consciously force themselves to mimic human blinking at the best of times, but you've gotta' figure something is up when they take an attractive model & actress and expand her face until it makes up 80% of her body mass.

 

[warpig]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

What a cutie. I don't think that ME character looks shitty because of developer's ineptitude. If she looked like the girl in the photo that would be misogyny and sexism - this is how Biowarian brains operate...

 

[donkeymong]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

It's not like it's the first time. Miranda looked like Yvonne Strahovski's corpse if she had drowned and spent a couple of days under the water. And the same thing happened with the reporter that rides with you in ME3, whatever her name was.

Curiously, Mark Vanderloo looked exactly right, and Zaeed didn't look that bad either.

Maybe Bioware artists are misogynists (or ugly women).

Actually Miranda looked like a female Michael Jackson. Anyway, the best faces Bioware made werent based on models(as far as i know)
Bastila and the thorian clone looked better then anything based on a model.

 

[santino27]

I don't think the issue is that BW can't make her conventionally attractive. It's that they don't want to.

I find that somewhat interesting actually. Also the nerd rage it's provoking here and elsewhere. Especially as it's certain to have face customisation so you can craft your very own Melania clone.

Which works fine for your protagonist, and less fine for the dumpy-faced people they give as your companions... who aren't customizable.

 

[Jarmaro]

Understanding Bioware designers would allow me to become higher being. To solve this labyrinth of missunderstandings and bad ideas that somehow made way into final version would make me calm. I would die in peace.
I hope I'll achieve it one day.

 

[pippin]

Bioware/fans tried to contact Vanderloo a couple of times so he could dress up as Shepard but he just ignored them. Actually I don't think they had legal permission to use his image.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Kuattro]

"BioWare is so good at writing party bants"

 

[Freddie]

So I looked this Jayde up and I'm surprised she's not suing Bioware for what they did to her face.

It's not like it's the first time. Miranda looked like Yvonne Strahovski's corpse if she had drowned and spent a couple of days under the water. And the same thing happened with the reporter that rides with you in ME3, whatever her name was.

Curiously, Mark Vanderloo looked exactly right, and Zaeed didn't look that bad either.

Maybe Bioware artists are misogynists (or ugly women).

Actually Miranda looked like a female Michael Jackson. Anyway, the best faces Bioware made werent based on models(as far as i know)
Bastila and the thorian clone looked better then anything based on a model.

I recall reading that they based Bastila to likeness of Jennifer Hale. Don't know how Bastila compares to her though and then, they didn't have modern complex tools to fuck it up that time.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

The biggest problem I see with the comparison pic is that the eyeballs are seemingly lit separately to the rest of the features, and do not seem to have any sort of shadow or occlusion cast on them from the eyelids. What the fuck is their engine doing?

Adding a bit of shadow to the top of the eyeball to match the eyelid shadow is literally all I've done so she doesn't have such a crazy stare. Come on Bioware, sort it out.

 

[Outlander]

 

[Cyberarmy]

^Still better than ME: Andromeda's faces

 

[Frozen]

You are overanalyzing it.
At this point I think they are trying to make her good looking but are so bad at their work that this is the best you'll get.

 

[Durian Eater]

In what way do Bioware make games that don't appeal to the core gamer? They're an exemplar of cookie cutter, trend chasing, audience expanding developers.

The problem isn't the gameplay--EAware makes reasonably competent skill-tree action games--but the everything else. There's a reason why Bioware has been butting its head against ~5m sales for 15 years, while Bethesda sells more on launch day that Bioware games do over their lifetime. The fact is that core gamers (talking males 18-34 ± 5) have never really taken to the soap opera/romance elements that have been progressively devouring the main plots from ME2 onwards. If they absolutely had to include those elements, ME2 was probably the most core-accessible way to do so: supersoldier/underwear model Shepard saves the galaxy while blowing shit up and fucking a variety of (theoretically) hot women.

7 years later and where are we? The Thalidomide Twins, Hipster Manlet and his sister Potato, picking space-elfroot in a game where the devs have spent more time tweeting about what insect- and tentacle-people the player can fuck than they have the actual plot. I assume EA wants these games to make as much money as possible, which is why they've been dropping Skyrim and TW3 comparisons, but I doubt the combined slashfic and animalfucker communities are going to come through for them.

tl,dr: If "see that cricket-woman? you can fuck it" is part of your online marketing, you're probably not making games for core gamers anymore.

 

[donkeymong]

I recall reading that they based Bastila to likeness of Jennifer Hale. Don't know how Bastila compares to her though and then, they didn't have modern complex tools to fuck it up that time.

Bastila looks better then Hale. Bigger and prettier eyes.(and form is different)

The biggest problem I see with the comparison pic is that the eyeballs are seemingly lit separately to the rest of the features, and do not seem to have any sort of shadow or occlusion cast on them from the eyelids. What the fuck is their engine doing?


Adding a bit of shadow to the top of the eyeball to match the eyelid shadow is literally all I've done so she doesn't have such a crazy stare. Come on Bioware, sort it out.

Well, i wonder why they need models if their intent is to make female faces ugly anyway.

 

[warpig]

"BioWare is so good at writing party bants"

Wow this is bad. This was visible in other DA games (I didn't play Inquisition) but here...lol. Immersive fantasy world where people talk and act like 20-30 year old quirky, urbanite dipshits from XXI century America xDDD