It’s no secret Mass Effect: Andromeda has copped flak over the questionable quality of its character animations. If you were hoping the issues would be fixed by a miraculous release day patch, well, prepare to be disappointed.
The game’s lead designer, Ian Frazier, responded to a question on Twitter regarding BioWare’s patch plans. His answer isn’t unsurprising.
@JohnCharling At day 1? No, that ship has sailed. We’ll have more patches later on, but exactly what goes into them is still in discussion.
— Ian Soon Frazier (@tibermoon) March 16, 2017
In fact, the “day one” patch has been and gone.
@pupunoob @MechaShinOni To be clear, there IS a day 1 patch. But I’m told that patch is already included in the early access builds.
— Ian Soon Frazier (@tibermoon) March 17, 2017
I think it’s safe to say that addressing the perceived quality issues will take more than pressing a big button labelled “FIX”. Considering how heavy the Mass Effect games are when it comes to character animations, it could easily be weeks, perhaps longer, before BioWare has an official stance on the matter, let alone a patch.
@tibermoon [Twitter, via Gamespot]
Comments
33 responses to “No Animation Fix Included In Mass Effect: Andromeda’s ‘Day One’ Patch”
They do look bad when there is picture or gif but when I was playing through the trial yesterday I didn’t notice it once. I am playing on the One S though so maybe it’s more notable on the PC version.
I’ve seen a few oddities on PC but nothing so outrageous as what I’ve seen posted around the ‘net these past couple of days. It’s not game breaking for me.
I haven’t had anything that has ruined my experience
If the game is good, almost seems a bit trivial to hark on about animations
A simple patched can’t drag a whole game into 2017, animations wise. Or fix the bow-legged running. It would require a huge reworking. It’s obvious somewhere along the line someone said “meh that looks good enough, no one looks at faces in a bioware rpg anyway, we could delay and spend more money but let’s roll with it”. Probably the same people in DA:I writing all the lore, paragraph after paragraph, in white capitals on a black background. Because no one who plays bioware games ever read lore, so why present it comfortably! Hah
I thought that was a really nice font and didn’t have any issues with it. They definitely put work into it, anyway, with all the artwork and everything – so you can’t accuse them of laziness. And besides, it’s not like the original ME games had good facial animations, I think they just don’t have the best mocap animators on the payroll. Didn’t break those games, so I’m still looking forward to this one.
Man, how good were those lore art cards? I seriously need to investigate crafting a deck of those as a gift.
Well it could be a fairly easy fix if it’s a case of there being a bug in how the animations are being applied to the models, rather than problems inherent with the animations themselves.
I’ve read the story is pretty cliche and poorly written from rockpapershotgun. What do the comments section at kotaku think? I was tempted to get it, but worried it’ll be too cringey.
have you played a BW game? it’s fairly standard affair, you’re initially player in a grand plan, the plan goes south, you’re now the central figure to make sure the original plan plays out
after 10 hours with the trial, my “complaint” so far is that the event that led you to being a pathfinder seems slightly glossed over. like one minute you’re a person on the pathfinder team, the next minute you’re the pathfinder and everybody is like “yup okay well we have bigger issues so here’s all our problems, help us Obi-Wan Kenobi “
The Neogaf thread in the other story about this had me crying with laughter the animations were just so bad. It’s so bad It’s actually made me look forward to the game to see them in all their busted glory.
I’ll play this and hope for a sweet moon-walk during a serious scene.
Like this:
Performs renegade/dick move, face snaps to the camera breaking the fourth wall (slight duck face), MJ’s Bad plays as I moon-walk away, full of schwag.. or shwifty or whatever.
If they have just gone, “oh well, it’ll do”, then everything else in the game better be fabulous.
…sad thing is, from the reviews, the game isn’t blowing everyone away. Which means we’ve got an okay game, with years old animations.
Zero fucks be given. The world, characters and story are why I love Mass Effect and I hope that continues with Andromeda regardless of how it looks.
I feel like no game has ever really gotten the human facial animations down.
I was thinking about this while playing Horizon Zero Dawn. Facial animations and choreographing a scene are two areas in which games are usually lacking. How many games involve dialogues with puppets who just stand and stiffly emote?
LA Noire did a fairly good job, don’t know how it stands up now though
Still look great aside from the occasional “sticky” lips.
Uncharted series is probably the best I’ve seen using standard capture.
Last of us thoroughly nailed posture and minute expression gestures. There were some seriously nuanced, ‘human’ expressions in there.
Very true, I didnt think of it at the time since I was the 1 person on the planet who didnt enjoy the game. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the quality of the game, it is very very good and I can understand why it got the accolades it did. But I’m typically not a fan of Zombie apocalypse games in general, and the setting didnt really grab me. I played about 10 hours of it and stopped playing because I wasnt having fun with it.
On topic though, yes, from a facial animation standpoint it is top shelf.
I played the trial to the full 10hours and honestly it’s not that bad. yes there are some oddities but is it immersive / game breaking? nope
I’m more concerned about the 2 CTD I had. if the day 1 patch is already on the trial build I wonder how stability is as I progress into ME:A
That tweet response to the first question nailed it. The ship has sailed. I’ll be shocked if art assets are so much as breathed on at all. I think it’s a little cruel to leave players with some false hope about future patch content being up for discussion (Please don’t cancel your pre-orders!)
I took that to mean the day one patch ship has sailed, not the animations. They can’t add more things to the day one patch but maybe future patches might address it.
Even still, I’d be incredibly surprised if any future patches even bother trying to fix what seem to be VERY deep issues with the entire animation system.
Very deep issues that apparently most of the comment section here has not experienced at all, even after playing through the entire 10 hour trial.
The articles make this seem like you’re guaranteed to see this kind of thing within 5 minutes of playing. This is obviously not going to be the case, and this is certainly not the first game to have idiotic animation problems. If the rest of the game is good, then this wont detract from the overall experience in my opinion. On the flipside, some of the facial animations in the first hour of Horizon Zero Dawn were almost laughable, and yet we dont hear a peep about that.
Honestly, I wager basically anyone playing the trial has actually witnessed a number of these issues with the animation. Mainly because a few of them are consistent and essentially always occur during specific scenes, etc.
If you’re not actively looking for it though you might simply not think much of it and will just go about your day. You may also interpret different context/reasoning for some of the less ‘problematic’ animations that others automatically see as “Bugged!”.
It’s a whole different deal if you’re looking for stuff like this as you go. Though, that leads to the point where if you look for problems in any game you’re bound to find them.
My ‘very deep issues’ comment was also more in regards to suspecting that the underlying cause of many of the issues is buried in the game engine, so to speak, and that it simply wouldn’t be worth them trying to fix it.
Personally, I really don’t see any need to fix them. Though that is simply because it doesn’t detract from the game for me, for others it may, and as you pointed out there are other games that have had such issues. Previous Mass Effect games are at the top of that list.
On the topic of Horizon, I could be wrong but I thought I actually saw the awful lip syncing and such mentioned in at least one of the Kotaku articles. I do know I’ve seen it brought up in discussions on various forums, etc.
I concur that the time invested in fixing the problem would probably outweigh the potential benefit of fixing it, so they probably wont. I dont recall a game that actively went out of it’s way to fix a cosmetic bug that didnt effect the gameplay at all, although my memory isnt that great to be honest.
Your comment came across to me at least a bit differently to how you probably intended it. From my point of view, if you’re looking that hard for issues with facial animation, you’re probably not getting much enjoyment out of the game anyhow, and probably wouldnt like it anyway. If the animation issues arent that noticable then this is a moot point.
The reason I really want to play this game is because of the universe, the exploration and the feel of being captain of a spaceship filled with interesting characters. This is ultimately why I fell in love with the other games, and why I will probably love this game based on this article. Some facial animation glitches are not going to break this for me.
There may have been articles on Kotaku about Horizon, as stated my memory isnt great, but Mass Effect Andromeda has been ripped a new one because of this, when there are other probably more deserving games that dont get the same treatment. Yes it’s worth mentioning, since a key component of the game is interacting with characters, but does it really warrant a constant barrage of articles about it?
No animation fix, GOOD.
I hope they never bother with any kind of “animation fix” to appease trolling A-holes who probably aren’t even buying the game anyway. It was never an issue for the fans already on board for a new adventure.
In graphics I compare oranges with oranges. How Andromeda looks compared to the last Mass Effect game (#3). Looks improved & fine to me, others though are bitching why it’s not Uncharted 5: Drake in Space.
I can see why people are complaining. It is there, it is worse (then the last 3). But I only ever notice it (mostly) when I do look and then think about it due to these articles. Kinda like I see it because its being called out, other then that I have played the game pretty well without noticing it or it being this huge immersion breaking thing.
It’s bad yes, but the game itself (so far) is fantastic and because of it, i notice it less and less. It’s only on the major characters or major emotions that I go, man, could have done with more sadness.
Hopefully its tweaked, but its no game breaker.
Same here…. but sometimes it does feel a bit Thunderbirds
Whats wrong with Thunderbirds? That show was great!
Yep. People love to bitch about shit. And it is shit. Go play a David Cage game if you want emooooution.
This seems pretty obvious. For major adjustments they’d have to get motion-capture actors to re-act scenes which would cost a penny or two.