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Mass Effect Andromeda for Haters


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Their announcement for the plans in the next 2 months sound better than I expected. 

 

Thanks prinyo!

 

However, this makes me wonder, am I the only one that thinks most of that list should have been on the Q&A briefing before the game was released? Fix the eyes for human and asari ?  Really? that wasn't evident before you released the game. Ryders zig zag animations? These are quality control issues not post game fixes. The Remnant decryption key being lower, more romance options for male Ryder... these are patches and post release fixes in my opinion. 

 

Sloppy game delivery, pure and simple. Coming from an Indy game developer with a short history, this game would be wonderful and great. Coming from an established company with a history of great and wonderful games, this is just poor workmanship and quality and control.

 

I am happy they are admitting the issues and taking feedback seriously and fixing these issues and perhaps more in the future to make this game as great as it should have been when released. I am disappointed that they'd release the game in its current condition. As excited as people are about the release of the game, if they announced that they ran into some issues that required fixing before release to give their customers the high quality game they expect... then I am pretty sure most would accept this.

 

It is a pretty good game and they have some pretty great things in the game from graphics and such, my issue isn't with the game, design (in general), and to a small degree the story (it is weak but I could accept that if the fit and finish was there) My issue is mainly with the fit and finish, quality, fine touches that they just ignored. 

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However, this makes me wonder, am I the only one that thinks most of that list should have been on the Q&A briefing before the game was released?  ... My issue is mainly with the fit and finish, quality, fine touches that they just ignored. 

 

 

 

I believe they over-relied on the main target group of the game. I keep calling it "a cool sci-fi shooter about teenagers/young adults in space" because everything in the game is made to appeal to the teen/young adult group. If you look at it as a game made for 16-22 year old boys everything makes sense. I really believe the bosses at Bioware did not consider the faces and conversations important enough. I was reading quite a lot of comments about the game in the past days and there is a group of players that clearly enjoy the "dynamic combat", are glad that don't need to bother with controlling squad-mates (because it is for noobs and stopping combat is boring), do not care about the facial animations because they do spend most of their time in the game with helmets on and even when they don't - they consider all the plot and conversations a filler between the shooting and don't really care. They also don't care that all you do in the game - plot related, is press buttons, because the vaults are cool and after all jet-jumping around and killing stuff is the real purpose of the game. I believe if the game was somehow magically distributed only to 16-22 y.o. boys it would score 9,5-10/10. It is been commented a lot lately that the budget for MEA was not that big and they clearly prioritized this age group. 

 

The ME sub just published a preliminary result from their "2016 Demographics Survey" and it shows that close to 40% of the fans are older than 24 years. And we are the ones asking the questions about polish, AAA quality, coherent, logical story, adequate squadmates and such. And Bioware seems didn't expect such a strong reaction. 

 

The list they published today is quite serious bit for the most parts doable. And at least for me it will mean that almost all of the serious problems and annoyances I had with the trial and will have with the full game will be fixed. And if people manage to create some handy mods in the next few months that would mean around the end of the summer I'll consider the game playable so I'll probably buy it. 

 

However there are two points in their plan that are quite sensitive and I don't think they have the capacity to deal with themselves. They will probably need to ask the DA team for help and hire external writers and consultants. They clearly had "checkboxes" to fill for including trans and gay characters, including obviously specific points about gay families and adoption, they clearly didn't know how to do that and they failed on all of them. But they need to get it right this time. The only possible way to fix the gay romances fiasco is to turn Jaal bi. This is the only way to tick all the boxes - he is both squadmate and alien. And the Gil romance is fundamentally flawed, inadequate and frankly offensive and I really don't see how they can fix it without rewriting it. 

 

But it will be interesting to see what will happen in the next few months. 

 

 

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Well, the Youtube package is now complete  :)

 

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Fuel to the fire

 

According to a report by gaming historian Liam Robertson, BioWare apparently had all facial and character animations outsourced to other EA studios."

 

-"Robertson, who stated he spoke to several BioWare employees anonymously, noted that the company used new Cyberscan technology, which created digital scans of a person or object that is used to create 3-D models in-game. According to Robertson’s sources, BioWare relied heavily on Cyberscan instead of using artists to sculpt faces internally, believing that Cyberscan would compensate for time for development."

 

-"However, several sources told Robertson that they place the blame on the animation quality on BioWare’s management team, who chose to outsource almost all the work on human characters to other teams. One source, according to Robertson, believed that BioWare “put too much faith in the scanning tech” as it would not require too much additional face modeling for the outsourced team..”

 

 

 

https://techraptor.net/content/report-bioware-outsourced-mass-effect-andromeda-facial-animations

 

Also a twitter about their plans to be revealed tomorrow: twitter

This might explain why they replaced entire human head mesh just a year before the release. And why their facial animation pool was so poor.

 

 

You're referring to two complete different things. The 'replacement' is moving from Unreal to Frostbite. The faces are screwed up because they were poorly animated, there's no standardized tweening/node sync tool for frostbite, and secondly two BW lead Producers have mandated that no female character will be 'unnecessarily or unrealistically attractive', but for males cheesecake is just fine since it directly appeals to gay and female gamers.

 

Andromeda has the issues and sales it does because on the MP side they deliberate went for a high TTK grindfest to fund a game they knew was going ton have an uphill climb in ratings and sales, (and it did/does) and the SP issues are entirely the result of A hiring completely unqualified people because of their politics for senior management positions and then not even bothering to get other people to properly teach them the implementation methods their section actually requires and B working in a literally insulated hugbox environment where they don't even have a means to contact consumers because 'forums are too open and too negative', so only the sanitized halls of twitter and EA Answers (roflmao) are viable means of feedback.

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However, this makes me wonder, am I the only one that thinks most of that list should have been on the Q&A briefing before the game was released?  ... My issue is mainly with the fit and finish, quality, fine touches that they just ignored. 

 

 

 

I believe they over-relied on the main target group of the game. I keep calling it "a cool sci-fi shooter about teenagers/young adults in space" because everything in the game is made to appeal to the teen/young adult group. If you look at it as a game made for 16-22 year old boys everything makes sense. I really believe the bosses at Bioware did not consider the faces and conversations important enough. I was reading quite a lot of comments about the game in the past days and there is a group of players that clearly enjoy the "dynamic combat", are glad that don't need to bother with controlling squad-mates (because it is for noobs and stopping combat is boring), do not care about the facial animations because they do spend most of their time in the game with helmets on and even when they don't - they consider all the plot and conversations a filler between the shooting and don't really care. They also don't care that all you do in the game - plot related, is press buttons, because the vaults are cool and after all jet-jumping around and killing stuff is the real purpose of the game. I believe if the game was somehow magically distributed only to 16-22 y.o. boys it would score 9,5-10/10. It is been commented a lot lately that the budget for MEA was not that big and they clearly prioritized this age group. 

 

The ME sub just published a preliminary result from their "2016 Demographics Survey" and it shows that close to 40% of the fans are older than 24 years. And we are the ones asking the questions about polish, AAA quality, coherent, logical story, adequate squadmates and such. And Bioware seems didn't expect such a strong reaction. 

 

The list they published today is quite serious bit for the most parts doable. And at least for me it will mean that almost all of the serious problems and annoyances I had with the trial and will have with the full game will be fixed. And if people manage to create some handy mods in the next few months that would mean around the end of the summer I'll consider the game playable so I'll probably buy it. 

 

However there are two points in their plan that are quite sensitive and I don't think they have the capacity to deal with themselves. They will probably need to ask the DA team for help and hire external writers and consultants. They clearly had "checkboxes" to fill for including trans and gay characters, including obviously specific points about gay families and adoption, they clearly didn't know how to do that and they failed on all of them. But they need to get it right this time. The only possible way to fix the gay romances fiasco is to turn Jaal bi. This is the only way to tick all the boxes - he is both squadmate and alien. And the Gil romance is fundamentally flawed, inadequate and frankly offensive and I really don't see how they can fix it without rewriting it. 

 

But it will be interesting to see what will happen in the next few months. 

 

 

--------------------------

 

 

Well, the Youtube package is now complete  :)

 

 

 

The age of the general gamer is getting older and older. It is silly to target to 16 ~22 when they were too young to play the original games :P 

 

I also agree with the writing and romance. They did it really poorly. There was no real reason to do this. Check boxes do nobody a service. The characters need to be fully fleshed out and meaningful or gay, bi, pansexual whatever does these groups a serious disservice. Meaningful characters make an impact. If they wanted to make a meaningful contribution as it seems they do to the LGBT community, they'd make really interesting and impactful characters, that will be really memorable. 

 

Shortcuts, cutting corners and hoping the customers swallow it up. Shame it cost more to fix fuckups and shortcoming and screwups then to do the job correctly in the first place.

 

The game does have a pretty good fighting system. Not the best, but pretty good.

 

Well, it is settled - 6/10

 

 

 

Yes, I agree with much of what is stated in this video, there were some good things but they are being distracted by a few serious flaws.

 

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You're referring to two complete different things. The 'replacement' is moving from Unreal to Frostbite. The faces are screwed up because they were poorly animated, there's no standardized tweening/node sync tool for frostbite, and secondly two BW lead Producers have mandated that no female character will be 'unnecessarily or unrealistically attractive', but for males cheesecake is just fine since it directly appeals to gay and female gamers.

 

Andromeda has the issues and sales it does because on the MP side they deliberate went for a high TTK grindfest to fund a game they knew was going ton have an uphill climb in ratings and sales, (and it did/does) and the SP issues are entirely the result of A hiring completely unqualified people because of their politics for senior management positions and then not even bothering to get other people to properly teach them the implementation methods their section actually requires and B working in a literally insulated hugbox environment where they don't even have a means to contact consumers because 'forums are too open and too negative', so only the sanitized halls of twitter and EA Answers (roflmao) are viable means of feedback.

Nope. If you compare internal Bioware leaked videos and screenshots from the end of 2015 and the early 2016, you will see that head mesh for human characters they used back then was completely different to the one in final product. Also in the sex scenes, take a look at the neck connecting to the body. No way head and body were designed together as a whole model and even by the same artist.

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I saw it in person last week. Some of the ugliest *#$ I've seen since vanilla Oblivion.

 

If their marketing is trying to attract women by having the characters ugly, then they're even more stupid than Bethsoft. I don't mind a few ugly characters but the main ones need to be attractive for me to play. Women AND Men need to be attractive. If it's true they're taking some kind of marketing angle to attract women, I've got some news for them. This woman finds the uglification (it could be a word laugh.png) not only ridiculous, but insulting.

 

wink.png

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Nope. If you compare internal Bioware leaked videos and screenshots from the end of 2015 and the early 2016, you will see that head mesh for human characters they used back then was completely different to the one in final product. Also in the sex scenes, take a look at the neck connecting to the body. No way head and body were designed together as a whole model and even by the same artist. 

 

 

 

 

 

You're not listening.

 

They went to a completely different engine, and I've had access to previews for quite some time, as I used to work with people there and still have friends there.

 

Completely different engine, and different assets.

 

The head wasn't designed 'by an artist' at all, it's a scan cap with zero blending or tweaking, which is part of the problem. Even with a direct topology cap, you still require an artist and an animator to make it legit, that didn't happen here. Basically Romanian and Czech artists and interns handled all character geometry and facial animations, including hero assets.

 

Also, what you'r referring to isn't 'internal' anything, it's a public demo reel for a VFX artist.

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Nope. If you compare internal Bioware leaked videos and screenshots from the end of 2015 and the early 2016, you will see that head mesh for human characters they used back then was completely different to the one in final product. Also in the sex scenes, take a look at the neck connecting to the body. No way head and body were designed together as a whole model and even by the same artist. 

 

 

 

You're not listening.

 

They went to a completely different engine, and I've had access to previews for quite some time, as I used to work with people there and still have friends there.

 

Completely different engine, and different assets.

 

The head wasn't designed 'by an artist' at all, it's a scan cap with zero blending or tweaking, which is part of the problem. Even with a direct topology cap, you still require an artist and an animator to make it legit, that didn't happen here. Basically Romanian and Czech artists and interns handled all character geometry and facial animations, including hero assets.

 

Also, what you'r referring to isn't 'internal' anything, it's a public demo reel for a VFX artist.

 

I don't know if my english is to blame here, but you fail to understand my point.

 

Bioware didn't switch to Frostbite3 mid-production. In E3 2014 they released a teaser of MEA, they've been already using frostbite3 back then. Of course they had to remake all the assets for the new engine and for the "next-gen standards". This is what they supposedly have been doing since june 2012.

 

What I'm talking about is the fact that head meshes for main character (both male and female) from that demo reel and other screenshots posted from 2015-2016 were a lot better than those we got in the final product. Even if those supposed to be a temporal placeholder for demo reels and marketing until cyberscan was done for all the characters. What boggles my mind is the fact that someone at Bioware looked at results of cyberscan and decided to roll with that. They had time (almost 2 years) to remake faces for all character using those placeholder meshes as base.

(I'm not talking about animations, I'm talking about geometry: unrealistically big eye sockets, enormous mouths etc)

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Nope. If you compare internal Bioware leaked videos and screenshots from the end of 2015 and the early 2016, you will see that head mesh for human characters they used back then was completely different to the one in final product. Also in the sex scenes, take a look at the neck connecting to the body. No way head and body were designed together as a whole model and even by the same artist. 

 

 

 

You're not listening.

 

They went to a completely different engine, and I've had access to previews for quite some time, as I used to work with people there and still have friends there.

 

Completely different engine, and different assets.

 

The head wasn't designed 'by an artist' at all, it's a scan cap with zero blending or tweaking, which is part of the problem. Even with a direct topology cap, you still require an artist and an animator to make it legit, that didn't happen here. Basically Romanian and Czech artists and interns handled all character geometry and facial animations, including hero assets.

 

Also, what you'r referring to isn't 'internal' anything, it's a public demo reel for a VFX artist.

 

I don't know if my english is to blame here, but you fail to understand my point.

 

Bioware didn't switch to Frostbite3 mid-production. In E3 2014 they released a teaser of MEA, they've been already using frostbite3 back then. Of course they had to remake all the assets for the new engine and for the "next-gen standards". This is what they supposedly have been doing since june 2012.

 

What I'm talking about is the fact that head meshes for main character (both male and female) from that demo reel and other screenshots posted from 2015-2016 were a lot better than those we got in the final product. Even if those supposed to be a temporal placeholder for demo reels and marketing until cyberscan was done for all the characters. What boggles my mind is the fact that someone at Bioware looked at results of cyberscan and decided to roll with that. They had time (almost 2 years) to remake faces for all character using those placeholder meshes as base.

(I'm not talking about animations, I'm talking about geometry: unrealistically big eye sockets, enormous mouths etc)

 

 

This should be the old demo :

The same scene happens in game and its way different...

But it all boils down to the fact that we will never know for sure who/when/why the directors accepted that facework.They will try to save face and stay silent.

 

 

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I saw it in person last week. Some of the ugliest *#$ I've seen since vanilla Oblivion.

 

If their marketing is trying to attract women by having the characters ugly, then they're even more stupid than Bethsoft. I don't mind a few ugly characters but the main ones need to be attractive for me to play. Women AND Men need to be attractive. If it's true they're taking some kind of marketing angle to attract women, I've got some news for them. This woman finds the uglification (it could be a word laugh.png) not only ridiculous, but insulting.

 

wink.png

Women love attractive characters just like men, sure you got a few people spewing out the usual thing about not everyone is pretty and realism (while rocking their pictures on facebooks and everywhere, with tons of make up on them and sexy poses), but the simple fact is, people are attracted to good looking characters, they want to look good and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

 

The whole "open world" scanning garbage should have been scrapped and they should have concentrated on what made the series great.

But this isnt just Bioware, lots of other studios do this, they just followed the trend.

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Women love attractive characters just like men, sure you got a few people spewing out the usual thing about not everyone is pretty and realism (while rocking their pictures on facebooks and everywhere, with tons of make up on them and sexy poses), but the simple fact is, people are attracted to good looking characters, they want to look good and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

 

The whole "open world" scanning garbage should have been scrapped and they should have concentrated on what made the series great.

But this isnt just Bioware, lots of other studios do this, they just followed the trend.

 

 

It's also escapism. There's a reason you don't have tons of movies with super ugly people for the same reason. At this point though, I'm convinced anything from North America is going to make unattractive NPCs by default. Bethsoft, Bioware, anything affiliated with EA..... wink.pngwink.png

 

Of course after my shock on how hideously ugly the female NPCs are (the Asari included), the dialog and the voice acting! laugh.pnglaugh.pnglaugh.png I'm in the middle of playing through ME1 for the first time and I've got to say the Andromeda dialog coupled with the atrocious voice acting is ... either sad or freaking hilarious. Maybe they should just make a comedy game? Serious is out of the question!! angel.gif

 

That's actually one part I thought was neat. At least coming from ME1. In that I want more Mako content, not less. (And interiors that aren't all -exactly- the same layout. Extra funny when it's a cave! HAHA!)

I'm only towards the end of ME1 but I'm already disliking the main "it's the end of the galaxy" plot point. I HATE it when games do that. When it was just hunting for a rogue spectre agent I was into it. As soon as it became save the galaxy ... I'm finding myself a lot more interested in side quests. End of the world stuff has been done by so many games now I just lose interest when it happens AGAIN.

 

It's a good thing I have everything up to ME3 already though. (I'll be using the happy end mod for ME3 of course!) Been talking to some people at work this week about some of Bioware's ... shall we say "colorful" employees. Let's just say after finding out a bit more of that, I won't consider spending a single penny (or whatever the equivalent Euros are) on that company ever again. angel.gif

 

Funny, I've had my own reasons for avoiding Bioware since their EA acquisition. Seems their own people now provide me with an even better reason to avoid them.

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Women love attractive characters just like men, sure you got a few people spewing out the usual thing about not everyone is pretty and realism (while rocking their pictures on facebooks and everywhere, with tons of make up on them and sexy poses), but the simple fact is, people are attracted to good looking characters, they want to look good and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

 

The whole "open world" scanning garbage should have been scrapped and they should have concentrated on what made the series great.

But this isnt just Bioware, lots of other studios do this, they just followed the trend.

 

 

It's also escapism. There's a reason you don't have tons of movies with super ugly people for the same reason. At this point though, I'm convinced anything from North America is going to make unattractive NPCs by default. Bethsoft, Bioware, anything affiliated with EA..... wink.pngwink.png

 

Of course after my shock on how hideously ugly the female NPCs are (the Asari included), the dialog and the voice acting! laugh.pnglaugh.pnglaugh.png I'm in the middle of playing through ME1 for the first time and I've got to say the Andromeda dialog coupled with the atrocious voice acting is ... either sad or freaking hilarious. Maybe they should just make a comedy game? Serious is out of the question!! angel.gif

 

That's actually one part I thought was neat. At least coming from ME1. In that I want more Mako content, not less. (And interiors that aren't all -exactly- the same layout. Extra funny when it's a cave! HAHA!)

I'm only towards the end of ME1 but I'm already disliking the main "it's the end of the galaxy" plot point. I HATE it when games do that. When it was just hunting for a rogue spectre agent I was into it. As soon as it became save the galaxy ... I'm finding myself a lot more interested in side quests. End of the world stuff has been done by so many games now I just lose interest when it happens AGAIN.

 

It's a good thing I have everything up to ME3 already though. (I'll be using the happy end mod for ME3 of course!) Been talking to some people at work this week about some of Bioware's ... shall we say "colorful" employees. Let's just say after finding out a bit more of that, I won't consider spending a single penny (or whatever the equivalent Euros are) on that company ever again. angel.gif

 

Funny, I've had my own reasons for avoiding Bioware since their EA acquisition. Seems their own people now provide me with an even better reason to avoid them.

 

I felt the same way, i enjoyed ME1 especially because of the feeling that you were part of something bigger, the humanity just got into space and was like a baby next to the aliens who where there for thousands of years.

 

After ME1 it all went down the usual slope of nonsense with humans being important whereever they set their feet on, saving the galaxy, meddling in alien afairs and everything.

They should have build upon the whole spectre thing and cooperation with other specters, that would have made for an interesting story on the relationships with the other alien species and retaining their importance, then making them just a background for the glorified human race.

 

Bioware simply isnt able to get out of the whole savior hero nonsense, they just keep repeating that until the sun goes nova.

Plus now they aiming at the teen demographic who just want to go out, shoot things and bang some aliens, i have no hope for ME anymore.

 

Hopefully CDPR will fill the hole with some good scifi in the future that wont feel like it was written by some 14yo tumblerist.

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I'm just hoping this doesn't screw over DA4 too much. :/ I need my DA fix!

 

Although, I have played ME:A, if only to see what it was like for myself. It's kind of like Oblivion - easier to swallow if you take it as a comedy and enjoy the non-stop trainwreck. I heard there was a transsexual in there and before I actually found out who it was (some random NPC somewhere that has nothing to do with anything and vomits exposition for the sake of diversity), I kept looking for one like Where's Waldo. I managed to find a turian with a female voice and a male model, some random human NPC with boobs, a very manly face, bright red hair and fire engine lipstick, as well as a Krogan who looked like he'd gotten into Addison's makeup hoping to win a beauty contest.

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To anyone who enjoys the game: Do you now see what value the public shaming of the launch day product had? The improvements made to the game would have never been made if everyone had just accepted what they had been given.  

Keep this in mind for any future released by any other games studio. Voice your concerns and discontent. It is the only way that some games developers or even the publishers will know for certain that they put out a product in an unacceptable state.

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To anyone who enjoys the game: Do you now see what value the public shaming of the launch day product had? The improvements made to the game would have never been made if everyone had just accepted what they had been given.  

Keep this in mind for any future released by any other games studio. Voice your concerns and discontent. It is the only way that some games developers or even the publishers will know for certain that they put out a product in an unacceptable state.

 

This. If someone did something stupid, we will call them out on it. The same for developers as well. The time in which 'put the game in a semi-finished stage then we'll patch it' mentality is what makes consumers angry and deserve criticism.

 

ATM, I put off ME:A until all the patches are in place after 30 hours of banging my head in sheer frustration at the lack of polish. Oddly enough, I feel the developers that get it RIGHT first time are those that are exclusive for consoles since they know if they fuck it up, it'll reflect on them and their studio. Look at the Order 1886 and how it was panned. Then you look at Horizon Zero Dawn. Sure, that has some issues but it was almost flawless. For a smaller studio to earn accolades and awards compared to you Bioware is laughable at best.

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To anyone who enjoys the game: Do you now see what value the public shaming of the launch day product had? The improvements made to the game would have never been made if everyone had just accepted what they had been given.  

Keep this in mind for any future released by any other games studio. Voice your concerns and discontent. It is the only way that some games developers or even the publishers will know for certain that they put out a product in an unacceptable state.

 

This. If someone did something stupid, we will call them out on it. The same for developers as well. The time in which 'put the game in a semi-finished stage then we'll patch it' mentality is what makes consumers angry and deserve criticism.

 

ATM, I put off ME:A until all the patches are in place after 30 hours of banging my head in sheer frustration at the lack of polish. Oddly enough, I feel the developers that get it RIGHT first time are those that are exclusive for consoles since they know if they fuck it up, it'll reflect on them and their studio. Look at the Order 1886 and how it was panned. Then you look at Horizon Zero Dawn. Sure, that has some issues but it was almost flawless. For a smaller studio to earn accolades and awards compared to you Bioware is laughable at best.

 

The sad thing is we can accept issues and some problems with a smaller studio with less experience when they really stretch and try to make something awesome. We can't accept some crap that should have been caught in QA and fixed before even shown publicly when dealing with such a massive Studio as Bethesda.

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