Bioware General (Mass Effect/Dragon Age/Other)

[TTTX]

This is one where I'd definitely wait for lots of user reviews to come in. And that's aside from the fact that if this is super successful, EA probably won't let BioWare make single player games ever.

Well I doubt it'll live up to EA's expectations of successful.

It'll probably need to sell like 10 billion copies and make at least a couple billion before EA is even going to consider it successful, because it's about making all the money not some money.

[magnuskn]

This is one where I'd definitely wait for lots of user reviews to come in. And that's aside from the fact that if this is super successful, EA probably won't let BioWare make single player games ever.

Well I doubt it'll live up to EA's expectations of successful.

It'll probably need to sell like 10 billion copies and make at least a couple billion before EA is even going to consider it successful, because it's about making all the money not some money.

Given that first review, I'm highly skeptical that it will be so successful. Then again, I don't see the appeal of Destiny, either. So what the hell do I know, I got a very clear taste in videogames, and this ain't it.

Unless the include the Vanguard charge, of course, in which case all is forgiven. Well, no, but it would make the game a bit more interesting to me.

[TTTX]

Given that first review, I'm highly skeptical that it will be so successful. Then again, I don't see the appeal of Destiny, either. So what the hell do I know, I got a very clear taste in videogames, and this ain't it.

Unless the include the Vanguard charge, of course, in which case all is forgiven. Well, no, but it would make the game a bit more interesting to me.

Given the Review I say this is pretty much like Destiny 1 and 2 just an alright game, you can kill time with friends (which I don't any of in the online gaming sphere and I don't like multiplayer games in general so ehh), but you can say of pretty much every online games ever made.

[magnuskn]

Well, there are varying degrees of depth. MMO's like World of Warcraft have plenty of complex systems, which stuff like this seems much more superficial.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-TuQGbXm3w

[TTTX]

Well, there are varying degrees of depth. MMO's like World of Warcraft have plenty of complex systems, which stuff like this seems much more superficial.

true enough, but a game can also be to deep or have annoying mechanics kinda like Red Dead Redemption 2 has.

[magnuskn]

Well, there are varying degrees of depth. MMO's like World of Warcraft have plenty of complex systems, which stuff like this seems much more superficial.

true enough, but a game can also be to deep or have annoying mechanics kinda like Red Dead Redemption 2 has.

Sure, most large single player games also have this. Anyway, it's not looking too good for Anthem, at least with reviews by Youtubers. It'll be interesting to see what the gaming press says. Can't wait for the 11/10 IGN review!

[Raga]

My coworker who will play anything's opinion seems to be "it's a game" so, yea, aggressively adequate seems to be the takeaway.

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qRFVPqNmh0

[Vol]

There is a Vanguard charge, yes. It's called Spark Dash, Interceptor has it. Pretty sure it's a detonator.

[magnuskn]

Hrm. I guess maaaaybe I'll have to check it out, then. In a few months, when you can get the game on discount and it has further content. I had hoped the power user (Storm?) one would have the charge, though. Oh, well.

[Vol]

https://old.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGame/ ... e_details/

Well that's good news. Albeit it means people who shelled out for early access have effectively paid EA to beta test for free.

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzlVXCkNVdk

Okay, what's with the creepy smiles? Is this another case of ME:A facial animations gone horribly wrong?

[magnuskn]

Watching just a bit of Angry Joe's Twitch play session of Anthem and I am already struck with how terrible the conversations look, with your conversation partner just standing in front of you, with no interesting cinematic angles like we had in Mass Effect or Dragon Age games.

I'll be honest, this already concerns me for Cyberpunk 2077. I hope the guys at CD Project Red make the conversations a bit more dynamic, even from first person view.

[TTTX]

Watching just a bit of Angry Joe's Twitch play session of Anthem and I am already struck with how terrible the conversations look, with your conversation partner just standing in front of you, with no interesting cinematic angles like we had in Mass Effect or Dragon Age games.

I'll be honest, this already concerns me for Cyberpunk 2077. I hope the guys at CD Project Red make the conversations a bit more dynamic, even from first person view.

well we haven't seen much Cyperpunk 2077 outside of few teasers, a trailer and a gameplay demo that wasn't going to comepletely like the final game.

what did see is that at least the talking scenes will be better then what Bethesda have done in years with their Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, Cyberpunk at least in the demo felt and sounded a lot more real in conversations, I imagine cinematics will be for more major events and if scenes calls for it.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, still optimistic for that game. I'm just worried with seeing these static conversations in Anthem (also in what video material I've seen of The Outer Worlds). But, in CD Project we trust.

*edit* Ah, just checked again into the 47 minute gameplay video of Cyberpunk 2077. I shouldn't have worried. The conversations look much more dynamic.

[Raga]

Camera angles in dialogue are like such a non-issue to me as are non-facial animations for the most part. Like, if it's there, fine, but if the X amount of man hours put into producing that could instead be spent on, say, more missions or more dialogue choices or more of just about anything else in the whole game, I'd rather they spend it on that.

Having VA for everything already constrained dialogue content/amount by a solid 25%+ in RPGs. Insisting on all dialogue having dynamic cameras and organic, non-repetitive animations is just going to constrain it even farther and put it outside realistic achievability for any studio that doesn't have an enormous budget.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, BioWare sure has all those budget problems...

Dynamic camera angles and small conversation cutscenes made a huge difference for me in terms of immersion for Mass Effect 1-3 and also for Dragon Age. The same goes for The Witcher 3. It just helps to keep being interested in long conversations, when people are moving around and you get the same kind of camera work you'd get in a TV series or a movie. Cyberpunk 2077, from what I've seen, gets around the first-person camera view by making you and the NPC's move around. While everything I've seen from Anthem does make it look like people are just standing in front of you and don't move. It looks terrible.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk6oSVPp8L0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6YocpHqZWc

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Vol]

https://www.destructoid.com/review-anthem-543071.phtml

To save you a click that gives them ad revenue, they gave it a 70. Fun, but flawed (Which I called years ago).

Re: Camera angles - They matter, but not for every moment. Banal conversation, a fixed camera, or some stock angles (Miranda's ass), is fine. But for dramatic or important moments, such as Tali and Shepard's first time, very important. Much like voice acting! I'd settle for more options to say things, at the expense of no voice, other than for important lines.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, I wouldn't. Sorry, but the difference in immersion for me is massive for a fully voiced title. The old-school way of not voicing the main character is pretty much dead for me. Which is why I already am not that interested in getting The Outer Worlds.

[Raga]

It is often better when it's done, I admit. It's just that if not having dynamic camera angles or animations is the difference between, say, the way side quest conversations work in ME3 or in Andromeda or Inquisition, I'll pick no dynamic angles. At least in Andromeda I get to ask questions and it's not 100% autodialog. And not having dynamic camera angles when talking to the lore dump NPC or the guy asking me to get his goats back or whatever is just not that big of a deal. Or like in Andromeda, this is probably why there are mini conversations I can have with Drack or Cora or Kallo asking them for little anecdotes about their past or for stories. The past games didn't have these. My interaction with party members was basically a set of info dump questions that never changed, actual plot progression scenes, or occasional one line dumps where I had to just stand and listen. And even the one line dumps of the character responding to specific missions weren't a thing in previous games before ME3.

I agree that major scenes should have full animation in higher budget stuff though.

And stuff like that is the difference between middle range or low range RPGs being able to exist at all. I started playing Persona 5 a few days ago, and if that game had full VA and full animation, it would have to cut like 50% of the content out of the game just out of space constraints, let alone budget issues.

[magnuskn]

I think you are overblowing the difficulty of having better camera angles, at least for games of large companies. The Witcher 3 had them for about every goatherd or lore dump character.

I agree, though, that smaller studios have smaller budgets and hence they can't reach the quality larger studios have reached already. But that is no excuse for BioWare with Anthem, then, where from everything I've seen the conversations all look like shit.

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhe76p6Tiro

Can I just say, that I find it absolutely horrible that characters seemingly are always standing around in the exact same pose. This is especially noticeable with black pyramid hat lady, who has a horribly unnatural resting pose and seems to keep it in conversations at all times.

And am I crazy, or does that reviewer make it sound like enemies in the ME3 multiplayer behaved more smartly than what BioWare produced in Anthem?

[DarkStorm]

Guess I'll just wait for Doom Eternal and Outer Worlds.

[Deano]

It's honestly so sad what's happened to BioWare, I do wonder if they could of gone the way of CDPR if they weren't sold to EA. How do you go from the Mass Effect series not even long ago that was almost a masterpiece (even 3 was a good game) to this utter trash. Games as a service is a fundamentally broken structure of creating a game and having BioWare try and make one with that structure was never going to work.

[TTTX]

It's honestly so sad what's happened to BioWare, I do wonder if they could of gone the way of CDPR if they weren't sold to EA. How do you go from the Mass Effect series not even long ago that was almost a masterpiece (even 3 was a good game) to this utter trash. Games as a service is a fundamentally broken structure of creating a game and having BioWare try and make one with that structure was never going to work.

according to an interview with one of the people you had been at the company for long time BW was in the process of falling apart because of a lack of money after ME1, so EA buying them "saved" them for a while.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM_ftjYzHlc

[Raga]

I think you are overblowing the difficulty of having better camera angles, at least for games of large companies.

Well, it's camera angles and animations. I'm just assuming that you mean both. And it's doable for big companies, but it does still mean that disc space or manhours or budget or whatever that was spent on that could have been spent on other things.

It's also a hard comparison point because there are only 3 companies I know of that make true RPGs at this scale: Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR. And of those three, only CDPR has done full VA, full animation, full dynamic camera for every conversation and then, only for 2 games and with a set protagonist.

If they do it for Cyberpunk, then Cyberpunk will literally be the only RPG of that size with a variable protagonist that has all that.

[TheodoricFriede]

Just throwing this out there now.

If it becomes apparent Anthem isn't selling well, EA/Bioware will find a way to blame it on some combination of Sexism, Racism, and Homophobia.

[magnuskn]

I think you are overblowing the difficulty of having better camera angles, at least for games of large companies.

Well, it's camera angles and animations. I'm just assuming that you mean both. And it's doable for big companies, but it does still mean that disc space or manhours or budget or whatever that was spent on that could have been spent on other things.

It's also a hard comparison point because there are only 3 companies I know of that make true RPGs at this scale: Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR. And of those three, only CDPR has done full VA, full animation, full dynamic camera for every conversation and then, only for 2 games and with a set protagonist.

If they do it for Cyberpunk, then Cyberpunk will literally be the only RPG of that size with a variable protagonist that has all that.

Yeah, BioWare and CD Project clearly have spoiled me. It's difficult to go back from such excellent work to mediocrity.

Just throwing this out there now.

If it becomes apparent Anthem isn't selling well, EA/Bioware will find a way to blame it on some combination of Sexism, Racism, and Homophobia.

Probably, although the game so far seems to have flown beneath the "oh noes, women in gaming! I never!" crowd, so Kotaku would have to scour comment sections, I guess.

[Alienmorph]

Just throwing this out there now.

If it becomes apparent Anthem isn't selling well, EA/Bioware will find a way to blame it on some combination of Sexism, Racism, and Homophobia.

Of course. BW consulted with the Sarkeesan Living Saint this time around too, to make sure Anthem is super diverse and inclusive, so if you don't like it, is because you're an hateful neckbeard, it's not the game's fault!

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snFkIwJOWI&index=15&list=WL

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSL4bxgHBFw

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O43D5LyrfI

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osCkt0mY7AY

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te3MMqQK_2Q

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2bXPIYxcE

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCVXikXqIw

[Vol]

The sheer variety of e-personalities all with hot takes on why Anthem is bad is exactly why I'm dubious of the claim, just like with ME:A, just like with the old shills in the video game magazines. Also question people who profit from what they say.

[Alienmorph]

Hot takes aside, I keep earing about the same two-three major problems, and how the game is basically the equivalent of goind on a date with a very hot, but dumb and shallow, person. I wouldn't say it's gonna be worhty of any "worst game ever" award, but it seems to be the just the umptheen overhyped and half-finished AAA game.

[magnuskn]

Reviews are coming out in Germany from major gaming websites and so far the game is a resounding "eh". 67% from Gamestar, 7/10 from Gamersglobal. So far it seems professional gaming journalists and Youtube freelance game reviewers are on the same page in their assessments.

[Vol]

Yeah, a 5-7 depending on your tastes seems about right. It's not a Bioware game, so it can't be a masterpiece, but it's gotten too much time and money to not be at least somewhat fun.

[magnuskn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFqTpJJ_ZVw

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKuE-FQfD5s

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS0bec8dnqI