GameDev on MEA facial animations & expressions.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

I'm not too worried. I believe they will be able to make the animations much better but even if they don't, I will have to get used to it. As long as the rest of the game is good it'll be jarring but playable.

That was a rather interesting read, thanks for posting.

I saw more facial animation in the Tech-Demo than in the gameplay...

More or less in line with the things I've been hammering down ever since I saw the trailer. A) Them showing the game in this state this late indicates "polish" is not likely to improve the real issue behind the point that's being criticised here. It's not just the mouth that's off, it's the lack of expression in the eyes due to a lack of eyebrow movement.

Now stop being apologetic about BioWare and realize they didn't think the animations were unacceptable before people pointed it out in the trailer, and polish will likely be spent on inserting animations where there aren't any and not fixing the ones they've already shown. I have a distinct feeling either Mac or someone else at the top of the project had gotten hints that this was an issue, but were like "Don't worry, folks we'll make it! Let's not make a mile out of a molehill lol!" and then nothing gets done, because they're too lenient.

On the flipside I've heard they have full-performance scenes with face-scan-esque animations, so unless the ones we've seen is that, only gone wrong, the big moments might still have good animations.

Overall though I think it's slightly on the embarrassing side and the worst BioWare has done within their cinematic-era.

Your entire post needs a "Citation Needed"

The most interesting thing that I take from this is that Liara has eyebrows. How in God's name did I not notice this before, particularly in the context of the recent issues involving another Asari with eyebrows?

Good article, thank you for the link!

I'm just not sure whether the animation wonkiness of the MEA trailer is entirely caused by a lack of animated eyebrows. Look at the disarming scene - not just her eyebrows are weird, her mouth also looks a bit off and the gun twists out of the Turian's hand with a speed that's surprising even if his hands were still super greasy from recent calibrations.

Now it's probably safe to assume that a published trailer contains some of the best spoiler free material they have available - they want to generate positive attention and PR for their game, after all. They want to impress the audience. So this was the best they had, and it's five months to release. Hmm. While this does not particularly worry me, I can't for the life of me remember seeing an AAA game trailer with such animation issues before - and certainly not one where those issues were then fixed in the final product. If you play on Playstation and saw an Uncharted trailer with such animation problems five months before release, would you be worried?

I dimly recall that the devs assured us that there would still be a lot of polish going into the game before release, and that's good. No word about the scene being from an old build though, so if they are planning to fix it, it's still on their to do list.

In the end, I'm going with the article's conclusion - I'm not going to worry because BioWare should know better. They should also know better to release trailers with obvious issues in them, but then again, their marketing has always had the touch of awkwardness, and people have learned to cut them some slack for it.

For me, I don't notice at all (Including other facial thing many people complain on this forum). But if it will satisfy other, then they should make it look better.

Thanks for sharing, an interesting insight into animations...though I was less bothered by the lack of emotion and more by the bad lip-syncing in the recent trailer.

I found the quote at the end interesting and quite possibly insightful...and more and more recently thinking it is the case.

But they could also have bitten off more than they could chew.

But they could also have bitten off more than they could chew

Now days, this shouldn't be acceptable with a Triple A company.