Is it really that bad?

Yeah, that must be why they made the Extended Cut and decided to focus Citadel almost exclusively on role-playing and companion stuff. Because BioWare never listens to fan feedback. With fans like these, who needs enemies...

You're being extremely dramatic.

You are being quite selective. After all, look at this elaborate coughing and shouting animation Yen is entertaining us with at the beginning of the video.


TW3 Witcher 3 animations are really nothing to praise - a great deal if them is very... basic, with a strange insistence of botoxing characters' jowls and mouth corners, so they barely move when they're speaking. Their body animations are far better - and MEA has caught up with that.

I mean seriously, we can mine every game for some less-than-stellar animations. Big RPGs especially. I haven't found a single recent game that I wouldn't have varying degrees of issues with facial animations - if that was a selling point for me, I'd have to drop gaming alltogether, I am that picky.

We're just at that stage of game development where we're too close to Uncanny Valley for that line to not be crossed, at times too much for comfort.

Ironically I think BW tried to push for more focus on facial expressions - putting a spotlight on them rather than hiding them in shadows or sticking to more subtle expressions... or zoomed out camera. I watched the characters intently, especially during proper cutscenes, and the *range* of expressions has been vastly expanded and there's a great deal of subtle movements across the face. 

Despite some claims that the facial animations need a complete overhaul, BW simply needs to put a few tweaks to improve many animations - or their reception - from my point of view. 

We have and she's right. It's not a matter of "belief". 

From what I saw (I didn't play), my opinion is in the middle ground between the two sides. I hope in any case that the game becomes better after the point of Early Access.

The facial animations/eyes are certainly not a deal breaker and not noticeable in all scenes/dialogue, but are there and when they're bad they're BAD. I still enjoyed the trial though and it won't spoil the game for me, it's just disappointing they didn't do a better job with animation.

I think the limitations with the CC are more egregious and head scratching than anything else.

I haven't seen an RPG match TW3s animation level yet, not one with such a huge cast of characters. I think the procedural aspect of it is pretty ingenious and something other RPG devs will emulate. And I'm talking facial and body emotes. It's bad enough in ME:A that I'm four hours in and still trying to get used to it. Doesn't help that the worst example is your player character. If I replay, I'll probably stick with default male Ryder as mimics seem to work best with his face model. And that way I don't get cro-magnon dad. This'll be the first Bioware game where I have almost no incentive to create my own character. 

Only never where it actually counted, it seams... look, I think people would be much more forgiving if BW wasn't consistently lying about their own products. Not only did they said ME3s ending will NOT be a simple affair of choose A B C, but highly complex and special/different for every player... unrealistic? Kinda, but why say it then? Lying isn't marketing... and with MEA, it appears the same thing is happening again.

It wasn't clear to me from the old boards that what "the fans" wanted was coherent enough to be implemented. People asked for Refuse and got it. Then other people whined about getting Refuse because they wanted Refuse to lead to victory, which is an idea the first group hated

The stupidity was incurable by the time we got to the ending. ME1 established that the Reapers' plan was stupid, and nobody ever figured out a way for it to not be stupid. 

Drew might have... then again, he is an actual scifie writer.

Personally, I thought they should have gone with the "dark energy" plot... or leave the reason behind the reapers vague to begin with, like the people that made the MEHEM.

Drew was the one that created the stupidity in the first place. And his dark energy plot might be (slightly) better then the one Walters came up with, but it's still in the stupidity range.

Huh... the Ryders are nowhere near as defined as Geralt - who's not only defined in games, but whole series of books he's based on.