Is there a way Bioware can even solve the problem of animations in their future games?

Here's the thing - one really has to nitpick in order to deem it a big problem that there's some stiffness in character's shoulders in a small section of one cutscene. And like I said - it's a definite improvement over 'diaper walk' we saw in DAI when female PC/NPCs were animated while using male walk cycle; which was done like... 70% of time in DAI cutscenes. 

It's not the end of the world or anything, but compared to the trilogy, where the animations are near perfect (other than a hint of stiffness when they walk away at the end of the conversations), people can be forgiven for being a bit spoiled by flawless animations.

^A textbook example of 'blowing way out of proportions'.

I haven't played original ME yet, but "flawless animations" is not a thing I heard often used in relation to ME trilogy.



...What I do think happens is that people expect flawless product from MEA - even if  any person has a different idea of what "flawless" means.

I personally believe it can, but Bioware needs to start doing the grunt work in an algorithmic fashion based upon data parsed from the recorded voice lines, and then have devs go in and do some fine tuning adjustments manually afterwards, rather than all by hand as they seem to be doing at this time.

Obviously this means a deeper investment into the software engineering part of their budgets, but it might be needed for Bioware to cope with the uncanny valley problem.

While I agree it's starting to become a little over the top in complaining regarding animations.... I need to ask, you don't see anything wrong with the way she's walking away? That looks natural to you? It sure doesn't to me. There are worse examples to show though and I can excuse/get over some of the wonky animations. I enjoyed the trial and I'm sure I'll enjoy the rest of the game too. Bioware can only improve in the future, right???

No - I don't see enough wrong with it to make it an issue; at least to a level it is implied in original post.

And lot of this "weird walk" is actually not an issue of walk cycle, but how the lights and shadows play on Cora's uniform. It's that ridiculously simple. I say that because what we see is the same walk cycle we see in the game at all times in MEA cutscenes or even normal walk cycle of female Ryder, and I don't really hear people making a lot of stink about that; only some cherry-picked stuff of minor importance or an occasional bug - that should tell you enough.

And yes, despite the backlash, I personally have mostly positive experiences with the trial, so I'm not worried about Bioware at large moving forward.

Nobody is claiming they are top tier. But they are leagues beyond the facial animations over their competitors (Bioware, Bethesda). No RPG can use mo-cap for facial animations because it would be ludicrously expensive. Action games like COD, Halo etc can because they typically only have to animate maybe 20 characters.. a RPG needs to animate hundreds and even thousands... this is why RPGs use facial animation toolkits.. basically an algorithm that animates a character's face with as little input needed by an animator as possible.. this allows a small team of animators to animate all those countless npcs in a reasonable time at reasonable cost.

No, the animations in Witcher 3 are far from perfect... frankly no game is and many mo-capped games suffer from uncanny valley because they get too close but not close enough and thus ruin the illusion. Witcher 3 is cited as an excellent solution because of games of its class (large rpgs with many characters), its animations are among the best... both because of its appearance vs other games of its kind and because of how effective the toolset is for a small team of animators.

I have two relatives of mine who work as animators (not necessarily faces though) in the video game industry, and while they say the animations in Andromeda are not bad, they lack what both the Witcher 3 and MAss Effect 3 did ... brow / eye movement. The eyes dart frantically for some reason in Andromeda in many conversations... now compare it to ME3 or Witcher 3 where the pupils move as well, but not in the manner of which you'd expect of a terrified prey animal. There is also very little brow movement in Andromeda... a tragic event occurs, character's face stays flat... in ME3 when Shepard sees a child die, she / he grimaces, squints her eyes in rage at the Reapers. When a peasant says somethign racist to Geralt, he says nothing but cocks one eyebrow up inquisitively.... I have not seen these nuanced details at all in Andromeda yet, or not often anyway.. yet they are common in both ME3 and Witcher 3.

I strongly encourage you to watch some youtube videos of those other 2 games.. then watch some andromeda ones and you will notice the distinct lack of upper facial movements and also ask why their eyes keep traveling so quickly as if they were scanning a canopy of trees for predators in their midst.

long story short, don't outsource to the B team

Oh, on the contrary.

Like I said - a lot of it comes to the style. Since Witcher is dark, somewhat grimy, and stylized in a specific way what they have works to how they present it. It's a little different when it's not like that - Witcher's animations would not work for MEA for example, which style is different, even when it comes to cutscene direction.

I'm a visual artist with some experience with animation overall, so I know what I'm talking about isn't complete talking out of my rear. I do know that eye darting is an issue and they COULD use more brows in some scenes... but actually, the brow/eyelids movement exists in MEA as is in any game as they do in other games you mention; in many respects it's more a matter of textures.

In fact, I was quite amused when people juxtaposed some of the animations from MEA to character from ME1, because the major difference between them wasn't animation per se; it was the fact that the character had dark eyes, dark brows and a very heavy eyeliner, which has accentuated all of the minuscule eyelid movements... Heck, even effing Geralt has eyeliner in TW3. 

And there's a reason for it. We generally like eyes contoured by eyeliner or lush, dark eyelashes - it makes the face more... well, expressive. Not that I disagree with you that animations could use some work in MEA, but I can guarantee that if some of the eye textures were adjusted, we'd hear a lot less complaints.

Oh, so me pointing out that people have hung op on a few seconds of a cutscene even though we see the very same animation 90% of the time in the game (when we play femRyder) and nobody is having issues with it, is apparently "apologizing for shitty animations", instead of pointing out how ridiculous cherrypicking is?

Right. No discussing with you. Whatever I say it will be "apologizing" to you, no matter what I actually said.

Of course it matters. Because if people say that Witcher 3 facial animations were sooooo much better and just leave it at that, they're just fooling themselves.