Post by Link"Guess"ski on Mar 21, 2017 0:20:08 GMT
Remember the footage on the left? It leaked on the date embedded in the video but the footage is actually from 2014 according to a NeoGAF poster the same time as the leak dropped. It's a portfolio from a VFX artist (who was maybe fired or laid off from Montreal and thus had an axe to grind: www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1354014&page=1)
The significance is the facial animation on the guy in the old footage. That is clearly using the same kind of face-capture performance tech they used in the infamous "Ugly Sara" TGA trailer but it looks rather good compared to the emotionless guy in the final game. What could've happened? I have no idea.
My wild guess is that it's linked to the "lead facial animator" that left in feb 2016. I don't know about how these kinds of things work in the industry (let alone EA/BioWare) but in a former company I was part of we had contracts where each of us had to sign that our contributions and assets to the project was entitled to the project or ourselves, which was decided in our own little democracy. I re-emphasize this is a loose guess but what if BioWare had to forcibly take out almot all facial animations and redo them from scratch at some point? (they'd have to when they iterate the dialogue regardless, but without the facial animation lead...)
Thoughts?
"A geth wanting emotions would be no less disrespectful a character than a black man who wanted to be white." - L'Etoile
Its a lot easier to get one scene together and polish it and perfect it then it is an entire game. I think that's one of the main reason why stage demos can be polished and ultimatley look so good but then...surprise!...actually not end up being like the final product.
I mean then why didn't BioWare do that? Bit glad they didn't honestly. They didn't try prettying the game up to show it off in a stage demo they offered it warts and all...and people are still complaining.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Mar 21, 2017 0:36:13 GMT
Animations aren't usually known to strain on hardware since it's the graphics they depend on that do that. The game has no issue rendering animations, the animtions are just not well done, but for some reason they used to be but now it's gone and replaced with something that looks like someone from the DA:I team came in and created lip-sync movements but nobody bothered to work on the eyes so some non-animator just tweaked the sliders for eyebrow movement at random for every scene.
wow thats embarrassing. I cant wait to get an insider article on the mishappenings at montreal and why MEA became bioware least critically acclaimed game since Sonic. Also i expect Montreal to shut down.
Last Edit: Mar 21, 2017 0:41:03 GMT by dutchsghost7
Your right I can definitely see the difference. The guy's face on the right has way more emotion and the face animation looked natural. I wonder what went wrong exactly.
Remember the footage on the left? It leaked on the date embedded in the video but the footage is actually from 2014 according to a NeoGAF poster the same time as the leak dropped. It's a portfolio from a VFX artist (who was maybe fired or laid off from Montreal and thus had an axe to grind: www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1354014&page=1)
The significance is the facial animation on the guy in the old footage. That is clearly using the same kind of face-capture performance tech they used in the infamous "Ugly Sara" TGA trailer but it looks rather good compared to the emotionless guy in the final game. What could've happened? I have no idea.
My wild guess is that it's linked to the "lead facial animator" that left in feb 2016. I don't know about how these kinds of things work in the industry (let alone EA/BioWare) but in a former company I was part of we had contracts where each of us had to sign that our contributions and assets to the project was entitled to the project or ourselves, which was decided in our own little democracy. I re-emphasize this is a loose guess but what if BioWare had to forcibly take out almot all facial animations and redo them from scratch at some point? (they'd have to when they iterate the dialogue regardless, but without the facial animation lead...)
Thoughts?
Preview footage hasn't used actual gameplay since Spore, and possibly even earlier
Your right I can definitely see the difference. The guy's face on the right has way more emotion and the face animation looked natural. I wonder what went wrong exactly.
if you want to go further down the rabbit hole then go to bioware's glassdoor page and see what former employees at montreal say. Generally speaking the leadership there was incompetent, a lot of the talent from montreal and edmonton left, and the new breed were given poor direction by leadership. Also the design philosophy of being an openworld exploration game kills any ability of it being a good game since bioware cant do openworld right like most developers. The only game that has done it right was witcher 3 and gta franchise, skyrim is overrated.
Last Edit: Mar 21, 2017 1:05:29 GMT by dutchsghost7
I think it depends on how they did their facial animation for if it was done by algorithms it could be variables changed while tweaking it to make it look better elsewhere. It could also be they tweaked the character generator between those times and having a more customizable protagonist screwed up the facial animations.
Right now my concern is that it was the latter, for if that is the case I am concerned that the next BioWare game in development is going to go the way of Destiny or The Division with regards to character generation and I much rather have some weird animations and be able to customized my protagonist more then just a couple of random sliders.
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Origin: kinom001 Posts: 2,067 Likes: 4,060
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard
There's definitely a difference, but it's a scene I'd want to see in game before passing judgement. The one on the left is so washed out it's hard to see.
"To hate blindly is as dangerous as to trust blindly." An old Angaran saying.
After 5 years and $40 million they give you a Mass Effect beta demo to prepare for Anthem. Sold at full price featuring never to be resolved cliffhangers. BioWare is over Pyjaks.
Looking like they rebuilt the game over and over again till there was nothing left worth looking at.
Theres a quote I can't remember from an author.
Something about losing everything worth reading, because you rewrote it so many times, trying to make it better than it already was.
i seem to recall that they actually finished writing the game back in late 2013, Yannick made a post about it on twitter or on biowares site i think. Guessing the first draft would have been better than what we're getting now.
wow thats embarrassing. I cant wait to get an insider article on the mishappenings at montreal and why MEA became bioware least critically acclaimed game since Sonic. Also i expect Montreal to shut down.
Well an allegedly former employee of Bioware Montreal posted a review for the company in Glassdoor. Among other things mentioned:
"Bioware Edmonton and Montreal symbiosis is broken. Lots of conflicts and bro culture."
"Lost over 13 leads (game design, art, audio, prog, senior core leads, etc) in 5 years at Bioware Montreal on Mass Effect. Edmonton lost only 3. It is clear that Edmonton has the bigger part of the stick when it comes to purge Leads and Producers who are not aligned with their leadership style."
"Putting people on performance improvement program (PIP Program) is the new tactics to get rid of people. Once again more than 10 people in Montreal got slammed with this bureaucratic uppercut to let go people that are not bending to Edmonton leadership styles in the last revision cycle. This approach is used by the Montreal Leadership to purge the mess from the lack of vision cause by upper management in the last 4 years (throwing people under the bus to protect bad core management)"
"Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy."
"Retaliation and harassment is sadly a reality. If you talk and ask questions you will be tag as a trouble maker and end up in a bad position."
"HR won't help you out. They will deny the current harassment from Monreal management by ignoring and not documenting the facts. In other words if you leave don't talk. Just let it go..."
"Many benifits got cut due to too much time extension to get the game done."
wow thats embarrassing. I cant wait to get an insider article on the mishappenings at montreal and why MEA became bioware least critically acclaimed game since Sonic. Also i expect Montreal to shut down.
Well an allegedly former employee of Bioware Montreal posted a review for the company in Glassdoor. Among other things mentioned:
"Bioware Edmonton and Montreal symbiosis is broken. Lots of conflicts and bro culture."
"Lost over 13 leads (game design, art, audio, prog, senior core leads, etc) in 5 years at Bioware Montreal on Mass Effect. Edmonton lost only 3. It is clear that Edmonton has the bigger part of the stick when it comes to purge Leads and Producers who are not aligned with their leadership style."
"Putting people on performance improvement program (PIP Program) is the new tactics to get rid of people. Once again more than 10 people in Montreal got slammed with this bureaucratic uppercut to let go people that are not bending to Edmonton leadership styles in the last revision cycle. This approach is used by the Montreal Leadership to purge the mess from the lack of vision cause by upper management in the last 4 years (throwing people under the bus to protect bad core management)"
"Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy."
"Retaliation and harassment is sadly a reality. If you talk and ask questions you will be tag as a trouble maker and end up in a bad position."
"HR won't help you out. They will deny the current harassment from Monreal management by ignoring and not documenting the facts. In other words if you leave don't talk. Just let it go..."
"Many benifits got cut due to too much time extension to get the game done."
Etc etc
Makes sense, this is what happens when inept people are hired for job positions beyond their capacity. People who's incompetence, and abuses of power are ignored due to nepotism.
Well an allegedly former employee of Bioware Montreal posted a review for the company in Glassdoor. Among other things mentioned:
"Bioware Edmonton and Montreal symbiosis is broken. Lots of conflicts and bro culture."
"Lost over 13 leads (game design, art, audio, prog, senior core leads, etc) in 5 years at Bioware Montreal on Mass Effect. Edmonton lost only 3. It is clear that Edmonton has the bigger part of the stick when it comes to purge Leads and Producers who are not aligned with their leadership style."
"Putting people on performance improvement program (PIP Program) is the new tactics to get rid of people. Once again more than 10 people in Montreal got slammed with this bureaucratic uppercut to let go people that are not bending to Edmonton leadership styles in the last revision cycle. This approach is used by the Montreal Leadership to purge the mess from the lack of vision cause by upper management in the last 4 years (throwing people under the bus to protect bad core management)"
"Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy."
"Retaliation and harassment is sadly a reality. If you talk and ask questions you will be tag as a trouble maker and end up in a bad position."
"HR won't help you out. They will deny the current harassment from Monreal management by ignoring and not documenting the facts. In other words if you leave don't talk. Just let it go..."
"Many benifits got cut due to too much time extension to get the game done."
Etc etc
Makes sense, this is what happens when inept people are hired for job positions beyond their capacity. People who's incompetence, and abuses of power are ignored due to nepotism.
Mind you that the posts in Glassdoor are not vetted, so the things mentioned there or even if the person is truly a Bioware employee or not may or may not be true.
Makes sense, this is what happens when inept people are hired for job positions beyond their capacity. People who's incompetence, and abuses of power are ignored due to nepotism.
hiring is one issue, but how this facial animation manage to get pass the QC check is another real issue here. It's an instant noticeable flaw which we can see even from ME:A gameplay trailer, which become worst when we started playing it (Even in the end, we'll get used to it after playing it a while).
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
This footage from the final build is depressingly bad. The textures are terrible! That krogan looks like a clown, and the armor textures look on par with ME1 Xbox360 quality. I've completed it over 70 times, and this is not hyperbole. Very depressing.
The leaked footage here looks better than it did when I first saw it; its more finished. I don't think I'm remembering it incorrectly, either. Likely I'm seeing a higher quality stream of the video, this time. Sigh. WTH, Biovar?
Last Edit: Mar 21, 2017 14:50:13 GMT by Element Zero
Looking like they rebuilt the game over and over again till there was nothing left worth looking at.
Theres a quote I can't remember from an author.
Something about losing everything worth reading, because you rewrote it so many times, trying to make it better than it already was.
i seem to recall that they actually finished writing the game back in late 2013, Yannick made a post about it on twitter or on biowares site i think. Guessing the first draft would have been better than what we're getting now.
Can't say but there was those tweets from a former employee saying it looks like its got massive writing problems. Then the lead writer quietly tip toed out. Or maybe the other way around.
Theres no way all this talk about play testing and relentlessly fixing bugs is legit.
And if it is true theres no way MW tweets about "I truly believe that in 5 years we've created something magical" was genuine sentiment either. Then again he might have just been hoping really hard.
After 5 years and $40 million they give you a Mass Effect beta demo to prepare for Anthem. Sold at full price featuring never to be resolved cliffhangers. BioWare is over Pyjaks.
Shocking that the vid on the right has better lighting and facial animations. Andromeda is a great looking game, but it has a very plastic look to it and it lacks shaders or lighting effects....game probably needed a bit more tweaking in the visual effects and animation department.
Knowledge, wisdom and understanding. These are the basic fundamentals of life.
If you can't amaze them with brilliance, baffle them with bulls**t.
That krogan looks like a clown, and the armor textures look on par with ME1 Xbox360 quality. I've completed it over 70 times, and this is not hyperbole. Very depressing.
