This is what the Frostbite Engine is capable of

...

Comparing scripted scenes that make up maybe a tiny FRACTION of ME:A's content, and can thus be polished much more thoroughly by hand, to a massive game including many HOURS of dialogue in cutscenes...

Yeah, that's a fair comparison to make.

I don't think it's asking for help. I think it's a cost issue. I wouldn't doubt that DICE charges Bioware for every millisecond used in tech support. If that's the case of course. I know a lot of subsidiary companies charge each other for just about anything to justify budgets for the next year. Frostbite is a magnificent canvas, it's still a freakin' bear to code. One dependency down and it's like dominoes falling over the place.

While having the same quality would be great, you do realize you're comparing about an hour's worth of facial animations to maybe 20 hours worth of facial animations?

It's better to compare battlefield one's gameplay graphics to MEA's gameplay graphics. They're both fantastic with MEA having more issues with bugs and frame rate, but that's not consistent.

The 4k textures in both games look insane

youre comparing apples and oranges OP.

It's not relevant, but it's more interesting than this topic:

Battlefield 1 looks great.

I usually don't do FPS but that game is hyper masculine and action packed.  Makes MEA super feminine in comparison.

Ugh, I just thought for once maybe it would be a topic about how bad the engine is, but here goes, another "look at how well animated this super linear 8-hour campaign is compared to a 60hr RPG"

No, I think for whatever reason (time, money, manpower. mismanagement, a combination of any or all of those) they just didn't do all the polishing required to make things look as good as they should for a AAA quality game.  Even the small fixes in the 1.05 patch made a huge difference for some of the problems (like the my face is tired lady).

If they had spent more time and effort on cleaning up the animations things would have been fine.

Not that I am trying to excuse BW, these things absolutely SHOULD have been cleaned up before release.  I just don't think it is a case of them not being capable of doing it.

I am bumping this thread for one reason - watch the video in the OP.

Despite being presented as something BioWare should strive for, I see this video as a condemnation of the software it was made on. What in the flying fuck is so difficult about making a jaw move properly? It can be done in DA2, and all of the Mass Effect games.

[disclaimer: if you read that last sentence and think I am claiming that either of those games are a shining example of perfection - I do not. We have Sheploo memes galore, and well earned. This is a specific criticism of something FB struggles mightily with compared to Eclipse or UE3/4/5 or Crystal. /disclaimer]

So, despite some ooh shiny things that do look nice in this footage, it is still a step backwards from everything Bioware did from 2005-2012 regarding immersive conversation facsimile. Even if the skin mesh quality is higher pixel, janky animations make it look worse. UE3/ME games had great animations for this in their time, but definitely had some funny outcomes with some expressions (as mentioned in the disclaimer). Nevertheless, we were able to make fun of and look past TrollShep and his various hilarious looks, because there was enough good quality to make it seem the exception and not the rule. The story was keeping me moving forward.

The laziness and obvious lack of love put into MEA in this regard cannot happen again. It is disrespectful to the product first, and then to us.