Bioware Acknowledges 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' Criticism
Mass Effect: Andromeda has been heavily criticized for its performance issues, animation problems, and other downfalls since its March 23 launch. The game's developer, Bioware, acknowledged those criticisms in a tweet saying that it's trying to figure out how to improve the roving space adventure.
Some of these problems actually showed up before the game's official launch. Some EA or Origin Access players were greeted by a black screen when the game was launched or switched to via Alt-Tab; characters getting stuck in animations and not responding to commands; graphics issues that cropped up on AMD GPUs when HDR was enabled; and other technical frustrations when they got an early look at the game before it was released.
We encountered several glitches ourselves. But as we wrote in our hands-on, the game has shortcomings even when it's running perfectly:
In some ways, this game shows Bioware’s experience with the software, especially with its environments, which were beautiful. However, a quick look at any of the game’s characters showed the developers’ shortcomings. The lack of most facial expressions aside from the occasional smile or scowl was disappointing. In fact, it seems as if Bioware merely imported the facial animation from Mass Effect 2 or 3, which was disheartening when you consider the technological advancements in development since the last game came out in 2012.
That criticism was mild compared to some of the complaints made in popular messaging boards, social networks, and YouTube videos. Now, a week after launch, Bioware responded to all of those complaints with a message posted on Twitter:
It will be interesting to see how Bioware addresses some of Mass Effect: Andromeda's issues. The game is unlikely to be fixed overnight--its problems are too pervasive and its scale too big for that to happen--but incremental improvements are still improvements. In the meantime, Bioware has already added free multiplayer content featuring a new map and character as well as resources for the single-player campaign.
| Name | Mass Effect: Andromeda |
|---|---|
| Type | RPG, Sci-Fi, Third-Person Shooter |
| Developer | BioWare |
| Publisher | EA |
| Platform | PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| Where To Buy | OriginPlayStation StoreXbox StoreAmazonBest BuyTargetWalmartGameStop |
| Release Date | March 21, 2017 |
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Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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dstarr3 Well, there are a lot of problems that the game has that I don't think can really even be fixed. Like the voice acting. Generally, all of the acting is quite bland. I think by design, as well. There were many lines that were delivered as blandly as possible so that it could fit into multiple contexts. And when you tells your actors to stay bland for so many lines of dialog, you just get a game full of bland acting. And I don't think BioWare has the time or money at this point to completely rerecord and then reanimate most of the dialog in the game. That's just not going to happen.Reply -
MatchstickMan Agreed with DSTARR3. The biggest problems I have with the game are the dialogue and the acting. BioWare won't completely rewrite the game to fix that, but I can hope they will learn for the next game.Reply
From the article: "..it seems as if Bioware merely imported the facial animation from Mass Effect 2 or 3..."
Oh God, I wish that were the case. Having just played the original trilogy, the animation was significantly better. ME:A just feels deadpan all the time.
In general, I have really been enjoying the game. Once you get past the specific dialogue and the character animation, the story and the game are still pretty fun. Most of the issues I have end up being really nit-picky, like your companions not coming with you through the gravity wells but rather being teleported at the very end. Or your companions dropping from orbit after exiting the Nomad from time to time... -
delaro I find this hardly surprising with EA owning Bioware. EA has a reputation of rushing products to the shelf before they are streamlined and sometimes even stable. They makes that $60 a copy and players get to suffer.Reply -
dstarr3 Well, that, and this was developed by BioWare's B-team. It was never going to be as good anyway.Reply -
rantoc Multi GPU performance is soo soo (even with *shivers* fxaa - blurr "aa". Temporal is nice singlecard aa (yet again quite blurry) but it destroys sli/cf busses/performance due to reliance on prev frame IE the prev frame needs to be transfered to other card while processing the current drawn) and the facial animations is bad at times but beside those short-comings i like the title and would still recommend it any day (or night!)Reply -
ddpruitt I think we all saw this coming when BioWare lost what made them BioWare and it became just another ATM that EA would run into the ground.Reply -
Jim90 Once again we see alpha/beta testing taking place after the 'official release'. Utterly shocking and a bit sickening. There's really no excuse for this. You know, in the old/gold days - before the internet - games had to be properly tested before release...you couldn't 'patch' them later.Reply
I blame the (apparent) 'fast' internet - the developers now think ALL issues can be resolved 'quickly' by a post-release patch system that they firmly believe is acceptable to the buying public. Inexcusable! -
extremepenguin What we need as gamers is to actually send a message that we wont tolerate buggy poorly written releases. The pre orders alone for this game probably made it break even once that happens they have very little incentive to release a solid product at day 1 we need a big AAA title to flop and flop hard to send a message that we wont tolerate this kind of stuff any more.Reply -
mapesdhs Add to the above the ridiculous infestation into the game of SJW politics. What a mess...Reply