The first patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda is already out and here is what it fixes

Mass Effect: Andromeda releases tomorrow and BioWare has already released its first patch. According to the company, this patch addresses some issues that its community reported while playing the EA/Origin early access version.

[rpvenom]

sooo.. it fixes nothing that people have complained about.. amazing lol

[INMATEofARKHAM]

Heh... That stuff is going to take far longer than a few day to fix... If they fix it at all. (It's hard to fix bad voice work and weAK writing.)

[Dark_Knightmare2]

Which characters would you consider to have bad voice work. I've been playing for a few hours now and just made it to the nexus and nothing about the voice acting as really stood out as bad. The animations are indeed sub par especially eyes and lip sync but when playing the game you hardly notice it unless specifically looking to signal it out. I also really like the dynamic dialogue it makes everything feel more real and alive. I would rate the game an 8 as of now it's really fun especially combat with the jump jets and landing on that first planet really felt like you were discovering something for the first time and I'm interested to see where the story goes. Oh and the scanner is so cool I wish the original trilogy would have had it it makes exploring even more fun.

[Kaze88]

@Dark_Knightmare2 listen to the murder audio log, the voice over is horrid :D

[Ashlen]

I mean I'll be the first person to criticize the game but it won't be for those reasons.

[joab777]

The scary part is that if it could have been fixed quickly, it would have been. Funny though that leading up I read about bugs etc but nothing about faces and animations until Access. I read some about sub par graphics and this must have been it b/C the rest of Andromeda is gorgeous!

[joab777]

@Dark Yeah I was actually impressed because I expected a disaster. Game is gorgeous and I just played Horizin in 4k. Dialogue is Mass Effect. Yeah the eyes are bad as are skin textures but what can ya do now?

[Goldenarmz]

Some of you guys wouldnt have survived old school gaming. People are complaining about Voice Acting? Seriously??

[JikguJay]

Exactly.

[CrimzonRazor]

Destiny fix voice work it can be done but would not be quick and probably will not happen

[MaximusTKG]

Again, as I have said before, I dont think half of you play the actual games you complain about. You pick apart something relatively minor that is holding you back from enjoying a decent game.

Let's be honest, the facial animations aren't great. The story is somewhat plain in the 12 or so hours I have into it, but it does the job and the combat is surpisingly responsive. Don't knock it before you try it at the very least. Maybe form your own opinion rather than cobble one together from what other people say. Maybe.

[UltraNova]

@Goldenarmz

Well its 2017 now and today when a game promises a huge story driven, character building space opera experience then we should rightfully expect voice acting and motion capture performances on par with said expectations. This is epecially true for huge IPs like Mass Effect.

They had a long long time to get everything right but they didnt. They should have delayed the game and improved it. There is no excuse...they knew of our high expectations, expectations set by their previous games not by us - they did not deliver.

[joab777]

I have issues with it like everyone but the low expectations worked in my favor this time because it's way better than expected after the internet tirade of the last week. Other than eyes and skin texture, both my characters look good, dialogue seems like Mass Effect, game is stunning in 4k and combat is a HUGE improvement!

[Jon_Targaryen]

Realistic, I dont think they would be able to fix the entire game in like 2 days ;)

[JikguJay]

That patch was in the cooking for a couple weeks if not more.

Usually, they send the game up for shipment a few weeks before it's release, and after that, they start fixing bugs and patching up the game up to release, and that's where the day one patch comes into play.

They've only now started to gather up criticism, so it can take some time to fix those issues.
Talking from experience, it can take some good time to fix something as complex as the character creator, or the character models or animations, assuming that they're thinking about fixing that.

Hope I can shed some light into this.

[jaymacx]

The cover of this game says it all it has a ship on fire crashing.. Exactly how this development went. It does make me sad though Mass Effect was one of my favorite franchises. March was gonna be the best month in gaming history and EA had to fumble it.

[DreadGara]

That would requires another 40 million
Or when Bioware decide to get rid of every SJW they have.

[cfc83]

I asked a fellow n4g member how long it would take to sort out the animations, and he or she said 6 months. Do you guys think that's accurate ?

[Perjoss]

It all depends on how things are done, in terms of hand animation it can take about a week to do 10 secs of good animation. That's 1 animator.

[CrimzonRazor]

wow your calculation is REALLY slow, you would get the axe in a afternoon if you take that long.

[Perjoss]

Nope, I work for a reputable company and thats how long our animators take to work. I said good animation :)

Obviously theres lots of different kinds of anim, but facial anim with lip synching and an extensive rig will just take time to animate correctly. Animating some more simple like a car or another static object will take far less time.

[cfc83]

Thanks to perjoss and all who replied. Great responses all around. Seems like EA don't like re-arranging schedules.

[meka2611]

Probably longer than 6 months. You can't just patch an animation you have to make it over again and replace the animation that is there. They would essentially have to reanimate all the faces, and that's close to remaking the game. You figure they have tons of characters that have dialogue and talk, that's a lot to fix.

[Ashunderfire86]

In that case it should've been delayed til January 2018

[Delivorance]

What if it is a technical issue/bug with the engine? Not everyone has had the same issues in the same places which would lead me to think it's something more along those lines. Bad voice acting or voice direction is something nothing can be done about. But the animations may not take as long as we afraid they might to fix. I also wonder if there are multiple versions of the same lines not firing correctly. There were whole lines of dialogue in DA Origins you never heard because of bugs. And in ME Trilogy there were lines of dialogue they just never got used period.

[Jon_Targaryen]

Heck, why not just re-record the most of the dialogue too? Ninety percent of it makes my ears bleed.

[Artemidorus]

Depends on the manpower.

[Perjoss]

And the way a company like EA works is the animators are already working hard on the DLC for Andromeda or working on an entirely different project. Or if they are freelance they are not even there anymore.

[Raf1k1]

It does take a while to animate stuff depending on the level of detail you go into and how well you want to lip sync.

Here's a video of the animation process for an Overwatch character highlight intro. It's not the same but gives an idea of the work that goes into it. https://player.vimeo.com/vi...

[showtimefolks]

cfc83

performance issues can be fixed in shorter time

i doubt they will improve animation because that will require a lot of work which means it will cost a lot of money

they can't re do the voice overs again because that's like making a new game

bad story can't be fixed

fetch quests can't be fixed

[Pandamobile]

I'm a game animator. With a game on the scale of Andromeda, much of facial animation is automated. If the game has say, 20,000 lines of dialog that need lipsync and facial animation that can be an insurmountable thing to simply "patch".

The lipsync is likely done using a thirdparty tool such as FaceFX which is used to extract phonemes (mouth shapes) from audio wave forms and maybe get a few minor tweaks from an animator and pushed down the pipe. Then there's the issue with how Bioware handles characters faces, meaning facial animation has to be transferable across all characters, races, species, etc. All of this negatively affects the quality of the animation, but allows teams to have more dialog because facial animation becomes practically automated.

There's no excuse for how dead the eyes look though. A system like that could easily be fixed to not look so blank. Hell, even games as old as Half-Life 2 had NPCs that would actually appear to look at you when you engaged with them.

[cfc83]

Very interesting. So that leaves the question, at what point could bioware have said 'these animations aren't up to scratch, lets do them different' ? ...safe to assume there's a point of no going back.

[ASBO-5]

good luck patching out that much fail

[Kokyu]

Not surprised this patch fixes MP problems and nothing for single player really. Show where the games main focus is, combat and MP two things I could care less about when playing mass effect.

[IamTylerDurden1]

I certainly care about combat in sp.

[Kokyu]

I dont, I liked ME1 exploration, mako sections, I did like the heat sink mechanic and the way nades worked in ME1. Yes its light years in the future but we will never advance nade tech beyond lobbing them at people.

[CorndogBurglar]

Combat is a LARGE part of all Mass Effect games.

If the combat is garbage I find it hard to believe that anyone would put in the time to finish the game.

Its all important to a certain degree.

[IamTylerDurden1]

Andromeda worried me when the big gameplay reveal showed almost no gameplay. I think the development for this game was far more rocky than EA led on. I'll still siphon some enjoyment out of it though.

[Surt]

On metacritic It's two points above Ghost Recon critic score. And that's not saying much.

[chobit_A5HL3Y]

so, at this point, i'm pretty sure ubisoft and ea should be completely avoided.

[l-Mc-I]

I want a patch for real life. It's buggy.

[Tzuno]

In a way, No man sky again :)

[lildudexst]

Good thing, I hold out on this game. I wait a month to see if half the bug and fix are gone. I want true mass effect experience. Hope to catch a 5$ off sell never know. If not oh well😂😂 still buying it.