The Game Awards 2016 played host to a great number of world premieres last week, one of which being the first gameplay trailer for Mass Effect Andromeda.
Offering up our best look at BioWare’s 2017 sequel to date, there were those who took issue with the footage shown and, in particular, the quality of the animation, essentially claiming that Andromeda wasn’t up to snuff in the visuals department. Addressing that criticism head-on, Creative Director Mac Walters spoke to GameSpot about the state of Mass Effect Andromeda going into 2017, and why the dev team will continue to polish the title until BioWare “take it from [their] cold, dead hands.”
On the topic of that gameplay reveal trailer, Walters was quick to defend the animation on display, stressing that it’s not representative of the final build.
Cinematics are very complicated, and have a lot of dependencies. The levels, characters, lighting… everything has to be at a certain point to allow cinematics to polish their work. As a downstream team, it means it’s one of the last things to get polished, and something we work on up until the very end. Ultimately, as this was a gameplay trailer, we made the decision to show ‘in-game’ footage–not pre-rendered. But rest assured, it will look great by the time we ship. And we’ll be sure to share more of the characters, stories, and cinematics before then.
Further in the interview, GameSpot quizzed the developer about the inspirations behind Mass Effect Andromeda, at which point Walters highlighted “the fluid movement and very tight combat mechanics” of Destiny as a creative touchstone.
Mass Effect Andromeda is headed for PS4 and is still, at the time of writing, without an official release date.
[Source: GameSpot]
