"Andromeda seems to have lowered the quality of its base algorithm, resulting in the ‘My face is tired’ meme featuring nothing but lip-sync. This, presumably, was because they planned to hit every line by hand. But a 5-year dev cycle shows they underestimated this task"

The idea was to hand animate every npc of voice acting, when they started out.

They underestimated the time & money, and a deadline wasnt going to get extended,... . so they had to resort to a almost quick fix like solution.

A algorithm that does it, same as in the older games, but because this wasnt the "A plan" but a last resort type of deal, they didnt spend as much time on it as they did on older games.

Its just bad planning by the upper management, is basically what he was saying. 

"It’s simply a quantity vs quality tradeoff" That they where forced to take, because they stupidly believed they could easily hand animate everything when they started the project.

Was there a time when making games was easy as pie that a baby could actually do it?. (like legitimately speaking)

Also the dev admitted that they do their work for scripted pieces, whilst the other devs have to do theirs for a myriad of sequences that the player gets to choose, not the dev via a scripted linear story (hence being unable to compare the two as being unfair).

Probably EA wanting it out on the shop floor pronto. That's the trouble when you don't publish yourself.

Sorting

Yes thats how I understand it too.

They gave up on trying to do everything by hand, because it was too much work.... only they realised that too late, and had to scramble to impliment a algorthme based alternative.

They should have had more time & money, and done it all by hand as they intended.

Seriously, who cares about animations? Im over 20 hours in i would not have even noticed it if it wasn't all over the internet. Overally this game is less bugged than most open world games i've played (i am looking at you bethesda). The hate on this game can be justified, since its basically inquisition in space so if you don't like that game you wont like this.

But when the same reviewers give inquisition 9 and this a 6 something is wrong, my personal opinion from 20 hours of play is that this is better.

And overall i like the game, its not Witcher 3, but few games are...

I can tell you assuredly that a lot of people don't understand just how much slacking off there is in corporate structures, or how important experience is in terms of getting things done on time.

The fact of the matter is that bioware lost an incredible amount of experience and talent with their designer and director migration.

Now that isn't to say that Andromeda is without virtues. I actually really like the move to a younger more expressive protagonist, because honestly I've always felt ME was almost devoid of good expression, opting instead for deadpan deliveries of silliness in order to cover for the lack of meaningful expressive animations.

However, it could have been done a lot better.

Hum. In essence i already knew that. And i assumed its more or less common knowledge. And when i see people compare animations too W3 or DE:HR for example then i guess i assumed correcrec.

The budget was 40 million..I just don't know where all the money went. This is one of those AAA games I'm definitely skipping since The Division.

I still don't see much issue with the animations. And had nobody said anything, i wouldn't have even noticed.