Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2012]

[TheD]

The game is made for a seven years old console with 512 MB of memory.

I think it looks very good, BTW.

How in the world can you say that?

Even by console game standards a lot of the textures are beyond crap!

Stuff like the clothes are sporting textures that have huge pixels.

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/5526/masseffect3dress.jpg

Take a look at the guys uniform, you can clearly see how low res it is even from this distance, never mind the fact that you get a lot of close ups of it in dialogue (and not just him, all of the characters look like that).

You also have hyper compressed normal maps on main character faces, really low poly counts on just about everything (including the non default player characters faces), nasty texture seams, low res DOF ect.

What is even more insulting is that they don't even bother to give PC players higher res textures (No way in hell the character textures in game are base asset quality) or even fix the low res DOF!

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with that picture you used. You could find a dozen of others that have far more obvious problems, but that one is totally OK.

 

[Acert93]

I would have to agree. Also, this gen as it pushes forward it has compromises. e.g. Alan Wake had some terrific lighting but also had some nasty screen shots of squarish tires! Lots of people are drooling over the Last of Us but look at this truck. The ME screenshot posted actually has a fairly even look to it and considering the game (a 20+ hour Action-Shooter-RPG) I cannot say that that is horrible looking in the least.

 

[TheD]

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with that picture you used. You could find a dozen of others that have far more obvious problems, but that one is totally OK.

You can make out the texels even at that range, the same texture that is used in closeup shots a few seconds later.



Check this shot out.



That is not some random NPC and most outfits look like that.

 

[Arwin]

Would this still be a space limitation issue or is it a RAM thing? The game seems very large and already has 15GB of data, but as they are used fully I can imagine they've still squeezed textures. But it's also possible they've used low-res textures on close-ups of characters so they don't use extra RAM or cause load-times when switching from distant to close characters.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

They simply did not have enough human resources and thus a lot of the character textures (and models) are more or less straight from ME1.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I don't believe that. Looking at the game it's pretty clear they spent as much of the memory budget on the face textures as possible, even if it meant compromising on the clothing textures. It's a shame they haven't upgraded those textures for the PC version.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I could write a long list of the new character assets they've made for this game... you can see quite clearly that a large amount is made for ME3, some are lifted from ME2 or LotSB, but all the rest are ME1. Like the Council, Udina, Citadel NPCs; and also, all the support cast humans are made with the ME1 face generator (Conrad Verner, Bailey, etc)

There's only so much new content they can create.

 

[TheWretched]

I could write a long list of the new character assets they've made for this game... you can see quite clearly that a large amount is made for ME3, some are lifted from ME2 or LotSB, but all the rest are ME1. Like the Council, Udina, Citadel NPCs; and also, all the support cast humans are made with the ME1 face generator (Conrad Verner, Bailey, etc)

There's only so much new content they can create.

Well, as you say, it's a lot of old content... so if the engine indeed supports better textures, then why not at least upgrade the old ones to use higher resolution?

And I know... it's an added cost with little benefit... but still. It makes the game look a LOT less impressive than it actually is.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

You guys have an awfully simple concept of "high resolution textures". Maybe someday I'll try to explain with some examples.

 

[Ghostz]

There are obviously advantages to using the same tech for 6 or 7 years but there are obviously disadvantages. It is a little unfair to compare Last of Us to Mass Effect 3 for example. Though, Bioware also didn't really think through a lot of their decisions regarding Mass Effect. They should've have better built a technology package with modularization in mind but everything in hindsight always looks a little better.

 

[TheWretched]

You guys have an awfully simple concept of "high resolution textures". Maybe someday I'll try to explain with some examples.

I think you underestimate my knowledge in that area^^ Thing is... no matter what, it just looks ugly as f. And it takes you out of the game, especially if the rest is quite "pristine".

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yes, the seams are showing, but it is a huge, huge game and it's still unbelievable how much better it looks then the first game released on the same hardware.

 

[TheD]

Yes, the seams are showing, but it is a huge, huge game and it's still unbelievable how much better it looks then the first game released on the same hardware.

Important characters should never have such bad textures!
It is not just the old textures that look like crap, new textures have HUGE amounts of normal map compression (and the colour textures are still very bad).

The environment textures on the other hand are wastefully high, the game sports super high res handrails, floors, walls and the like.

An AAA game from one of the worlds largest pubs should not look like that.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I still say this is nitpicking. On the Xbox, the game looks awesome IMHO.

 

[TheWretched]

I still say this is nitpicking. On the Xbox, the game looks awesome IMHO.

And that's YOUR opinion... I am not saying you are wrong, mind you. If you like it and it doesn't bother you, more power to you. My opinion is just different.


Well, in any case, I still haven't played the full game yet (pretty busy lately)... but I really want to^^

What I wonder is, why they stayed with UE, instead of leveraging their own engine (i.e. the one from Dragon Age). I mean, cleary it would've meant a lot of initial work, but I think Dragon Age (at least on PC, the second game too) looks notably better

 

[kagemaru]

What I wonder is, why they stayed with UE, instead of leveraging their own engine (i.e. the one from Dragon Age). I mean, cleary it would've meant a lot of initial work, but I think Dragon Age (at least on PC, the second game too) looks notably better

Can't talk about the PC versions, but ME has always looked better than DA on consoles to me.

I would imagine after all the work they did with the engine for ME1 and especially ME2, it wouldn't have been worth the hassle.

You also have to consider how it could have created issues with the whole character importing feature if they switched engines.

 

[TheWretched]

Well, I meant switching after ME1, obviously.

And yes, the import feature might not have survived... that'd been bad, I guess. At least ME doesn't have a silent protagonist, as DAO has... I hate that.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The very idea of carrying player decisions through the games necessitated sticking to the same engine. And yet, the advancements between the releases are quite obvious and big. ME2 improved the looks by a very large margin, ME3 added more performance to handle more characters and larger levels with some huge components (Reapers!)

As for the nitpicking, of course I see the low res textures on the reused ME1 assets. In an ideal world EA would finance them well enough to replace everything, but let's not forget - for all the critical success, Mass Effect is still not selling as well as Gears of War, for example. So I just don't bother with the results because there's a lot of awesomeness in the game, too.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Er... what is this?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles?topics=digital_foundry