Mass Effect: Andromeda

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About

Mass Effect: Andromeda is the fourth title in the "Mass Effect": role-playing video game series, which was released in late March 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows systems. Prior to the game's release, footage of the character animations were widely circulated online, with many mocking them for being poorly designed and marred with glitches.

History

On July 15th, 2015, Mass Effect: Andromeda was officially announced by BioWare at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. While originally slated for release in late 2016, the date was pushed back to March 21st, 2017.

Online Presence

Animations

Online, the game's voice acting and glitchy character animations have been widely mocked. On December 2nd, 2016, the MassDefect^[5] Tumblr blog posted an animated GIF of the Andromeda female protagonist awkwardly grabbing a gun during one of the game's cut scenes (shown below, left). Within three months, the post gained over 28,400 notes. On February 28th, 2017, the same blog posted a GIF of an awkward-looking punch animation from the game (shown below, right).^[6]

On March 14th, YouTuber xLetalis uploaded a video expressing concern over the game's "alarming facial animations" (shown below).

On March 15th, YouTuber Truongasm uploaded a scene from the game dubbed with a laugh track and the theme song from Seinfeld (shown below, left).
Meanwhile, YouTuber consmonauta uploaded a dialogue scene in which a non-player character says "my face is tired" (shown below, left). The following day, the scene was posted by Twitter user @Nibellion, along with several poorly animated scenes in the game.^[1]

Also on March 16th, YouTuber TerkJK uploaded a montage of comically designed scenes in the game dubbed with a sitcom laugh track and cartoon sound effects (shown below). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to the game's animations, including Kotaku,^[2] Gamesradar^[3] and Polygon.^[4]

Conspiracy Theory

On February 19th, 2017, the gaming blog TheEgg^[7] published a post speculating that the female characters in Andromeda were intentionally designed to be unattractive in order to push a feminist agenda. On March 16th, NY Mag's Select All blog published an article by staff writer Brian Feldman mocking the conspiracy theory.^[8]