freakinrad

 

 
mass effect went live yesterday, a bit late for game release, but an amazing site nonetheless. AKQA comes through yet again with another industry-leading game experience. this was another site added to my growing list of projects i was extremely excited to be part of. seeing the intense back-end work put into assets like the galaxy explorer was a revelation. and watching the site build from a shell into this whole experience over the weeks of time put into it was a lesson of what it takes to get something like this built.as for the game, over the past four months or so, playing the dev kits for capturing assets, i built up my excitement for the release to a point where i just couldn’t think about it anymore. with something insane like 120 hours of gameplay inside mass effect, i was sure i’d never have the time to put into even playing it. as with any game in development, there were clipping errors, texturing issues, and static loading screens i had hoped would be worked on between development and release. either there was a rush in beating the holiday season, or maybe of just meeting one of the many push-back dates bioware set for release, but whatever it was, there are still many glaring errors in the gameplay. watching a character talk to your character while their skin textures build can be a bit disconcerting to the flow of believability. this game is without a doubt one of the predecessors to realistic texturing, which understandably takes intense system processes to render, but it’s still something i had hoped would be corrected before the game hit shelves. also, clipping continues to be a major issue for mass, with characters getting stuck in doors, their arms passing through walls, or the camera flying through surfaces. fight scenes can be unclear, hacking items like doors and computers has a horribly confusing interface, and conversations drag on and cannot be skipped. other than those issues…the game has a pretty good storyline, is a succesful RPG without seeming too nerdy, and looks promising for keeping me interested for at least half of its entire gameplay.

CD: john jakubowski
AD: kevin heigh
senior copywriter: justin kramm
senior copywriter: joel kaplan
senior motion graphic designer: garth williams
motion graphic designer: jeremiah wassom
motion graphic designer: matthew law
associate motion graphic designer: rian devos
motion graphic intern: gunnar pettersson
senior creative development: jason gatt
senior technial project manager: kirk kepley
sound designer: richard devine