Revealing The Kett, Mass Effect Andromeda's New Race
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- In this exclusive video interview from Game Informer, Mass Effect Andromeda's art director Joel MacMillan walks us through BioWare's process for creating a new alien race. The Kett are the first, but not the last, alien race the team has revealed for Andromeda.
Learn more about Mass Effect Andromeda in Game Informer's exclusive content hub - www.gameinformer.com/p/androme... - Hry
bruh wtf the early concepts looked way better than the end result
That's when the art director doesn't do his/her homeworks.
Sometimes they need to ask us the fans opinions or show our designs of what we would like to see aliens look like.
naw, i think thats when the producer fiddles with the design too much. They are so desperate for the character to connect with the player they cant seem to take risks. The way i see it, the whole point of having an alien is for it to be 'alien', not relatable. its the mystery of what their intentions and capabilities are that intrigue us
They want to use one set of animations for human and and as many aliens as possible. That's why.
So true!!!
They start out with a bunch of unique shaped heads and more or less end up with humans with some bony bits on their faces
The concept art reminded me a bit of Mycondids from DnD, a sapient fungal race. That would have been something special
I Laughed so hard as he was talking about that xD and it started turning out more and more and moreeeee like a human face
Verminator4 every concept art looks better than what we got :) It's like they give the artist freedom to create and end up with generic human like alien :)
I was about to say the same... their creative process goes backwards - from innovative ideas towards generic stereotypes.
Imagine how cool it would be to see something real new and unique as soon as you reach Andromeda! Keth looks like they were hidding in undiscovered part of Milky Way, not entire new galaxy.
Art team comes up with something cool looking.
Animation team sends it back because they want to use the same animations for humans
Hahaha. The truth hurts.
well art teams can come up with some creatures or characters they a modeller just cant rig very well at all, so they do have to find middle ground :p
Then they wouldn't make games lol
They look like far less inspired Collectors
Not really.
Quester91 collectors manipulated DNA so at least they had a reason to be humanoid but these have no excuse
The look of the tech also reminds way too much of 'generic' sci fi. Can't quite explain it, you know like how in 343 Halo everything is the same but somehow looks less 'Halo'? That kind of feeling.
Collector design sucked, and Kett design sucks too.
And this really sucks because most of other designs are super-awesome.
Geth for instance... I love the way they are designed.
Dario Zanze Same thing for turians, they're absolutely a masterpiece of alien design.
We wait 600 years, cross millions of light years, and find...humans with carapaces.
Huh.
The aliens in the Milky Way were way more alien. Oh well. Game will hopefully still be fun.
i kinda agree with you, but... hey, it's just one of the new races
Max Salmon I hope they actually made aliens for the other races and not humans with dog legs and a paletswap
I could accept all the Milky Way aliens being the same humanoid shape because that might have been engineered by one of the races that got Reaper'd or something but it's a whole new untouched galaxy and it has...worse looking Collectors. :I
actually, in reality we don't have any knowledge of anything else breathing around us for as much as you want...so I'm down if they find ninja turtles in a damn game...it's a game after all.
not all aliens were humanoid see hannar and elcor
Oh for fucks sake! You can make anything and you make another humanoid dude in armor?! Give it an other pair of legs, or wings or tentacles or gas sacs, anything would have been better than what you ended up with
Bioware animators are lazy and can't work with any skeleton different that the standard human one.
A pair of gas sacs would look ridiculous in a sex scene though.
lsq78 not true there are many creatures that are not humanoid
marckery blanchard
Elcor and Hanars are hardly animated at all.
All the rest basically only have relatively few combat animations: rachni and assorted creatures.
I stand by my point.
lsq78 eh, an alien has to be humanoid to use a gun
I think designers consistently overestimate how human they need to make something for a player to connect with it. People wanted to romance turians, always remember that.
They don't. They keep forgetting.
My favorite character in the entire franchise is Legion. A faceless machine made up of a hive of software programs. So yeah. Oh wait look guys Boney Qunari how alien!
You know they considered that when designing the Turians as well right/
+Zak But unlike Kett here, other than having 2 eyes, a nose, & a mouth, Turian faces look NOTHING like human. Kett here, on the other hand, look like a gray-faced human with dead fish eyes & wearing bony headgear.
I WANTED TO ROMANCE A KROGAN. GIVE ME THE ALIENS.
It gets progressively worse as they build up from the concept art....
The_Capiltalist how many times are you going to say that bud
Cody Cooper Just once. I let the garbage CZcams app double post for me.
Agree, I was loving the concept crab-like faces and then I see them getting more humanoid...then it flashes to a guy who literally looks like a human wearing armor and frowning and I lose hope
Cody Orvik Im the opposite I hate the idea of the new aliens all looking extremely unhuman. I'm also not sure how you guys could think they look like a "human wearing armor" I don't think they look human enough.
Cody Cooper Well if you literally wanted to make these aliens look human then I could understand your viewpoint, but the point is they're *aliens,* at least from my standpoint, aliens should look, well, alien.
"We wanted to give him a little lest humanity or soul"
Proceeds to give it a human face...
The true monster is man! WHAT A TWIST.
the eyes are the gatway to the soul.
why all the species we encounter in amss effect have those expressive eyes.
Aliens in games are begining to look a little samey.
True, i agree. I wish they would be a little more wierd and out there, but as the dude said its harder for players to relate to something that is too unfamiliar. if i had my way i would do crazy shit, but big games need to make their money back, which means they have to make their products appealing to a slightly wider range of peeps :(.
Plus animating would be a nightmare if it has wierd body parts.
Merky Beam agreed, where are the four armed guys? no race evolved from insect like creatures? no quadrapeds?
Merky Beam That's why I love the race profiles in Stellaris
skaarj warriors anyone? :)
Merky Beam aliens, demons, monsters all seem to have rock-skin these days
I get that humanoid shape is necessary for optimization purposes of all characters sharing same single skeleton and animations (and even then, in original game they played around with in in form of krogans). But why... you had a ton of cool face concepts that you showed IN *THIS VERY VIDEO*, why you went with standard "rubber forehead alien" human face in the end?!
Even in case of asari, in-universe there were hints that asari are affecting perception of other races to look more attractive to them.
Because apparently only humanoid face can be empathized with. You hear that Garrus? Nobody can have sympathy for you due to mandibles!
And you, Legion! And don't even mention Tali, nobody even considers her a person obviously, since we can't see her face!
Empathy between different races should be based on more general ground than simple ability to grimace. Very primitive approach based on stereotypic perception. And, by the way, Saren with his reptile beak was more charismatic than any kett villain with so funny final human face.
it's bullshit.. so sick of humanoid races like that .. bleah... there is so much you can play with and yet you chose humanoids every time... i believe that you can empathize with anything as long as it has good designed body language.. even asimetrical weird 5 limbed cross between octopus and snail and dog or whatever.. come on guys :( don't be dull
Exactly this. It's why most humans feel no empathy stepping on ants.
No face, no eyes, no human-like features = no empathy
i may love mass effect, and i can look past most of the bad of the series
but the kett look about as original as a loaf of bread, they started out in the concept art as neat and truly alien, and then became slate colored humans with bone growth and eyes of the blind
shame on you bioware, you can do better
+megamanx503 Like anyone gives a shit at the end of the day.
Totally agree. On top of that, they talk about a more organic feel to new races in Andromeda, as if totally disregarding the Collectors...
grimmSOL and it's not like i mind similarities, i don't, but this is just lazy, the kett could've looked fantastic
Agreed. They say they want to get away from humanoid, yet the body is still very humanoid. Also there is no color in their skin, what made Turians and Krogan and especially the Drell interesting was their distinctive colors.
I was right with him when he was talking about creating a species that was so alien and unique we didn't know how to relate to them...then he lost me when he started saying how it will look weird if they look different, and as antagonists we need to empathize/associate with them...why? Wouldn't it make the antagonists more memorable, unique, and haunting if they were something we've never seen before or could imagine seeing?
Bioware, are you forgetting about Legion? That weird flashlight panel thing that somehow became one of the most connectable characters in the series with a wide pallete of emotions from just flashy lights and angled panels? Come on. By now you should've realised that people are willing to empathise with actual alien looking aliens...
***** With enough characterization and quality writing, yes. Why? The point of my comment was that the design isn't as important as people make it out to be. You could make an amorphous blob a "connectable" character if you took it seriously and stopped treating it like comedy relief like they did with the Elcor, Volus and Hanar.
General Maul Not too be an arm-chair designer nor to lambaste Bioware's design efforts (Even though I don't fully agree or enjoy the final design of the Kett) but there are many different ways humans can empathize with aliens and even other life forms (dogs, cats, other animals, heck even plants in some odd cases) through various forms of movement, vocals, etc.
I don't hate the Kett design wise and like the rocky carapaced looked, but I think it would've been more interesting if they took their faces in a different direction. Maybe different jaws? Or what if they had an odd number of eyes.
I totally understand the limitations they deal with a Game Designers, but I would've preferred their faces to be a bit more bestial or exotic.
Still looking forward to the game though.
Yeah, these guys look awesome. It's just that..almost all the races in mass effect (especially the main ones) are all humanoid. Two legs, a head, a mouth, two eyes, etc etc. While they do certainly look cool (sort of like a cross between Krogan and Collectors?), it's nothing we haven't seen before. This is an entirely new galaxy, yet the species still have two eyes, and a mouth in the same exact place? Come on guys, we /want/ unrecognizable, alien shit to be thrown at us.
so... more Hanar? hahaha :P
But you can't shoot an alien's head when it pops up out of cover if it that head is in its stomach or crotch.
Maybe there are solid evolutionary reasons for this particular structure. We've seen numerous examples of convergence on earth where species develop similarly independently of each other.
Bat wings and bird wings are convergent evolution, yet bat wings do not look like bird wings at all. So then why this alien have human face on it? Don't give me that "cannot relate to characters that don't look like a human" crap, we were perfectly able to relate to Garrus, Legion and Tali (of all people, we don't even know how her face even looks like!).
they kinda had a thing about how evolution works in simialr ways in mass effect. and it kinda makes sense. phsyiology that allows use of tools, brain development, and so on.
albeit there are some examples that break the rules. elcor and hanar are sapient beings after all. but it is noted both have difficulty engaging in warfare. elcor are too slow in reaciotn, despite immense size and phsycial strenth.
and hanar......... are hanar
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the facial features of the end product. I liked some of the facial concepts, seeing as they did look more alien, this guy ended up looking way too human. Yeah, his body features look different, but the overall design looks like a human got stuck in cement and his face got a hint of sulfuric acid splashed on it.
A bit disappointing, but oh well. I do believe I heard some foreshadowing to other races besides the Kett, so I'll hold hope with them instead.
Steven ZachariasVA to have convincing antagonists you have to have them show emotion and be menacing. For a dialogue heavy game like mass effect they'll need to talk and show emotion. Hard to do when a race is so alien looking. That's why they go back to human looking features because they're easier to reference with emotions, making them more empathetic.
They confirmed there will be more alien races.
Man of Glass
Even if you have a fully functional face, if you just scream words and frown your face till it's just a singularity of rage, you still need good writing for them. (Though, the singularity would probably be very scary to look at.) What about the Rachni Queen? When she started talking about how their kind speaks through songs and that their kids know none, made me really sad, that I looked up a way to not kill the Rachni in the hot labs. That's great writing, it makes you feel for the characters, without the need of looking something close to a human. Although they used an Asari to speak, it was emotionless; the way the Queen spoke was still a big contributor to the feels.
***** Well, sir, I'm allowed to have an opinion, the fact that they released this means they want all of us to have a more filled out idea on what we're heading into. No game producer, especially the artists of said game, want people to unknowingly wander into games without a form of idea of expectations.
Man of Glass You, sir, make a much better point that simply "Shut up and stop being human." However I'd like to point towards Purvdragon-sensei as, like he stated, they have conveyed emotion and dialog with very odd looking races. Expression is more drawn out than just facial features, how else would you know a Turian is even happy or sad? They can't smile like humans. They express things through that odd, flange thing on their face and through their whole body. This is also true for Quarians as we can't ever see their face. Example, when Tali is nervous, her hands will often be very active, tending to wrangle around one another.
Gerasimos Tzivras Thank you, I'm actually very excited to see how they designed the other races.
I don't hate the Kett, per-say, I just don't agree with the designs. I feel that the designing team had wonderful concepts drawn, and then got shot down by the animation team. I'm not looking at this from a perspective of "Wow that will kill the game for me" I'm looking at it as an artist whom thinks that the Design team could have challenged themselves a bit more.
Steven ZachariasVA for a start the Remnant really look alien. We saw some of them during the tech demo. As for the kett they look OK IMO but I'd like something more alien at least when it comes to the face. The collectors, turians, Salarian, elcor, protheans and yahg all feel more alien than the kett
Bioware: "Hey kids! Did you like Mass Effect 2? You did? Good! What about the Collectors? You liked 'em too, huh? Great! So... How about a *GALAXY FULL OF COLLECTORS?*"
hey to be fair they may just have a lost exploration vessel of prometheans having started that race or bred into it ... course all the more likely its lazy but never know they may actually go for logical
Zacharius Kioussis Very true! Funnily enough I posted the same idea in another video which would explain why your ship could get from solar system to solar system; the Protheans built Mass Relays there too! However I'm still not a fan of the fact the incredibly "alien" Andromeda has a race of bipedal beings ruling the whole thing just like the Milky Way. Same stuff different name.
Bone armor aside, they look too much like the Protheans/Collectors.
I agree
I can kind of get where he's coming from, though there are some big differences, mainly in that the protheans had 4 eyes I think.We only really saw them a little bit though. The overall profile of the head shape I guess is a little similar in that they both seem to flair out at the top in a hairless carpaced ridged structure. The khett are more bone, while the Prothean are almost insectile, they both carry an angular triangle looking head profile. Also like the collectors their heads extend backwards to form a point, or at least the one shown at 4:24 does, another one looked like it had a basketball hoop headress
I agree from a designers point of view the kett silhouette is similar to the prothean and collectors. The final design colors are original, but the head, the same dome-ish shape the collectors and protheans had, also its just a human face with a bone helmet. He talks about an organic looking race, clothes, and architecture as if that's new and original in Mass Effect, it's not. The collectors are organic , their whole insect armor (same for the kett, except that this time its more rocky instead of insecty) even their ships were huge hives. I admit I still like the kett, but they are unoriginal, lazy designs, and a missed opportunity. I know you need the humanoid shape so it works in the game and all but they could have gone much crazier with the design. And if you need sympathy and empathy for them then get good writers. Mass effect itself has proved we don't need to even see a human face to have a connection with a character (Tali)...
dirtySoap
Don't forget the big stupid jellyfish!
And the voices sound like prothens, looks like protheans , show some Krogans, they are the best.
It's kinda cool design, but maybe making them nude with their carapaces might not be a bad idea. It shows off how different their culture is and how they use their body/shell as their 'clothes'.
Also, with all the races in Mass Effect, we barely see any Turian, Salarian, Prothean, or Krogan without their armor.
So Bioware created aliens called Shit. Kett is british slang
Steve Diament there probably little shits....or might mean something else in a different language shithead in English is bad but in another language it is a name.....
I've lived in the UK for 30+ years and have never heard the word Kett before.
Steve Diament which part of the UK does kett mean shit? I think you are talking kett mate.
ket is slang for ketamine in the north
+Rob Taylor Urban Dictionary has 2 definitions: "Quite simply kett = shit"; & "Useless or unwanted items / rubbish (Yorkshire, England)". I've never heard of it, & have lived in England even longer than you, but in the south (far from Yorkshire). www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3Fterm%3DKett%26amp%3Dtrue?client=safari
it would have been nice if they didnt have so human-like face underneath the bones... they wanted to create something really alien and finally they made a human with helmet-like bones... not so alien imo
the concept from 2:27 looked far better than the final version.
but really i don't understand how you want to create something really alien, wonder if you should even cloth it. and in the end it looks more like human than more than half the races from the first game... rachni, turians, krogan, collectors, elcor, vorcha... even salarians and batarians, all of them look more alien compared to the final version in this video. kind of disappointing.
"we want to have a really alien race - i know, let's paint it's color purple, and put some bones on the forehead. and don't forget to cloth it... god forbid there is an alien that doesnt need clothes" sounds like startrek original series kind of creativity...
I agree, I don't support the philosophy of "we need to relate to this alien," no we don't! We need these creatures to be things we *haven't* seen before, things we *couldn't* imagine. I just think of nature. Who in the world would think of a praying mantis or a scorpion? Or a whale, or a giant squid? Look at what nature has done, the sheer creativity--yet also believability--of these creatures is amazing. I think when designing new alien species, artists should aspire to that goal: something none of us could possibly imagine. In fact, the less we can instantly relate to and connect with them, the better imo.
Suncho it draws down to showing emotions. We can only most of the time think of human characteristics and features to convey emotions.
Man of Glass Look at C-3PO, expressionless the whole time and we got a great sense of his personality, same with HAL. I don't think we need to rely on more than language to convey what we're trying to get across.
Cody Orvik these aren't comedy relief characters or AI characters though. These are the main opposing faction of the game. There's going to be a lot of interaction and possibly a squadmate. Having no emotion will be hard to get to grips with throughout the game. Races like reapers or leviathan work because you see them in small bursts so their impact is more effective.
Man of Glass Look at pre-unchained EDI. There were no human facial features to measure expressions. Look at Rachni or the like. Expressions can be portrayed without a humanistic face.
"We wanted to make an original alien species, so we gave them lights on their back and guns with pistol grips. Also they have a mouth and a pair of eyes, wear clothes, and best of all they speak your language."
"So they're really not that alien at all honestly."
WHY ARE THE STILL FUCKING HUMANOID?! It was kind of acceptable on the Trilogy because it was in the Milky Way but this is Andromeda dammit. The truly alien looking things shouldn't just be worms and living ships. Give us something on four or six legs, then it feels alien and not just bipedal and similar to us. It feels as if we're still in the same galaxy despite the new ship and the floating worm things if we just see the same bipedal aliens over and over. Heck, even Geth had variety.
Really you only need three legs evolutionarily, but that wouldn't be very relateable from a character design perspective. Plus as a race develops, they can't do much if they use all 3 or 4 legs to walk and don't have hands to build or innovate. Keep the brain and eyes up, as far from danger as possible. Really, the humanoid form is the most efficient for intelligent species, otherwise whales, dogs, rats, and pigs would've taken over.
AGREED! They shouldn't have legs at all! Legs are a milky way thing! The Kett should be mucus covered eggs that use vibrations to communicate. They see a completely different color spectrum than we do, because they don't have eyes. Eyes are too much like humans. They use noodle like tentacles that extend from the egg like shape, and sense their surroundings in an alien like way.
The only way that they will even acknowledge our presence, is if we roll up in a ball, and do acapella skryllex. Once that is complete, we break bread with them, but they do not consume what we consider to be matter. They consume emotion. So we generate enough emotion to feed them (different emotions are different flavors). They, in turn, allow us to lick the mucus from their bodies. It is both delicious and nutritious.
All of this leads up to me stating that I am being sarcastic, and humanoids are a safe bet. Especially considering that we have no idea what evolution has done for intelligent life on other worlds. Not to mention other galaxies. Make them too "inhuman" would be risking us not caring about their story.
mambobro That was beautiful. Thank you for proving my point. No one would take non-humanoids seriously. There's a reason an action movie about a Hanar spy was so ridiculous.
mambobro
I know that's sarcasm, but aliens are supposed to look alien. The closer they look like us, the less fantastic this whole adventure to Andromeda becomes. It only feels as if they haven't gone anywhere, so the races they do get to meet are humanoid and not something otherworldly. I'm not saying they shouldn't have evolutionary shit like eyes and legs, but make them look and feel different, not just with couple of pimples on their skin or an extra dick.
Give them extra arms, or wings. Anything. It's a fucking new galaxy, why are we only seeing bipedal fungi? There could be mist-like creatures that become tangible when some horseshit happens! There's a literal galaxy of ideas and yet they choose a design that is familiar so we can relate to it. Why is that again? We're looking for new planets (in a new galaxy, might I add) and shit, and we coincidentally find people that look like us. Why that's no fun, I'd just go back and do shit on the previous galaxy. Is it so hard to think of a creature design that makes sense, based on the planet and how it evolved? Because Giger did it, and despite the Xenomorph being bipedal it was out of this world. Is it that hard to think of ways how we could have evolved if our Earth did not develop as it did now?
Ironically, you're also talking about taking the safe route, when the thing they were supposed to be doing, or at least when they were interviewing the Creative Director, is taking risks and being adventurous not just in the game but also during the development.
mambobro
And the 'making them inhuman would make us not care about their story' argument. That's horse shit, and you know it. I'm sorry if I'm getting all riled up but that's just not a good argument to use. The Thorian was a fantastic creature. The arachnid were seriously interesting. The Queen arachnid, more so, it made me feel bad for their species and when I got locked inside the Hot Labs I immediately looked up some way if I could choose not to kill them. Not only for Paragon points but because I felt bad after hearing their story. Especially when the Queen arachnid talks about the songs and how the kids have not learned it. Great writing like that can make you care for shit.
With Earth having more alien looking life form, this is just sad
So little creativity. A Starfish is more alien to human than this
lazy animators
lol, so true
LOL you realize how hard animation is? plus the modellers will have a say, if they honestly believe they cant model something they will have change it-- riggers too. You cant go with truly crazy models sometimes because of technology
Henbot a witcher tells me otherwise
Henbot
It's concept art Im talking about, not animation. It didn't stop MS1 from making the jellyfish alien, so that's just a BS excuse. I stand my case that they lack creativity
So they're the Collectors? We already had these 2 games ago, Bioware, WTF are you doing?
KubeSquared na collectors were engineered protheons.
The Unknown You don't understand shit
Ayy Lmao I probably know more about this world than you could ever comprehend you chromosome lacking moronic primitive.
If you wanted to implicate they were "retarded" or had a disability like down-syndrome, you should have said excess chromosome not "lacking."
Not that Ayy wasn't out of line, but it does also seem the point of the original comment went over your head given the point was that visually the Kett basically look like the Collectors, but a bit more human.
my mistake monosomy * is lacking chromosomes.
This guy has the muscles but his teeth needs saving
Mass Effect.
Too much Ket
i think i was the only one who see his weird teeth xD
he can do surgery to fix it is not hard but is painful afterwards :) but if he likes how he looks who we are to judge ?:) and back to the topic game looks amazing looking forward to play the game and experience the mass effect feel :D
His teeth are different, they look cool.
Looks like collectors v 2.0
When people start picking at every single detail in a game or movie, you can't really enjoy it. So, please people, let's just enjoy this! I'm so ready and can't wait.
UPDATED: I am not saying in no way, people CAN NOT have an opinion! This comment is not suppose to be taken negatively. All I'm trying to say is enjoy MEA.
If others' opinion can impact your enjoyment, you must be really unsure of whether you're really enjoying things.
Specimen021 With my last statement, you can clearly see that I am pretty happy and/or excited for Andromeda. I was talking about others, who seem to pick at everything that have to do with this game. Their opinions don't bother me, I just want them to at least give the game a chance before complaining about everything that Bioware is showing us. They can have their opinions, and I was just stating mine.
xXLunaXx Alright, gotcha. Though most people even bothering to watch ME promotional videos will buy and play it, no matter what they say now. I'm not getting too excited myself, mostly because of the N7 day trailer. I hope the gameplay will change my mind.
Specimen021 I always say, wait for the game to come out. Do some research and watch a few reviews before buying the game. I've never had any issues with the series. So I'm going to get it as soon as it comes out. But yeah, just make sure it is worth it before you purchase it.
Amen, the way in which youtube and Reddit have become ridiculously over-the-top bandwagon-bashing central in recent years and what's more frustrating is the way in which fellow gamers and/or sci-fi fans in general - all apply this hyper-critical assessment with such immense inconsistency that it makes tho whole hype-fest than much more cancerous. examples like how films like the two more recent Riddick flicks, 'Jupiter Ascending," "John Carter," 'Prometheus," the second Trek film, "Avatar," "Battle LA," and "Edge of Tomorrow" can be all vehemently bashed for being so damn hokey, poorly written, and poorly acted - not mention for that "John Carter" film, the second Trek movie, and Avatar - were all three vehemently bashed for being so damn unoriginal - to boot! Yet, those same people can turn around and celebrate the first Abram's Trek film, the marvel movies - (especially the "Guardians of the Galaxy), and most egregious of all - the new Star Wars movie last year - all as being phenomenal films and the way sci-fi/fantasy films should look like tho the hokiness and awful comic relief is littered throughout them as well! Contrast the reaction so many had to the Grdians of the Galaxy movie, with the reaction to the 'Chronicles of Riddick," and "Jupiter Ascending" - is simply mind-blowing due to the level to which the three are damned near identical in almost every facet and may very well have taken place even with in the same fuckin mythical universe for that matter! Oh - yeah add "Serenity"/"Firefly" to that list as well. Not that the Marvel films, (above all the second and the last Cap-America ones and the Guardians - which are by far the best of the whole series with out question imo), and then Serenity - which is easily one of the greatest and most underrated sci-fi movies, not to mention it's criminally cut-short tv series, in movie history, it's not that these are all bad movie. Im just saying that the awful writing, horribly cringe-worthy dialogue and comic relief, and poor acting is a staple for pretty much all sci-fi movies and its equally as present and consistent throughout all these films every damn much as these flaws are in the likes of Jup-Asdcending, Avatar, Battle-LA, Chronicles of Riddick, John Carter, and Edge of Tomorrow. So i def agree with your sentiment for the most part, at the same time however, in this instance - i have to say it warrants a bit of criticism. Then again, as much as i adored the previous trilogy - a huge amount of the design aesthetics of a number of aspects of the games - i happen to completely despise. None more so than almost every single fuckin gun in the whole series. I mean - good god are/were they goofy as hell looking! i know i't's the far future and all, but that doesn't mean you have to have weapon-designs that look as if they are/were directly transplanted straight outa star-trek or some shit!
They feel very similar to the Collectors
Pale Collectors
we wanted something really different and to be more organic , so we recolored the main antaganist from 2, the collectors, and made them less organic .... :/ i mean these have nice industrial armor nothing organic about it... you just gave qunari horns to a collective mesh and textured it with armor to differentiate
the collec tors were not very 'organic' to begin with. they were very unnatural looking, too perfect in form, non functional as life forms.
hell mordin goes on a rant about how they are an insult to life, far more t han even robots and androids.
they mean more organic in the sense of how their bodies form and look. more imperfections to em. not by them looking like they are carbon based lifeforms.
Am I the only person here saying that they don't look even close like the collectors? Dafuq!?
obviously they have to be humanoid. we're gonna have one as a squad mate.
Uranus Yea I hate that. at least make them only quasi-humanoid.
That's why I love the Krogan. And even THEY are too humanoid IMO
Uranus I hope so they look so cool I would love one in our team.
Yeah, kinda sad that another race is humanoid though, no?
Yea, have to be bangable. Because you know, continuing Shepard legacy.
TheCrusaderBin no, "humanoid" is used to say "look like humans" to the rest of the galaxy, we look like them. I don't think it's hard to believe that that shape is the best for survival evolution wise
why there are so many humanoids? why you can't create someone who doesn't resemble humans at all?
It would be too difficult to animate likely. Especially if there will be multibal on screen
Well, there's pyjak.
Literally the first alien they showed in the first gameplay footage is a quadrupedal beast the size of a monster truck. In the original trilogy, there was the Elcor, the Hanar and the Yahg. But if you watch the whole video, he answers your question: it's easier to relate to someone/something if it's closer in appearance to what we are.
That, and its probably easier (see: lazy) to set up A.I. for combat if every enemy is humanoid based, across the bored.
From an evolutionary standpoint, humanoid form is efficient for an intelligent, innovative lifestyle. See my reply to the above comment.
From a character design standpoint, if you make something too weird, yes, it'll be hard to animate, but it's also hard to be scared of if you're figuring out how it moves or find it so weird it's funny. Can you imagine fighting a Hanar? It's really about the uncanny valley. if it looks too human, or not at all human, it's not threatening. Make it humanoid but just a bit off and it's creepy. The Reapers were introduced by their ideology and that's what made them scary.
Despite the awesome initial drawings & concepts for the Kett, as well as the organic & bony concept for body & armor, which i absolutely love, like many here, i can't help but feel let down that at the end of the day, it's still a bipedal, two-armed being & worse still, with a remarkably human face right down to having our kind of teeth. hopefully this ain't the final version & the alien here can still look somewhat surreal in the game when it comes out, cuz i'd really hate to see just a human-version of the collector mashed with bony parts.
Humanoid form? Programming limitation? Large heads = Easy headshots
They end up all always looking too humanoid, I'd rather go with some of those faces on the initial sketches.
You had a chance to do something really unique and yet you fell back on the old bipedal design.
Bipedal is not the problem (We had geth, crogans, salarians and turians, they all looked plausibly alien enough). It have *HUMAN FACE*. That's the main problem.
The real problem is that it has only two eyes. How primitive!
is a mix of a Collector and a turian (cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/251593/collector.jpg)
(vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/masseffect/images/0/0c/Turian_sem_armadura.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150503050021&path-prefix=pt)
id rather not fight space centaurs anyway so im happy
Thinks makes sense though. Intelligent races should share certain similarities that lead to that intelligence.
Front-facing eyes, hands used to make tools, and upright movement. These are key to our evolutionary path, and it wouldn't be out of ordinary for multiple races to benefit from those things as well.
If anything, that one race in the first game that didn't have any hands or feet makes no sense to me. Like...how did they evolve that intelligence without any reason to?
The alien you're most proud of? what, a humanoid coral reef?
So techinally it just a billion of little creatures in a humanoid form I wonderi f they use We a lot in there dialogue.
but can we make sweet tender love to one of them?
Only in MEA 2 DLC.
Tywin Lannister XD
they must have the hardest boners in the galaxy
Tywin Lannister why would they even have compatible reproductive organs??
Dantick09 They're humanoid. It's safe to say they'd probably have things in the same place and relative in size.
I wanna complain but fuck I've devoted my life to series where each alien race are bipedal symmetrical hominids that are able to speak the same language with no explanation and the primary race is indistinguishable from humans because Akira Toriyama.
*****
Thats the Mass Effect explanation (and a few other sci-fi series as well). Dragon Ball has given 0 as no one gave enough of a damn to acknowledge it for 25-30+ years. I admit the lore and so called science in DB is shaky at best so my realization is just a silly gripe.
Really hoping for less humanoid aliens in this game.
they remind me of the aliens from Saints Row 4
...Oh so they do.
The face is still too human;
we shouldn't feel any sort of connection with an antagonistic species from an entirely different galaxy.
Think Lovecraftian Sci-fi, so foreign to what we're used to, it makes us feel a sense of dread or discomfort just looking at them.
Kyle Kirschner exactly, but they moved away from that to make them more relatable for some reason. I hear you can get one as squadmate, but if people can relate to an animal or robot, why not an alien?
Or the geth.
+Willie Pete
Agreed, people will enjoy what squadmates they choose regardless, that's the beauty of having options lol. It's even less believable for a distant galaxy to have humanoid characteristics.
yea at least it was explained away somewhat in the milky way galaxy with the stupid robot genocide against humans every x years and then reseeding of planets ... here though yea apparently all intelligent species are the same nothing else works cause me space science
I didn't know that Snowden's clone worked at Bioware :o
Edward Snowden works for BioWare now?
So many talks about about alien look and in the end you give Kett human faces. Brilliant...
I would have preferred that first version of the kett at 3:44 it looked pretty cool
same dude love that design
Joe berdanke I like the one in 2:10 in the bottom left. I think it looks cool.
Sharing rigs seems lazy, why not make a completely new species with spider like legs or something?
Descendant of Kraff that character would need a dedicated production team of its own if they didnt share the rig. basically doubling the work for no tangible gain and breaking multiplayer. Not worth it.
Disagree. It worth because it brings actually new design of characters, gameplay and experience for developing next games. Remember vortigaunts and other species from Half-Life? By some reason Valve didnt hesitate to create absolutely strange alien organisms. So Bioware could.
Dr. Harvey The cost of developing an AAA game has increased nearly 1000% since then. Not a good comparison. I'm sure we are going to see lots of not humanoid characters. Just don't expect them to be crew or playable.
lastone032085 Understandable, but then let they don't talk about creating humanoids like absolutely unusual creatures.
Descendant of Kraff Reusing assets and stuff in games may seem lazy, but as a designer you to recycle some stuff in order to keep working on new as well as save money, time, and memory limit so you can make that new stuff.
Making a new rig with a character that has complicated movement using more that 4 limbs is very possible but extremely costly in time, memory, and money.
Not to say it's impossible or shouldn't be done at some point, but while creativity is vitality important you need to make sure you can't bite off more than you can chew.
1. They looks much like the collectors banged the protheans.
2. I hope the kett are not only an enemy like the reapers were I hope Ryder could recruit a kett and talk to more civilized kett that don't agree with the radical ketts.
3. The kett should not be the only new race the Milky Way had Asari, salarians,turians,batarians,Krogan, protheans, quarians(#lovetali) and many more in to total about 17 races, and you are telling me that in andromeda that is a much bigger Galaxy than the Milky Way there will only be 1 race, I ask a minimum of about 10 new races because if we only get one I'll be disappointed, remember the Asari, humans,turians and salarians are there only because they came from the Milky Way, so plz more races.
inFamousxable I'm replying to your first point. Collectors are prothean, did you play mass effect 2?
I'm assuming there are going to be a little more than just one race since the description tells us that this is the first but not last revealed race.
+Medic1089 well yes and no, collectors are the protheans that were subjected to genetically experimentation plus cybernetic modification and they were indoctrinated, so yes the basis of the collectors are the protheans but, the end result is basically a different species, if you want more of a visual representation check the pics between Javik, the prothean on ME3, and a collector.
inFamousxable oh I know I'm a huge ME fan, I just thought that was kinda funny but really if you look at the concept art of the protheans in mass effect 1,2,3 they're all differebtb
+Medic1089 one good way to look at it which is kinda cool is that the collectors the same as the prothean as much as the husk are the same as humans or the banshee are the same as the Asari, the reapers just take different especially and genetically modified them to suit their needs, that's why I consider the collectors a different especies from the protheans.
uploaded 3 hours ago and almost 5k views already :) I flew here when i saw this pop up, im trying to get my hands on any little detail about the new mass effect thanks GI
music in the background just takes me back😢, those were good times.
When they showed the silhouettes all I could see was "COLLECTORS"
Soooooo pretty much the Collectors....?
At 2:11 the head on second row, middle. That head has a very aerodynamic form, if worked on it could be another race used as a basis for aviation. A race with wings, how cool wouldn't that be?
The abstract background is a extremely high res photograph of a cave in a beach. It's funny because i needed to draw it realistically a month or so back.
The Hive meets the collectors
Such a shame and disappointing to see something that looks so generic after all that creative exploration.
... and then they made the face completely human.
Christ.
+Enthused Norseman Right? How do they go from all those cool, alien concept designs to that bland ass human face?
I like the concept arts better, they looked uniquely different. I dont want to see anymore intimidating looking humanoid aliens. These guys probably lived in different planet oxygen levels and gravitational hold. Not to mention a different environment, lets have them look a little gross or something really sophisticated. Something outta ball park
And not to mention it's a whole different galaxy. Can developers get at least a bit more creative?
Cosmos is still built from the same ingredients everywhere: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, helium, .. it's expected to have aliens built from the same ingredients as we are (in ex. carbon based rather than sillicon based for instance, not due to its abundance though but its chemical "reactivity"). Being bipedal might be also common feature of any land-based apex organism elsewhere (provided it exists) as a result of two legs being minimal setup to provide full transportation flexibility on land (obviously any potential water based civilization wouldn't be bipedal). It is believed that rules of evolution are the same everywhere (just living environment might be different, determining different sets of body features to be favoured).
reav3rtm yeah but different oxygen levels means different size aliens. doesnt make srnse for them to be all average adult height. also most life thrives in water, I expect atleast one sentient alien to not be bipedal. I get it though, humans evolved to be effecient but I cant expect them to all to look soo similar. possibly they could have larger eye sockets cuz they adapt to sense different wavelengths. or some sort of venomous skin to protect against predators. anything else but an intimidating humanoid
I think it would've been fantastic to see a relative to a species we already know. From the early trailers, the 'enemy' to me looked like some sort of Geth hybrid, as if they had already been in Andromeda for a long time (they were MIA for a while in the Milky Way). I even heard Geth weapon fire in the trailer. We saw AI turn into consciousness in the first 3 games. It would've been awesome to see Synthetic life going through evolution in the next 3. They obviously evolve a lot faster than we do. It will boggle my mind if they don't explore this at all. It's always 'there's the robot, it becomes self-aware, the end.' I want to see a robot evolve.
Hi That is an amazing idea
I really don't like how every race is basically a mutated human. At least add some variation with the arms or legs or body structure or something. The Kett is just a bunch of stuff slapped onto a human template, not very exciting or interesting.
Side note: Why the green armor? Been done in enough with Halo. There are a lot of different colors out there that could work better with the Kett's natural colors.
+Yohoseph ... Like black and/or white? Yeah, real eye candy right there.
Yohoseph rig limitations he said it himself. Non humanoid are harder and take longer to program. It's why the Elcor and Hannah are so rarely seen.
There isn't a lot of green armour in Mass Effect though. Most colours used have been black, white and blue. So I think that the green armour is to show that the Kett are a truly different species from a different galaxy than us.
Panspermia! Google it.
The other theory is > You have to look kinda human to achive such technology
The eyes,nose,ears and mouth are 99.9999% on your head.
The head has to be small enough so youre not fragile like shit.
But big enough for a decent brain.
The body has to be strong to build stuff, but not too strong, so youre able to live free to run and stuff
You need arms, maybe legs. You have to control stuff, so you need fingers too
The species has to be a landwalker
Water species cant travel trough space.
Under water you cant melt steel, you cant work on electonics and stuff..
All of that, and more, are the way to look like a human.
Or kinda human..
***** tbf halo probably has a bigger budget and doctor who is a TV show.
I think the Kett look alot like the Hive in Destiny. Not exactly ground breaking. Not bad, just not anything to brag about.
When a Hive Knight and Collector love each other very much
0:50 Hm, interesting.
2:02 Awesome looking aliens!
3:30 Kinda looks too much like a collector but badass design regardless
3:50 Wait, what are you doing? Is that a human in armor?
4:44 I...fuck
So alien, yet they look like something out of Star Trek, but less inspired.
Does anybody else notice the "Galaxy Map" music playing in the background??
I spent half my time in ME2 listening to it as I collected about 700k of each mineral.
That music is the soul of ME, without it, there is no ME.
Sci_Ant ;)
pffft this "game" isn't Mass Effect
King Derner Cousland And why is that? It's made by the same people and has the similar characters. It even brings back the MAKO from ME 1.
1:58 The moment you know somebody is saying something but he knows he's lying.
Great content guys!
So basically evil(er) Protheans? Wow such original conceptt Bioware!
Right. The aliens can't look alien or else they'll be too alien.
If it was realy alien it would hard to relate to and animat
Arklight10 I get it, but I think it would be cool to face something that's so very different from what we're used to. They could even use the fact that you can't relate to them as some form of plot-point. I understand your point too though
Collectors look more alien than these guys. Granted you don't have conversations with Collectors. Geth then, Legion was the most 'alien' of all the party members.
And I thoroughly enjoyed conversations with Legion. I find the idea of something with a culture that alien and strange to us really interesting. I think it's within the realm of possibility to achieve an empathetic relation with something that doesn't look human. It's similar to how we empathise with animals.
Their final design sketch looked really cool and although humanoid, still looked very alien and unique, then he goes "we wanted to make them less human so we made their eyes milky", cut to the next set of pictures and its gone from a cool looking alien to a human in cosplay. You don't make them less human by making them look much more like humans bioware.
Will be great seeing them animated, that's always a huge difference than still shots, and generally just see more of the actual ingame model.
Is that Edward Snowden?
Fucking hell im excited in this game so much
Straight up just looks like a collector and a human combined...
4:17 The alien on the far right has a smiley face on the back of his armor
The collectors were naked...
This guys arms are HUGH MUNGUS
HUGH MUNGUS WOT?!?!?!?!?!
I like some of the old designs but this one is great too! the details, especially the eyes are awesome! Wonder what they will sound like!
So, are the milky way races gonna be the synthetic/organic hybrids theyre turned into after the mass effect 3 ending?
Joel Macmillan? Please, that's Edward Snowden
Too bad they didn't pursue some of the earlier designs. I was digging the crustacean, mollusk-like vibe, which was still very emotive. Somehow, making them look more human robbed them of their humanity. The generic, sci-fi, slag-men design is very uninspiring. Compared to the Geth(naked), the Turians, Volus, Elcor, Hanar(naked), Rachni(naked)... well these are some of the most human looking aliens in Mass Effect. Bunch of Voldemorts in "bone" armor. Hell, even the Asari were substantially intriguing despite also serving as the perfunctory space-babes (for either gender - also, potentially naked). Even the collectors, cannon fodder though they were, told more of a visual story, and Javik was straight up sexy design work. These kind of remind me of chitari. I can get over it, but hopefully it isn't indicative of the creative direction for the whole game. Hopefully there are many interesting variants on this basic design (he did say these were the grunts). I understand that there are limitations, but this is Bioware. Shouldn't they be pushing past those? Isn't that the point? Ah well. Something to hope for at least. And in the end, this is their art, their game. If their vision is discongruous with ours, well, that is okay. The original trilogy remains my favorite game series. I dare the new team to try and supplant it.
Agreed. I assume the design was destroyed by higher ups (not artists) making shit decisions within the company.
Such is the way of the game industry now days.
Tragic.
they always have to go for something more "human" when it comes to teammates or enemies, due to animations and gameplay. that's why species like the elcor or hanar are mostly background npc's, a shame really
Yeah, I assume that's what he meant by "we share some rigs" but think about the brutes from ME3 - those were pretty inhuman. And they didn't have to give it a "human" face.Like you said, it's a shame.
A lot imagination time and resources goes into this stuff. Crazy pretty interesting the background of games developed
the one thing i really wanted in ME:A was a continuation of the Protheans and im glad the Kett had a Prothean like outcome
Off the topic of mass effect but damn, look at that guy, he's got some guns. For an art director of a major game I'm impressed.
That dude clearly lifts lol
Can you say, "Yuuzhan Vong - redux!?"
like most people i doubt anyone at bioware has ever heard of that non canon fanfic crap #legendssucks
+Exile Studios Hey! Some of us like those books...
Conner Nickerson well some of you are fucking morons
MOST of Legends was crap. Some of it however was freaking awesome. Like Thrawn, who was so awesome they made him and his species canon again.
Goraka91 sure and revan was pretty cool but thats pretty much it lucas films has taken the best part of the legends continuity and brought it over to canon (except revan curse you lucas films) and now they can make new stuff
It wood be good to see a collector element with the kett and show a link with the assume control possessed mode and this being the Origen of that to make an antagonistic link between the bad guy in both galaxies
Ah yes, we go to another galaxy and meet humanoid aliens with human like faces, quality work right there, makes perfect sense. Bioware you did it again.
Awesome!
not digging the new alien, he talks a lot of about making it less sympathetic or more alien than our galaxy's aliens and then they go and make a Collector with a human face that looks a lot like our resident and only remaining Prothean, Javik, but with a hoop behind its head.
the first head designs looked fantastic, very alien, more than our galaxy aliens, then they kinda started looking like turians 2.0, specifically Saren-like by the looks of those silhouettes he emphasized a lot on, then they looked like anorexic krogans but still with a cool alien head, and then they turned it into a collector and ditched the cool alien head for a more human look...looking way too sympathetic and not very alien, like the asari.
I can look past humanoid bodies but the head/face is the most important part of a new alien, like he said. It sounds like they wanted to do another successful main alien race like the turians in terms of face and how weird they looked while also still be readable like Garrus, but they probably were maybe too alien looking of a species, making it hard or time consuming to animate the faces, dropping the alien look and ending up with a human face, like the super 8 alien.
hopefully they are more interesting to talk to than look at, and hopefully other aliens look more alien.
i liked the early models better than the final.
My question is whether all khett will look like the one from this video or whether the khett will vary love me the different sketches
Not very original to be perfectly honest, I mean, how is that even Gears of War can come up with more interesting designs for their creatures in the new game.
With all this talk of trying to make the new species more alien, they couldn't ditch the humanoid form.
Seriously, they are supposed to be from a whole other galaxy and they even have human teeth.
Sitting on Ceilings But human teeth?
Sitting on Ceilings Even that explanation doesn't explain the human teeth.
Sitting on Ceilings that's just dumb
hey does any one know if this is going to have all the races from the first 3 and is it a prolog or continuing off of the 3rd one i how it continues i know it doesn't have sheperd tho and if it continues i hope liara and garrus and the aliens that live a long time
The final version seems okay, but I hope they make the face more alien. The mouth to still have that crocodile thing going like the "refined version" before they gave him a human face and the nose to still be very up and snubby and the eyes to still be wide. Everything else looks neat except the god damn face.
To add on or correct, the handsome Collector vibe was better than a Dark Elf embedded in a cockroach. Besides that, they're still somewhat enjoyable to see and I can't wait to see them in-game with the full graphics.
What's up with all those inverted knees?! Salarians, Turians, Quarians, and now Ketts!
Is there any scientific explanation, or is it pure aesthetic?!
***** yeah, lot's os pictures of real people with inverted knees...not quite what I was expecting...
"We need to design something that looks alien."
"What about knees that bend backwards or are inverted."
"Looks different. Looks... (removes sunglasses he had on for no reason) *_alien!_*"
[repeat ad nauseum anytime a difficult design decision is required and actual work might be involved]
ʙɪᴏᴡᴀʀᴇ ᴀᴘᴘʀᴏᴠᴇᴅ!
magaldi Not necessarily pure aesthetic but it is alien on a biped lifeform...or rather uncommon in everyday life.
The inverted knees or digitigrade (loosely) was found on theropod dinosaur who all stood on two legs (Also had tails for balance).
There are some advantages to it (such as acting as a spring for better movement) though they are more common on quadrupeds then bipeds, hence why it often invokes an alien look.
matchesburn Considering the limitations of character rigs (Seriously if they wanted to crazy with multiple limbs that they'd have to create very new rigs with possibly very memory consumption depending on the complexity and how much it was capable of). Honestly, you do have make certain sacrifices when doing this, and using sort of digitigrade legs is still a good choice.
Would be cool if they through in a few ungulates in there too.
talks about how its flipped in the beginning. less milky way aliens. less humaniod. less sleek. bone carapace armor. middle of the video yeah we eventually went back and giving you milky way design aliens. seriously, the collectors are far more accurate depiction of what they intended based on what he said in the beginning. or vorsha. or turian.
So how did the cinematic animator become the art director?
sick guys
keep up the good work
I really like the design at 3:42. Th end product looks worse imo....
JUST LOOK at the designs for the Kett at 1:23 and look them at 4:23.....They could have been sooo cool looking and alien but no, ...It looks like a guy in a suit..
External bones are quite a good idea tbh... Makes sense since they evolve in harsh environment, allowing external bones to grow for more protection.
The new Race looks pretty much just like an artistic iteration of the Protheans...