The capture quality is ass and the image compression is worse than you' ll find over at IGN, but hey, more Mass Effect! Right?

Note: There' s zero chance these are 720p captures. They' ve been re-sized from what looks like 480p, so it' s probably nowhere near as bad as it seems. However, you can tell that the texture quality is lacking, that some of the environments look pretty bad and that some of the character models look laughable.

I need to see 720p native frame buffer captures before i start talking about graphical downgrades, but i' m getting the feeling that some concessions have had to be made...































More HERE

How in hell can this happen?

After all, didn' t hey have this game running on a 360 behind closed doors at E3 for the press to play, and didn' t they all say that it indeed looked unbelievable? If this indeed is going to be how Mass Effect ends up looking come the launch of the game, a whole lot of gamers are going to be pissed.

Nah, i don' t think it' s anywhere near as bad as these images portay. I just wanted to pre-empt any strikes by our... ...more troublesome members...

These are jusy REALLY bad screenshots. A combination of shitty capture hardware, re-sizing and horrible compression to keep the file sizes down (these 720p screens clock in at approx 76kb each whereas normally you' d be looking at about 230kb each)

So i wouldn' t worry too much.

I do think that some textures will be lacking but i can' t see the game being too far removed from the latest footage (the character spotlights at Gametrailers), and that looks amazing.

Anyone who belives in the images must be retarded.

Some other douche uploaded from the same video,and in one screen one had just a fat grey thing on him like it looks in GoW when it hasnt loaded.

Some beta crap,which has been fucked up.

I find that screenshots from the UE3 engine end up looking pretty shitty, due to the way it does post processing to mask up flaws like AA. Most of the UT3 screenshots that Epic has released actually look good because they are taken at a super high resolution like 4096x2304 and then shrunk down to 1280x720 in order to give the impression of soft edges and smoother/sharper images. So when you factor in the god awful captures here it doesn' t surprise me.

eg.

Released Screenshot of UT3


Original screenshot (warning HUGE)

I guess we don' t have long to wait to see whether there have been a ton of tradeoffs or not in ME.

Nah, i don' t think it' s anywhere near as bad as these images portay. I just wanted to pre-empt any strikes by our... ...more troublesome members...

These are jusy REALLY bad screenshots. A combination of shitty capture hardware, re-sizing and horrible compression to keep the file sizes down (these 720p screens clock in at approx 76kb each whereas normally you' d be looking at about 230kb each)

So i wouldn' t worry too much.

I do think that some textures will be lacking but i can' t see the game being too far removed from the latest footage (the character spotlights at Gametrailers), and that looks amazing.

Damn you Nitro!!!!!!!!!!

When I first read the title of this thread of yours, and then your post I was pissed off!!!!!!!

But now I see why you posted what you did......................but still " Damn you Nitro!!!"

The capture quality is ass and the image compression is worse than you' ll find over at IGN, but hey, more Mass Effect! Right?

Note: There' s zero chance these are 720p captures. They' ve been re-sized from what looks like 480p, so it' s probably nowhere near as bad as it seems. However, you can tell that the texture quality is lacking, that some of the environments look pretty bad and that some of the character models look laughable.

I need to see 720p native frame buffer captures before i start talking about graphical downgrades, but i' m getting the feeling that some concessions have had to be made...

Hi,

For the record, these are direct debug machine screendumps, rendered internally at 1280x720. The compression is 80% quality JPEG through Fireworks. The same as EVERY other image on gamer.tm that we' ve taken ourselves.

The screenshots have been taken from review code. Not preview, or any early build before that.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all that.

Regards,
J

OK, this thread has prompted me to upload some uncompressed ones.

http://www.gamer.tm/news.asp?id=1679&filtr=360

Regards,
J

Ok, now I am completely confused.

Are these screenshots really what we can go by as to what Mass Effect is going to look like come the release or not? It' s not going to change my mind on whether or not I will get the game as I have already pre-ordered it, but at the same time I can' t help it if it does matter a bit to me that this game might not look as good as we have all come to think.

I am thinking that maybe I should just avoid all Mass Effect threads until I get the game in the mail.

I dunno but reviews (Game Informer specifically) has claimed that the visuals rival a final fantasy cut scene...I think thats a bit exagerated tho you get the just of what they mean.

Phew. I was hoping you were just talking about the graphics. Don' t ever scare me like that again.

Ok, I was just on the Bioware forums and came across a good post regarding those " screenshots" from Chris Priestley.

Here is a link to the forum thread where one member mentions those " screenshots" . Another member posts after that no, there were no downgrades to the game, and then that is further confirmed after that by Chris Priestly.

LINK

Cool thing is, Chris is on the forums right now so I think that UncleJaysus you should head on over there so that you can let Chris know that he is wrong about his own game, and set him straight for us.

These look like native 720p pictures to me. Just look at the text. If they were upscaled 480p you would definitely be able to tell.

From the Bioware forums: " No, no downgrade. Those aren' t really " screenshots" . They' re frame grabs likely from someone playing a green disc press version of the game with a poor TV.

thats what a community coordinator of bioware sayd (atleast i think hes a community coordinator)" .

Hmmm, poor TV? That' s odd, I wasn' t aware the quality of the TV mattered when taking screendumps directly from the Xbox 360. Well, it matters if the 360 is hooked up to a standard def TV, as then the 360 renders at a lower resolution and outputs the grabs accordingly. But that' s not the case here: we played it on a hi-def TV and the screenshots were dumped at 1280x720.

Also, we have final reviewable code.

Comments left over at gamer.tm have expressed a concern that the ' Grain Filter' is making the screenshots look dodgy (highly possible), so tomorrow we' re going to take some grabs with that turned off.

Gamer.tm ? WTF is that? We' re supposed to believe some second-rate no name site' s screens over IGN, teamxbox, gamespot, oxm, egm, gamepro and the almighty quez? Seriously, GTFO our forum, your site is a waste of megabytes. All the aforementioned sites and publications have screens 5times better than that.

Well gamer.tm got what they wanted, they got a stir in the pond and comments directly from Bioware.

I think its pretty obvious they suck majorly at capturing images.

It' s possible that Like Gears of War, most screenshots come out badly.

Either way, Gamespot have some direct feed gameplay footage up that should satisfy everybody. Check it out HERE

Ugly or not, if the game looks better than KOTOR then I' m happy because the rest of the game (gameplay, story, music, atmosphere etc.) is supposed to be awesome.
F*** all you graphic whores. Mass Effect will be great no matter how ugly it gets.

I went onto the Bioware forums because to me it seemed a little strange that after the game has gone gold, and after a whole lot of the gaming press already has had hands on time with the game, plus all of the screenshots that are posted on Bioware' s website on a regular basis, that just now with a few weeks before the release of the game all of sudden a website posts screenshots of Mass Effect that look like ass.

It just seemed a little odd. Add on top of that, that most of those screenshots on 360gamer are screenshots that we have already seen on other sites (IGN, Gamespot, Gamepro Etc.) that looked gorgeous on those sites, but for some reason on 360gamer they look like ass. Either they have no clue how to take a proper screenshot, or it is as Nitro stated that simply some games like Gears of War just don' t show up well in screenshots.

On another note, I hope to be seeing everyone in some COD4 multiplayer over Live come Tuesday!!!!!!!!

Bioware just released a new in-game trailer when in combat.

It looked the same as we all seen it before and nothing like these pics ffs.