The article "Criticism Of The Facial Animation In 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' May Have Been Misdirected" by Kevin Murnane discusses how many people have negative opinions on Mass Effect: Andromeda's facial animations. The article first summarizes people's reactions, and then explains why the facial animations are so bad.
Murnane believes that criticisms towards the game should have been directed at Electronic Arts, the game's publishing company, rather than the animators who may have been rushed to get the game ready for release. The author states that "people at either Bioware or Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, that insisted the game be released before it was ready." (Kevin Murnane). Murnane talked with Jonathan Cooper, a lead animator on previous Mass Effect games. Cooper said that "In RPGs like Mass Effect, the player chooses among dialogue options which lead to different paths through a conversation. Rather than a single, scripted dialogue sequence there are any number of possible dialogue paths. Facial animations must be created for all of these paths" (Jonathan Cooper).
The article does a really nice job at defending the animators at Bioware, and informing people of the reasons as to why the game's facial animations are so low quality. However, Murnane compares Mass Effect: Andromeda to several other games, such as Uncharted and The Witcher 3. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a different game made by a different company, and while it's easy to compare, it's unfair since Bioware is a smaller company.
Overall, I agree with Murnane. Bioware's animators were likely not at fault here, and may have been rushed to finish the game so it could be released quickly. Bioware has been known to rush games, and were criticized for reusing assets from Dragon Age: Origins in Dragon Age 2 so it isn't rare to see this kind of criticism direct at Bioware's development team.
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