I wouldn't say she Ryder is ugly. However,I think the female is reusing animations made for her male counterpart. The potential recycling of animations onto the female character, is what I suspect is the source of her weird facial animations.

Bring back Miranda! Best pixelated ass I've ever seen lol

I think it's rather juvenile to judge part of a game based on the attractiveness of a character. How does that affect gameplay? And if the main reason you're playing a game is cause you think one of the characters is hot, that's sad to me. Every game is art, all art is different and unique and not everyone classifies the same exact design and look as "attractive". To call these character designs "ugly" is an insult to the artists behind such a great franchise.

Well for the male version, I will recreate Shepard face and image that the male voice is Shepard since I hate the new character face and voice.

I believe it is down to the culture at Bioware rather than the skill of the artists, so it is more of a creative choice to give every female character a man jaw. They even made Miranda in ME2 look more like Michael Jackson than Yvonne Strahovski.
Video games are meant to be an escape from reality, where gamers can save the world and get the girl (or boy), and usually the characters are meant to be an idealised version of beauty. So the potential love interest should be the woman, or man of your dreams. Looking at the women in Mass Effect Andromeda, I'd like to quote Tom Hardy's character Eames from Inception "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."

Shrek needs lovin too.

Because SJW got them good.

Because they used your momma as a character model

The main characters definitely look generic and thats probably what they were going for. However its silly to say they are ugly. Going by your standards most people would be ugly.
I will definitely change the look since I prefer a more idealised look for a fantastic fictional adventure.

Edit:
I think the other characters look great.

Because SJWare.

This is starting to become ridiculous. Those creatures from Inquisition looked bad enough, and you were expected to romance then 'vomits'

If she appeared too beautiful perhaps some would complain that she was being over sexualised?

One of the best things about Mass Effect us spending hours at the beginning editing Shep's face. I will be doing the same with Ryder.

Forget her appearance, the animations are complete garbage. Bioware died after EA bought them in 2009, the last good quality title they produced was made and finished before EA could interfere with the development. It's all been safe and awful since.

This article should enter the category of dumbest article 2007

I wasn't aware that the main character was supposed to be a supermodel.....

so making a game, film, comic book character or employ people at a place of work have to be attractive do they. Journalism at its finest as usual/s

Look like she got hit with a bag of quarters.

Oh my god this is gonna start a war. Now sensitive people are gonna say ugly people are people too and why don't we have more ugly lead characters. Then people will point out ugly ones and even silly cartoons. Then people will say they are brainwashing us and that illuminati is coming for us. Then the aliens. Ffs.

Well, I think there are two possibilities here; either they are not capable of creating a besutiful character (which I highly doubt) or they just wanted to be left wing liberal progressive social justice warriors and make the characters ugly. Yes, ugly people are people too but when I play a fantasy video game I don't want to see ugly people. I can see that when I walk outside. There is nothing extraordinary in it.

They look better than Alloy from Horizon Zero dawn.

Probably they are doing this on purpose so those SJW don't start annoying with their over sexualized feminism mentality.

Female Ryder looks retarded since day one. I remember the last gameplay reveal trailer of MEA, Female Ryder's face killed the whole experience.

HAHAHA Looks like Niko Bellic's cousin Roman from GTA IV! "Hey cousin. Let's go bowling!"

Like other commenters have said, some of the people they are based on look WAY better than the in-game characters. That is either bad programmers or something purposely stupid to make them uglier.

I'd have to agree, all of the characters this time around that i've seen aren't created in a very feminine manner. Sure in the real world there are all types, but there doesn't seem much diversity in this regard. In previous mass effects they seem to have done a better job.

The pic on the cover doesn't do justice to the real woman voicing the character.

Who cares i thought you could change the face anyway?

Why do Mass Effect: Andromeda´s female characters look so ugly? Fixed.

CD Project Red characters look so much better then this, Im not surpriced though, after the god awful female character models in Dragon Age Inquesition.

You can have hypocrisy & you can have hypocrisy, everyone can have hypocrisy.

Because they wanted her to look like your mom.

"Why Do* Mass Effect: Andromeda´s female characters look so ugly?" #correction

Sees! Those are bats.

Even I must admit after seeing jayde rossi and her mass effect model in the links below, that they severely screwed up, there's a massive difference there.

It is a good job bioware are not plastic surgeons or into face reconstruction in real life, you would come out looking something completely new, they would how ever be perfect if you was on the run and with your new identity got a new face also.

Looks like it's time to get use to ugly butch characters in our games now smh. Thank god for dead or alive beach volleyball. I'll have to pop that in every so often to be reminded what hot game babes use to look like.

she is ok...

Because if they were attractive, people would complain.

Because theyre all transies maybe. They got to fit the bill for both male and female...whereas nowadays whose gonna want to play a white supremacist male?? lol

you know things have gone bad when you call ME2 bioware, " Old Bioware"

who cares? and i would be surprised if bioware didn't let you customiz the character

I am starting to wonder how in the hell so many articles get posted here with IMPROPER GRAMMER??????? It really bothers me. WHY DOES MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDAS FEMALS LOOK SO UGLY?????

THAT WOULD BE WHY DO???? Do none of the people who approve these articles have more than a 3rd grade education.....literally 3rd grade...

This character look like an anorexic nerd with low energy due to flapping(masturbating)! 😂 😂 😂

Seriously what happen Bioware? Mass Effect 1,2, and 3 female characters look way better! Who approved that look? Why didn't the modeler say something about this? It looks nothing like her. I would sue these people lol.

Well "Ugly" is a very subjective term. Just because the final computer model doesn't look exactly like a super model, does that make them "Ugly?" I personally know plenty of average looking guys and girls who if you asked them, think they look like frigging super models. People see what they wish to. And seriously, in a space exploration game, I don't care that much what they look like.

She looks good and wont look like that in the final version, they confirmed on Twitter that they would change her face abit so that she doesen't look plasty and bulky in the face when she smiles and talks.

Also keep in mind that you can do a Heavy character customization in the game, also confirmed on Twitter from the devs. Here is a small change of her face and more to come b4 release.

https://twitter.com/Disp0sa...

Honestly the female character looks like a transexual. Do these programmers understand women have narrower cheek bone. A womens shoulders are not like a mans, a woman has smaller hands, smaller then men. I am boycotting this game and will not play it until they fix female characters because their is no way the future has a female mass extinction and causes men to sleep with Transexuals. They had women in the first, second, and third game so I expect women in Mass Effect Andromeda. I am not ready for a game about men and male transexuals with the extinction of women. I never cared about women characters until they decided to make female characters to look like male transexuals. Bring back sexy Laura Croft, make them look like women atleast. We pay alot of fucking money for these games. I know the programmers can do a better job because they did a job with the past games. The image of female characters in this game has me thinking that the programmers have been having sex with dude in dresses because they are expecting us to accept that women look nothing like the female version. Honestly how hard is it to look at female character look sexy and feminine. I want some nice curves and fuck whatever feminist and the damzel in distress bullshit. Female characters in games are suppose to live up to our fantasies because its not an actual person so have some sexy female outfits instead. Feminist are ugly women who struggle to get a boyfriend and these characters are obviously men in drag.

Looking at Bioware's previous games it's clear that they dont have good enough graphical designers to make good looking female faces.

Well, there :
https://youtu.be/HrWgLMH8yR...
I think she looks much nice now.

the look very bad. Cartoony.

You don't have to be good looking, to do be good at your job!

they're supposed to be soldiers, not supermodels.

Don't expect the whole Quiet/MGSV business everywhere

Unless you plan on "mashing it" to a computer game, who cares?

they are only going to be more covered up and manly from now on, might as well go full butch and make all female characters look like ellen,

does anyone know if you can create your own character like in previous ones? that should solve some problem that some people have with her face.

The artists surely can do great characters, must be either the art direction or on purpose. To be honest, most ME or DA characters look like Poser figures (Poser is a software to create generic characters) to me.

Also what bothers me often with these Bioware games: characters squinting all the f*cking time.

Im not going to risk a ban for this lol

Why do*

Never liked a Bioware game and putting SJW politics into a game is very annoying.

Because of their character design and engine. Bioware, since ME1, has been consistently bad at making faces. Very few turn out proper, almost none have proper facial animations. It's one thing they've never been good at.

Well if Horizon can do it so can we!

Frostbite don't do female character models so well for some reason, maybe cause it was originally built around a military shooter with rugged burly men ?

Who knows

That's not the only ugly thing in the game, from what i see

"Ugly".

She looks fine, the hell?

Beautiful people are offensive to ugly people apparently.

Looks like the early Ashley Williams face mod is still in use .

Manveer likes trannies

Well why does everyone have to look good? Can't they just be a regular person? If we want video games that immerse us, then then stop forcing typical stereotypes in games.

Who cares, are you that materialist? And that is solely personal, but I don't think Sarah ryder is THAT ugly. By the way I'm pretty sick of those perfect-faced characters in certain games where everyone is slim and sexy, as this is ridiculous and certainly not realistic. Beauty is in imperfections which makes people (and characters) unique.

ok I'm not a SJW or a femnazi and if gam devs are trying to make characters ugly. Because they feel pressed to do so. By femnazi Is a shame and honestly i saw this coming back in Far cry 4. But truthful I saw the pic of the girl she ain't hot but i wouldn't say she was ugly. To be honesty i mean i'll smash it. Not the game character but a girl who looked like that. But I've been told in the past i have low standers so that might be in play here.

Because this game looks dated in parts and its been in development for quite some time now. Plus none of the human face models ever looked good in any of these Mass Effect games there was always that janky uncanny valley look to them.

Becuase if you portray healthy fit women you're obviously a mysogonist and probably a Nazi

I'm surprised we aren't being given forced to play in a hijab or as a non-binary trans fluid non-genered unicorn

Give it a year and there will be no white people in video games and if they are it will be as DLC becuase of their privilage lol

those chars look like mothers kid.like they are soft and so on.this is sci-fi game with bad ass alians,and we get mother kids? are kidding me?

There is no really nice women to romance with in this game...lol
That blonde have a strange old face, our main female character have strange face as well.

Does it mean no bikini armour?

I'm guessing that's her default face. I'm sure we can sculpt her into whatever we want.

Really folks. These are not real people. Who cares.

Why do opinion blog always scream to the top on N4G.

FFS thirsty blogs.

Dear author...Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Only ugly people are arguing this is fine because it's realistic. The entire game is unrealistic.

Better looking than most humans I see on a daily basis....then again I live in New England

That's every game that.

For some reason, female characters are never as realistic looking as males in video games.

Because Bioware games all have materials and rendering effects that look really ugly on human skin. A vast array of factors including lighting, materials, shadows, the mesh, the textures, the maps, the individual abilities of the person who cleaned up the scan/sculpted the character, the notes that person was given from superiors, and the individual preferences of the person looking at it can affect how a 3d character looks.

Oh wait no I guess it's the sinister SJW conspiracy that's... doing something. There is no nuance nor complexity in the world, everything is determined only by political leanings and twitter.

I'm sad I ever clicked on that trash link.

So it's not just me that thinks they are ugly. Thank goodness.

So much fear in offending every little sjw out there... Blizzard and EA both go out of their way with this nonsense and actually use it for publicity - just look at the gay characters in their games - I have no problem with their representation but it's so obvious when they go out of their way to publicise how "inclusive" they are. OKAY we get it...

bioware cannot model or animate for shit, this isn't news

AWFUL

Glad I wasn't the only one to notice this. I found the females too look laughably bad from the very first reveal.

BioWare really needs to have their name changed. They simply don't deserve to carry that name any longer.

Here's hoping mods aren't screwed by EA and their draconian DRM implementations.

After reading numerous articles from tgg.com over the past year, I'm convinced this website is trying to compete with Polygon in terms of clickbait and nontroversy pettiness.

I would call it a leftist sjw feminist move, but honestly the a few of the females look more characteristic rather than just sexy. I like it.

I wish games allowed you to create all of your squad members looks. Then you could make them however you wanted and what their sexual orientation was. Even if it was just the starting characters. Then none of this would matter

I don't really have a problem if bioware doesn't want all of their female characters to look like models or wants some of them to look a little more masculine like that short haired chick (not really my thing, but hey, to each his own). My problem with the female Ryder is just how she looks "off" especially once you compare her to the actual model.

Gaming journalism/internet these days

Japanese games: Why are the girls too hot
American games: Why are the girls not hot

Probably some stupid reason like "they are all lesbians because we are so progressive so buy our game" Bioware always pulls this stuff trying to sell their game simply by the fact there are gay characters. I love Mas effect but I always thought they put away too much emphasis on that.

Must be a lack of talent to draw from. EA still has a bad reputation for the unpaid overtime class action lawsuit.

She looks hot to me, but I admit I have no standards. My prof pic is w/e

Why do...

If they were too hot, feminists would no doubt cry about them being sexually objectified by the devs. Duh.

It seems like a waste of time, altering the appearance of the models to make them less attractive. Why not just hire average looking models, then actually model the character after the model?

The male model is superb so the idea it's lazy modeling seems suspect

Ugly female character designs seem to be a new trend. First Horizon Zero Dawn and now this.

It matters why? Doesn't bother me if they are damn fine or damn ugly.

This is kind of misogynistic dude. If I wrote an article about a similar topic, it'd be way better. Oh hey, I did. ;)

Just really....

How about you just play the game and find something meaningful to bitch about, like how shallow you have to be to think this is an issue at all. Take care of that and maybe you'll be able to enjoy the game. BFW!

Liara and Tali are my ride or dies for life.

Such an incredible list of characters. It's hard to choose favourites. Although I think Mass Effect - I think Garrus. Fantastic trilogy.