You know what’s sad? A small, moderately budgeted point-and-click game from Microids has better characterizations and visual presentation than an AAA studio like BioWare when it comes to animations and character designs. It’s fairly evident with the new story trailer for the upcoming Syberia 3.

In the trailer, we see that the new 3D engine makes use of environmental shader effects for the characters, creating a tonally soft and normalized result for the characters as they venture through different scenarios.

As you can see in the main header image, the sub-surface light saturation on Kate’s face makes it appear as if she’s actually in a cold, northern winter wonderland. The offset of soft-shadows and multiple light passes used for the characters and objects filters out any granular artifacts that sometimes pops up with shadows on character faces or hair renders, something that really detracted from the overall visual presentation of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

You can check out the trailer below to see the game in action.

Lip-synching and facial animations aren’t the best, obviously, but the game seems to go for a more fantastical approach to adventuring rather than focusing too heavily on graphics. Even still, it amazes me that this game manages to look more new-gen than Mass Effect: Andromeda.

It’s a real sad state of affairs when a budget-priced title can make better use of shaders and lighting than a $40 million dollar project designed over the course of five years.

Anyway, BioWare’s insistence on using unskilled diversity hires really backfired on them. If they wanted to expand their horizons and be “progressive”, they should have focused on bringing in people who at least had skill in being able to properly clean up models, rig them, and animate them in a professional capacity.

As for fans of Syberia… you can look for the third game to launch on April 25th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The Nintendo Switch version of the game will be available soon after that.