After several months of rumors that the first three Mass Effect games were to be refurbished, EA confirmed at the end of 2020 that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition was on its way. Now we know more about the renovation work, after we got to see a presentation where the developers went in depth on the project.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will be released on May 14, 2021, for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The bundle is also compatible with Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5, and although it is promised that these will have better loading time and run a snap better, no separate versions will be released for the new platforms.
You can see a trailer from the project at the top of the article, and more pictures and comparison pictures below in the text. We have also added a photo carousel with all the photos at the bottom, so you can see them in higher resolution and see the differences in detail.
Refurbishes, but retains the foundation
Work on the renovation began in 2019, and the developers have received input from people in EA, read forum comments, and used their own small team of blood fans who have been involved along the way to stake out the course.
All three games in the trilogy support 4K resolution and HDR, with refurbished textures, new depth of field, better lighting and shadows. The frame rate also gets a boost, with up to 60 frames per second on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S and PC.
The developers have worked on refurbishing the figure models, as well as upscaling textures and effects, and you can see the effect of this in the screenshots below in the article. On PC, the game supports 21: 9 screens, and one unified menu for settings across the games. The intermediate sequences have also been refurbished to offer higher resolution than before.
The lack of radiation tracking is probably the biggest aberration technically, which is primarily due to the fact that the developers chose not to use the game engine Unreal Engine 4. Instead, they went for Unreal Engine 3, which they claim was done to keep some of the foundation that the trilogy was put on, and did not lose the foundation of how the games feel.
Image comparison of Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
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Otherwise, the developers have not touched the animations significantly, and the multiplayer part from Mass Effect 3 has been left out – simply because it was too demanding to get in place.
One of the goals of the collection has been to create a unified package where the games slide as seamlessly as possible into each other. You still have to start each game, but everything is done from a separate “launcher” that connects it all. When you design your own Commander Shepard in the beginning, the character will look the same throughout all three games, and the games have generally been refurbished with the idea that they should have a uniform design.
BioWare has also added more choices for skin tones, hair and other cosmetic parameters, so you get more flexibility. And you can now choose to be the pre-generated female Shepard character, who first appeared in the marketing material for Mass Effect 3, from the beginning of the trilogy if you wish.
Mass Effect gets the biggest overhaul
Not surprisingly, it is the first game in the series that has received most of the attention from the development team. When Mass Effect was released in 2007, BioWare was still experimenting with finding the shape, and in retrospect, it is undoubtedly the game in the series that differs most from the other two. The goal has now been to refurbish the game approximately to the standard of the successors.
– We wanted to take what the developers learned about design and “gameplay” from Mass Effect 2 and 3 and bring it into the first game. There was a bit of friction in how the combat system worked, and the system was more of a role-playing game than a shooting game, says producer Crystal McCord about the work.
Thus, Mass Effect has received a lot of adjustments that are more significant than the changes in the sequels. The combat system has been modernized with improved aiming, and new opportunities have been created to give orders to the other two figures in the squadron. The weapons have been balanced and changed so that they are more different from each other. And yes, the controversial Mako car – which with its strange physique was one of the things the game was most criticized for in 2007 – has also undergone some small changes to make it all more bearable.
The long loading times in the first game, which were often hidden with long lifts, have also been planed down considerably. In our presentation we saw a lift ride in the Citadel area where the player gets the opportunity to skip the lift ride after 14 seconds. In the old version of the game, the same sequence took 52 seconds.
The world itself has also received a significant boost, where the areas have been given new details and lighting that at its best give the whole thing a dramatic overhaul. We got to see some of the work done with Eden Prime, where the developers have, among other things, moved the sun to provide a more suitable light, as well as added many effects, details and particles that make the area feel less flat.
Has not changed the Mass Effect 3 ending
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is first and foremost a visual renovation, and thus it is no wonder that most things are as before. It also means that the controversial end from Mass Effect 3 remains as before, ie the Extended Cut end which was relaxed a few months after the release of an update. No new content has been added to expand the game, but absolutely all of the downloadable content and expansions that were released for the three games are baked in here. It includes everything from expansion packs like Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadowbroker to armor and weapons that were part of promo deals with other companies.
Image comparison of Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
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Mass Effect was released in November 2007, while Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 were released a few years later, in 2010 and 2012. Both first, second and third the game received 9 out of 10 points from our reviewers. The game that followed the trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda, on the other hand, received a little less goodwill from both critics and the public, and led to the series being put on ice shortly after its release in 2017.
When the renovation package was announced in the autumn of 2020, we were also told that BioWare has taken Mass Effect out of the freezer again. Now they are working on a new game in the universe, but we know incredibly little about the project. All we have seen so far is one short trailer that was shown during The Game Awards in December.
BioWare is also working on a new game in its second major series:
Watch the first proper trailer for Dragon Age 4 »
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