Mass Effect Legendary Edition is the game that fans of the franchise have been waiting for. By refining and combining Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, EA hopes to give you the best version of these games you could hope for. The remasters included in this new collection are expansive, and include a ton of different little and big changes. And aside from a serious visual upgrade, there are tons of different gameplay improvements as well.
What has changed?
A ton of the work done for the remastering has been focused on making the world come alive like never before. The game has been given a fully fresh coat of paint with improved shadows and lighting really set things off. The worlds of the futuristic universe have been given tons of attention to make them look more modern. The new locales are set off with volumetric lighting and shadows, as well as reworks of existing shaders and textures.
Across all three games in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, there are tons of new details and better visuals to see. And expect it all in stunning 4K.
Technically the Legendary Edition is a marvel that blends both the games and their improvements together. By putting all the dozens of DLC packs into the game at default, there’s tons of extra stuff to do and collect. Beyond that, the remaster will focus on creating a cohesive image and narrative. Part of that means that the portrayal of the default Shepard character will be the same across all three games, and it’s based on Shepard from Mass Effect 3. This will help immerse the player in the new 4K world that the games seek to build.
So yes, that means that all three games will share a character creator. With an increased variety of hair, makeup, and skin tone options, there’s going to be more unique Shepards running around. And having that unified tool suite will help keep the player feeling that they’re playing one full story.
And in terms of gameplay, there will be bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements galore for this collection as well. Controls are a big area of focus with combat and exploration getting a lot of attention. Expect smoother camera operation, more refined control schemes and a better ability to direct your squaddies in combat.
To characterize just how much has changed, let’s hear from the team themselves about the project, and how it’s so much more than just a simple remaster:
“[I]t very quickly became clear that level of jump would really change fundamentally what the series was; how it felt, how it played,” Director Mac Walters told IGN. “A really crisp example of that would be if you look at the Kismit scripting language, it’s a visual scripting language from [Unreal Engine 3], there’s no real copy-paste for that to go into Unreal Engine 4, meaning that every moment, every scene… everything would have had to essentially be redone from scratch. We knew at that point that we’d really sort of start to take away the essence and spirit of what the trilogy was.”
Get a look at these improved visuals in the trailer below.
When does Mass Effect Legendary Edition come out?
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will release for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation on May 14. The game will be available via Origin and Steam on PC, and on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with forward compatibility for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles.
Is Mass Effect Legendary Edition on Xbox GamePass, EA Play, or other services?
As of right now, there have been no plans announced to bring the remastered trilogy to on-demand or cloud services. The amount of content across three games makes it pretty impractical to bring to these platforms due to bandwidth and storage concerns. There is some hope that it will make the jump to EA Play or other specialized services, but nothing has been announced yet.
There are still three months left till launch, so there may be an announcement on the way.
Will Mass Effect Legendary Edition have multiplayer?
The short answer to that is no. Recently, BioWare’s Kevin Meek and Mac Walters sat down with Gameinformer and revealed that the work to get it going was too much. They said that it was too much work to get the multiplayer portion of Mass Effect 3 going, and so the decision was made to scrap it. Instead, fans get to experience the narrative-driven singleplayer in all its glory, so the team could focus on making that part as awesome as possible.
