Everything we know now about Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Yesterday Bioware revealed to select gaming media details and a hands off demo for the upcoming remastered Mass Effect “Legendary Edition”. For those that don’t know, late last year we got word that the original trilogy for Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 are all being remastered for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. We now know it is coming to May 14, 2021. If you have never played the original trilogy, I have said many many MANY times, in my opinion the Mass Effect Trilogy is greatest video game stories of all time. In terms of scifi universes, I put it up there with Star Trek and Star Wars in terms of my level of fandom.

If you have never played the game, I highly encourage you to play the Legendary edition now that it will be remaster in 4K 60.

Here’s what we know so far. This is not a “remake” but it as thorough of a Remaster as it can be. With more than just an upscale, it will actually have 10,000’s of new textures powered by AI giving new life to levels. They have hand repainted most of the character assets. There has been a wide range of balances to improve the more outdated aspects such as the MAKO in ME1 and guns. There has been a major focus on unifying the experience across the three games with UI, guns, HUD, and gameplay being made more consistent.

(NEW OFFICIAL TRAILER)

We know that the vast majority of the work for this remaster was focused on h original Mass Effect as it was very much the most dated and aged of the three games. Thankfully while it was the one in most need, it is getting the biggest facelift. Eden Prime is the very open to the franchise and is getting a much needed visual overhaul. The ME1 character customization screen is getting more options, more inclusive options, in line with later games. The iconic FemShep from ME3 is being made available from the very beginning. The biggest, and probably one of the most hilariously notorious aspects of ME1 that needed a boost are those infamous Elevator load times! The private demo revealed that the almost minute long load times have been reduced to reportedly 10-20 seconds.

We got an amazing side by side of some of the improvements as well.

While this demo and reveal was filled with great news, we did get some bad news. I am very disappointed by this news, and I hope that maybe if this is financially successful we could see it still happen in the future, but the Legendar Edition won’t include ME3 Multiplayer. They said that the scope of doing the multiplayer would have been too big, equal to or moreso than all of ME1’s remaster. I can understand that it would have been a huge undertaking and my only hope is that ME3 multiplayer could be a separate project for a later date.

We also got news of a "Collectors Edition" even though, it doesn't have the actual game making it more like a side fan box.