The long-awaited Mass Effect Legendary Edition will launch on May 14, 2020.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will include content from all three mainline Mass Effect games, remastered and running at 4K60FPS HDR. All three games have received a visual facelift, with “remastered character models and tens of thousands of up-rezzed textures. Improvements to shaders and VFX, updated lighting and improved dynamic shadows, volumetrics and depth-of-field” according to the press release.
Of the three games included in the collection, the original Mass Effect appears to have received the most attention. These days, the original Mass Effect is badly showing its age. It lacks the shooter-centric mechanics of later titles and its lousy vehicle gameplay is renowned throughout the industry. Among a raft of improvements in the original game are “comprehensive world-building enhancements with added detail and depth to locations like Eden Prime, Ilos and Feros.”
Additionally, the team at Bioware have upgraded interfaces and UI, and implemented many quality of life additions. Combat has been “modernized” to bring it more into line with the shooter-heavy Mass Effect 2 and 3, and now features better aiming, fully integrated squad controls, improved camera controls and, thank god, better Mako handling.
Character creation has also been upgraded, and will still carry across all three games. With Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the Female Shepard character becomes the default character option. All glory to FemShep.
So it’s a good day for Mass Effect fans, who not that long ago were afraid the series had been put out to pasture for good.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC via Origin and Steam. Though there is no official version for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, you will be able to play it on next-gen hardware via backwards compatibility.
