The official reveal trailer for the Mass Effect Legendary Edition just dropped and we’re in for an amazing ride once more, back with Shepard and crew in 4k Ultra HD. This remaster is looking absolutely beautiful, seeing Miranda in crisp quality is just bringing back all those tremendous milky way feelings....
With that, we have loads of info dropping out about the Legendary Edition today on February 2nd, as the first wave of updates since the reveal trailer dropped, I’m sure they’ll be plenty more to come!
So, alongside the beautiful trailer, the Mass Effect blog was updated with many game details. The remaster is releasing on May 14th, it’s packed in single game launcher that has encases all single-player base content and over 40 DLC’s from all three games, including promo weapons, armours, and packs.
The trilogy has been remastered in 4K Ultra HD with enhanced performance, visuals, and graphics, all available in HDR. Updates include enhanced models, shaders, FX, lighting, and depth of field.
Even more exciting, the remaster has new customisations for Shepard with improved hair, makeup, eye colour and skin tones you can create your Shepard in a unified character creator with all options available across the full trilogy, or choose to play as the iconic Femshep from Mass Effect 3 now available in all titles.
We’ll be enjoying improved aiming and weapons balance, sound effects, better Mako controls, input/controls, squad behaviour, cover behaviour, and gameplay cameras.
Mass Effect 1 has been given a full world-building pass including environmental art, VFX, and level relighting.
The remaster supports ultra-high refresh rates on PC, and offers a choice between “favourite quality” for increased resolution or “favour framerate” to boost your FPS on consoles.
And on PC, there’s support across all three games with native controller and 21:9 widescreen support, user interface navigation improvements, and DirectX 11 compatibility.
Lucy James of GameSpot shared her own impressions, first on Twitter she shared about the stuff that got her excited:
• More unified control scheme
• Universal FemShep across the trilogy
• Mako control tweaks
• No Pinnacle Station (rip)
• No aim penalties in ME1 if you use a weapon you’re untrained in
• The ME1 uplift looks Thumbs up
• NERFED ELEVATORS
In her GameSpot video, she shared many more insights that we’re posted by MassEffectNews on Twitter, as followed:
- Dedicated melee button in ME1.
- Weapon rebalance across trilogy, esp. ME1.
- Unified controls across trilogy (in the style of ME2).
- Some improvements to squad and enemy AI.
- Animation bug fixes for ME1.
More stuff from the GameSpot
- Improved ME1 combat camera.
- *Universal* minigames across platforms (+ less of them).
- Some new makeup and hairstyles, incl. more black hairstyles.
- Default FemShep's design has been slightly adjusted.
- There is a universal launcher (although every game is a separate application)
- Pinnacle Station DLC is dead.
- Galactic readiness rebalance (due to lack of MP), you can get the best ending with just ME3 but easier if you play the whole trilogy.
In GameSpot’s video, we received a first look at FemShep in Mass Effect 1, and a comparison shot of Zaeed in Mass Effect 2 and the Legendary Edition. You can clearly see the differences.
We have more comparison shots of the original trilogy compared to the Legendary Edition.
However, even more exciting, Insider and huge Mass Effect Enthusiast Shinobi shared a small snippet of Mass Effect 1 in the Legendary Edition, and oh my... it looks beautiful! May 14th couldn’t come soon enough!
Eurogamer reported: “There's no multiplayer mode, no additional story elements, and no version (yet) for Nintendo Switch.”
They shared further: “Mass Effect 1, by far the most dated-looking of the trilogy, has undergone a particularly extensive rework, with dramatic improvements to some of its environments. The results on planets such as Eden Prime, Ilos and Feros look on first impression far closer to a full remake. ME1 has also seen other tweaks, including fan-requested improvements to the Mako vehicle's often wildly-erratic driving experience, various combat changes and much faster Citadel lifts (thank goodness).”
“Differences across the whole trilogy include remastered character models, an expanded universal character creator and the option to use ME3's default female Shepard model throughout. There are noticeable improvements to Shepard's range of available skin tones, hairstyles and makeup options, for a more diverse range of possibilities. Overall, BioWare says there are "tens of thousands" of updated textures, shaders, visual effects and lighting changes, plus a new bokeh-style depth of field.”
“Work on the Legendary Edition began in early 2019, when a small team within BioWare finally got the green light. There had been tentative talks within the studio for half a decade to get a trilogy remaster off the ground - some of which got further than others - but it was the return of studio boss Casey Hudson, a Mass Effect veteran, who finally pushed the project into being.”
Sam Hulick, the original trilogy’s composer tweeted: “I'm thrilled to announce that I've contributed music to Mass Effect Legendary Edition! It's a killer remix of an old, unused track... I'll leave it at that!”
You can pre-order the remaster right now, BioWare are also selling a legendary cache with an N7 helmet and other items on their Gear Store, so get that while it’s still in stock.
Game Informer are covering the Legendary Edition for a month, so expect more updates, news and exciting Mass Effect content to follow.
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