What Changes to Expect in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

Mass Effect fans can look forward to the remastered Mass Effect: Legendary Edition releasing on May 14, 2021. And with the release of the Reveal Trailer today, we’ve got a full breakdown of the assorted changes that fans will find when they return to this familiar world of paragons, renegades, and Reapers.

Arguably, the biggest change concerns the video and graphics. The original game came out toward the end of 2007, so there is a need to make these titles look great on the Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC, and the next generation of consoles.

Graphical changes:

• Everything has been remastered for a 4K Ultra HD, HDR. And the newest generation of consoles as well as the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 4 Pro can play each game at 60 fps.
• Thousands of textures have been unpressed. This means a texture size increase between four to six times, creating richer graphics.
• All character models have been updated. The female Shepard in Mass Effect now looks more like the version in Mass Effect 3.
• Cinematics have received AI upscaling and other visual effect updates.
• There are more options to tweak lighting, shaders, and assorted video effects. Between the increased depth-of-field, dynamic shadows, and other effects, it will look better than ever.
• PC users can enjoy the game in a 21:9 widescreen mode. This is on top of other improvements, including keybindings, native controller support, and DirectX 11 support.

Of course, graphical changes and improvements are to be expected. What players are more interested in are changes to the actual gameplay experience. For the most part, Mass Effect 2 and 3 will play like they originally did (but with improved graphics). It is the first game that has received the most changes to actual gameplay.

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Gameplay changes:

• The AI is much improved. Your squad will be more effective, but enemy AI has also been improved.
• Elevators are much faster. In fact, they can move up to four times faster than in the original games.
• The Mako is faster and features new physics to make it easier to control.
• You now have aim assist similar to what is in Mass Effect 2 and 3.
• Character customization is now uniform across all three games. Mass Effect 3’s iconic female Shepard is now the default female model, and you have all of the third game’s customization options. There are also additional hair and skin tone options across the board to create better-looking POC characters.
• Control scheme is now mostly uniform across all three games. For example, you now have a dedicated melee button for the first game.
• The UI has been tweaked to make it look more like the sequels.
• Mini-games are now the same for PC and console (they were previously different). And the frequency and difficulty of the mini-games has been lowered.
• Major rebalancing. Any class can now use any weapon (albeit without the ability to train in it and gain proficiency). XP has been balanced so that you can hit the 60 XP cap your first time through. Finally, boss battles have been rebalanced and weapons have been tweaked so that each one feels more unique.

Ultimately, only time will tell how effective these changes are. But fans are ready and waiting to devour this remastered trilogy, and it’s going to be a long, long wait until May 14!