Discovering how Mass Effect Legendary Edition came to be

Recently, I had the chance to sit down with some members of the Bioware team, who are bringing the iconic Mass Effect trilogy to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, remastered to make the most of those platforms.

In this showcase event, we got to hear from Mac Walters: Project Director, Crystal McCord: Producer and Kevin Meek: Environment and Character Producer, about all the aspects of the game, including how they are improving the visuals, the gameplay and offering a more cohesive gameplay experience.

Over the years there have been countless requests from fans, to not only bring Mass Effect to modern consoles, but to also remaster, make it look and play better and even internally at Bioware, they kept asking the question, should they do it. Producer Mac Walters noted that “In 2019 we finally got the ball rolling, in a way that felt a little bit more firm than in the past”, which brings us to today.

Initially it was a small group of developers, going through the older games and what was described as an archaeology discovery, where they went through and discovered what was going on in each game. But it wasn’t just something as simple as taking the old game code and placing it within a new engine, things would not be the same, especially as they couldn’t make it a simple jump from Unreal Engine 3 to 4. While they could rebuild the games in the new engine, the team realised that if they did that, building each element again from scratch, things would not be the same as they were and they would lose the essence of what made the trilogy so great.

So in the end, they decided on a simple goal, bringing the games onto, what was then current gen, smoothing out the edges that were perhaps a little annoying to fans, but presenting everything in a way that improved the fidelity of what people were seeing. That was the goal and while there are countless remasters that have had loftier ones, they are usually only doing one game at a time, not three.

Now that we knew what they were aiming to achieve it was time to discover just what exactly they had been doing and for that, Crystal McCord the Producer on the game took over. Something that must be taken into account here is just how much content there is in this collection, not only are all three games being remastered, but all of the DLC that released from them, which totals over 40. The good news is that some of them will be available at the start of their respective adventures, others will unlock at a natural point through your progression in the game; this does include items like the Dragon Age armour, so rest easy there.

Of course for a remaster, the visuals are a big part of that, if they didn’t touch them, it would be considered a port and while things have gone 4K, there is more than just a resolution bump. Those who plan on enjoying the story of Shepherd on consoles can look forward to 60fps on the Xbox One X, Series X, Series S, PS4 and PS5, the base model consoles will still be set to 30fps and if you are playing on PC, you can look forward to an uncapped frame rate. Across the board though there are enhances galore, from the character models, to lighting and shaders, plus changes to the depth of field, Boca, anti-aliasing features and more.

The visuals are not the only space to get an overhaul, there are of course gameplay enhancements and yes, the elevators now move faster than a snail, but there are also improvements to the Mako, at least in Mass Effect 1, and given it drove like a Mass Effect elevator, that is a great thing. In addition, perhaps one of the larger improvements is that the entire character creator has been unified across the games, so if you found that perfect look in Mass Effect 3, you should now be able to create it again in Mass Effect 1 and 2. There are even a bunch of new options to discover, meaning that you should be able to create a Shepherd that is more unique and more you, but more on that later.

For those wondering if they have done anything to characters or the story, they have not, Mac Walters, the Project Director noted that they considered that early on but realised that the memories that players have with the series are tied to those character as they were, so they quickly removed any thought of that from the project.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is dated to release on May 14 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, will Backward compatibility for the next gen systems.