“For the people who had an extended version, that became the experience for them, and it will be the experience for everyone playing the Legendary Edition,” he said. And in the end … you complete a game and there are things you would have liked to do or things you want to add, and for me that Extended Cut was that opportunity to have a little more love and a little bit more context around the end. So to me that’s part of the canon. “
Mass Effect 3’s endings were famously controversial after its release, with director Casey Hudson defending the game at the time. The subsequent Expanded Cut was released to add more context to those endings: “It doesn’t fundamentally change the endings,” read a 2012 press release, “but it expands the meaning of the original endings, revealing more details about the impact. of player decisions. “
Walters also confirmed to IGN that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition would not only include content to be added to the original games later via DLC, but also some minor, brand new gameplay tweaks – particularly for certain boss fights that were unnecessarily frustrating for players. . As an example, Walters pointed to the fight against Asari Matriarch Benezia in Mass Effect 1.
“A lot of people were very frustrated with a number of things: there is a lack of cover in that fight, so you are constantly flanked; its ability to immobilize you almost instantly,” he said. “So fine-tune some of those. Not so much that the fight isn’t still a hard fight – it should be a hard fight – but just so that you couldn’t get hit on the back completely right away.
And also, just on the frustrating side, adding discreet autosaves at certain points. I believe you had to go a long way back in that one specifically if you lost that fight, and now if you lose it the first time, you start just again with the fight, you don’t have to go through all the scenes. So stuff like that. And then it would vary depending on the boss fight, what we would try to do, a lot of times it’s about making sure the player has enough cover and adjust things accordingly. “Today, BioWare announced that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will be released on May 14, 2021 for PS4, Xbox One and PC, and while it is compatible with the next generation of consoles, the studio also confirmed today that it has no plans at the moment. for a special release or next-generation optimization patch.
Legendary Edition includes all the single-player base and DLC content from the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with enhancements such as improved frame rate and 4K Ultra HD optimization. It’s available for pre-order now using our pre-order guide, and you can read our first impressions of the collection here.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter at IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.