Mass Effect Legendary Edition shows improvements

Mass Effect Legendary Edition has been improved, rebalanced and fine tuned. The Bioware team is dedicated to give you the full experience!

Ever since the announcement of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, people have been looking forward to what exactly the changes would entail. And by changes you can think of things like game mechanics and re-polishing of textures and upgrade them to 4k. The BioWare team has showed off a ton of improvements of all three games coming out together on May 14th 2021!

Combat Tuning

The first Mass Effect was more classic RPG oriented and it shows in the skill tree and the gunnery and the way you had to reload your weapons. This has been changed in the upcoming Mass Effect Legendary Edition. And for the better if you read the blog about that.

We wanted to make the experience better across the board, but we didn’t want to unnecessarily change what our fans have come to love about each game. That proved a unique challenge, as the first game is quite different from the second and third in terms of gameplay and combat. Mass Effect was heavily influenced by traditional RPG mechanics, like the randomness of a dice roll and pen-and-paper stat building. As a result, weapons in Mass Effect often felt less accurate and reliable than the gunplay in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

The reason for the changes made to the first Mass Effect is because the feedback Bioware often got was that it was quite frustrating to shoot a few bullets with, for example, an assault rifle and then notice a big recticle appear on screen which notified you to that you were out. So the mechanic was changed to be more in line with how Mass Effect 2 and 3 handles it.

Other changes include better ADS (Aim Down Sight) , Accuracy has also been overhauled (weapon sway and reticle bloom) as well as the Aim Assist to improve precision.

Abilities have also been overhauled and are now rebalanced in Mass Effect 1. An example of that is “Immunity” now gives you a defensive powerful buff that lasts a brief moment instead of a small buff that lasts forever. Or until you turn it off.

Read more: Mass Effect Legendary Edition gets release date

The following changes have been announced for Mass Effect 1 only:

• Shepard can now sprint out of combat
• Melee attacks are now mapped to a button press rather than automatically occurring based on proximity to an enemy
• Weapon accuracy and handling has been significantly improved
  • Reticle bloom is more controlled
  • Weapon sway removed from sniper rifles
  • Aiming down sights/”tight aim” camera view has been improved
  • Improved aim assist for target acquisition
• All relevant enemies now take headshot damage in the first game
  • Previously some did not, including humanoid enemies
• Ammo mods (Anti-Organic, Anti-Synthetic, etc.) can now drop throughout the whole game
  • Previously, these stopped dropping at higher player levels
  • They are now also available to purchase from merchants
• All weapons can be used by any class without penalty
  • Specializations (the ability to train/upgrade certain weapons) are still class-specific
• Weapons cool down much faster
• Medi-gel usage has been improved
  • Base cooldown reduced
  • Levelling benefits increased 
  • Increased Liara’s bonus to cooldowns
• Inventory management improvements
  • Items can now be flagged as “Junk”
  • All Junk items can be converted into Omni-gel or sold to merchants at once
  • Inventory and stores now have sorting functionality
• Some abilities have been rebalanced
• Weapon powers (i.e., those that are unlocked on each weapon type’s skill tree) have been improved:
  • Effectiveness/strength is increased (duration reduced in some cases)
  • Heat now resets on power activation

Additional gameplay changes

Not just the way the game treats gunnery, some specific changes were made to enemy encounters, enemies and the way you handle combat. New opportunities are now available in the first game, again, to be in line with Mass Effect 2 and 3. And on top of that they have tuned up the entire systems accross all three games of Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

As an example, Bioware used an example of a boss encounter on Noveria. The boss room has been slightly adjusted and, while still true to the original, but making it less claustrophobic. So you will be less vulnerable to being thrown around by the boss’ biotic abilities.

More changes have been made:

• Squadmates can now be commanded independently of each other in the first Mass Effect, the same way you can command them individually in Mass Effect 2 and 3
• Some boss fights and enemies in the first game have been tweaked to be fairer for players but still challenging
• Cover has been improved across the trilogy
  • Additional cover added to some encounters
  • Entering and exiting cover is now more reliable
• XP has been rebalanced in the first game (details below)
• Ammo drops have been rebalanced in Mass Effect 2 (details below)

The XP you gain from Combat has also been changed and has been made more consistent.

For the people who like to get achievements, they are much easier to get on a first single playthrough instead of needing to do a second play through. And for your first run there is no longer a level cap.

And a final gunplay change is that ammunition has been tweaked in Mass Effect 2. The ammo was spawning very scarcely in the original Mass Effect 2 so that has been fixed by increasing the drop rate for ammo. Especially when you use a sniper rifle because in the original that ammo dropped very scarcely.

The Mako

The Mako was one of the fans favorite. And the missions you do with the Mako are amazing.

The legendary vehicle from the first Mass Effect will make a comeback, ofcourse, but it will perform better than ever. The original Mako was a bit bouncy and felt a bit too light and was sometimes even uncontrollable. But with the new tunings, the gameplay will be much smoother while still being everyone’s favorite vehicle to do missions with.

Other changes made to the Mako are faster shield regeneration and new thrusters allowing for speed boosts when you are trying to do something daring like crossing a bridgeless gap.

Other tunings made to the legendary Mako are:

• Improved handling
  • Physics tuning improved to feel “weightier” and slide around less 
• Improved camera controls
  • Resolved issues preventing the Mako from accurately aiming at lower angles
• Shields recharge faster
• New thrusters added for a speed boost
  • Its cooldown is separate from the jump jets’
• The XP penalty while in the Mako has been removed
• Touching lava no longer results in an instant Mission Failure and instead deals damage over time

More modernizations to Mass Effect Legendary Edition

The goal of Bioware was to tune it up and make it better and more consistent accross all three games while at the same time staying true to the original and preserving the uniqueness of the stories.

For example your Shephard that you create in your character creator has additional options like new skin and hairstyles and you can export that character over all three games so the look and feel are the same over all three games. Or you can give your Shepard a new look for every game while preserving the choices you have made in the previous games. New textures and hair models have been added as well.

Other addendums to the game are, and this is a really cool one, the Mass Effect: Genesis comics by Dark Horse has been integrated into the base experience before Mass Effect 2 and 3 so you can make choices from previous games whereever you choose to start.

Additional changes and tune ups are:

• New unified launcher for all three games
  • Includes trilogy-wide settings for subtitles and languages
  • Saves are still unique to each game and can be managed independently of each other
• Updated character creatoroptions, as mentioned above
  • FemShep from Mass Effect 3 is the new default female option in all three games (the original FemShep design is still available as a preset option)
• Achievements across the trilogy have been updated
  • New achievements have been added to the trilogy
  • Progress for some achievements now carries over across all three games (e.g. Kill 250 enemies across all games)
    • Achievements that were streamlined into one and made redundant were removed
  • A number of achievements have had their objectives/descriptions and/or names updated
• Integrated weapons and armorDLC packs
  • Weapons and armor DLC packs are now integrated naturally into the game; they’re obtainable via research or by purchasing them from merchants as you progress through the game, rather than being immediately unlocked from the start. This ensures overall balance and progression across ME2 and ME3
  • Recon Hood (ME2) and Cerberus Ajax Armor (ME3) are available at the start of each game
• Additional gameplay & Quality of life improvements
  • Audio is remixed and enhanced across all games
  • Hundreds of legacy bugs from the original releases are fixed
  • Native controller and 21:9 display support on PC, with DirectX 11 compatibility 

More rebalancing of Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Commander Shepard has been tasked with the hardest mission of his lifetime. As the fate of the galaxy lies in his hands and with that our lives, your choices determine on how that happens. How to unite the galaxy. who will live or die by your side. The Reapers spare no man so make your choices wisely. With that, The new Normandy Combat Information Center has been rebalanced.

Galactic Readiness is no longer dependant on external factors that aren’t part of the collection like the multiplayer did back then in the orignal OR the companion app of Mass Effect 3. But that doesn’t mean that Reapers will go down easily.

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition instead is dependant on how much content you complete. The more you complete, the better you are prepared for the final fight. So it is of the utmost importance that you complete Mass Effect 1 and 2 before you play Mass Effect 3. You can carry over your characters but more importantly: All your choices to the next game all the way up to Mass Effect 3.

Ofcourse, your Galactic Army won’t be ready without additional bug fixing and backend optimizations made to the Paragon / Renegade system in Mass Effect 2. This system now works more reliably and will make the immersion for Mass Effect 3 even bigger.