See The Mass Effect Legendary Edition Comparison Trailer
The new Mass Effect trailer gives us a perfect comparison for the new game.
This article is more than 2 years old
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is an upcoming compilation of a completely remastered Mass Effect trilogy, bringing new visuals and performance improvements. BioWare set out to remaster the series and give the trilogy a long-deserved graphical update, showcasing their accomplishments in the newly released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition comparison trailer. Watch the new Mass Effect trailer below.
BioWare released the comparison trailer on April 13, 2021, revealing the upcoming remastered graphics and performance, showing off its development team’s results. Though the new Mass Effect trailer doesn’t show that much of the upcoming game (or three games, for that matter), it does focus on stills and sections that highlight the differences between the original and updated graphics. This time around, players might even be able to count the scales on Thane’s skin and see Tali’s protective mask in even greater detail.
The new Mass Effect trailer also features highlighted world segments that now include improved, or better said, remastered lighting and details, as well as enhanced particle effects and surface-unique textures. Shadows, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, and depth-of-field also went through some rework, which is only deserving of the high praise the remastered edition is already garnering. In truth, viewing the original game next to its remastered version really feels like you’re looking at a game from 2007, at least in terms of visuals and graphic processing.
The new and improved graphics we see in this Mass Effect trailer only complement the original game’s story – something BioWare left intact purposefully to maintain the authentic trilogy experience. Instead of remaking the entire franchise, BioWare decided on the remaster, which allowed the developers to enhance previously built assets in a way akin to the final polishing stages of the game’s development cycle, utilizing the power of modern hardware. They remastered some in-game UIs but left almost all in-game systems intact, comparing the almost-finished game to a house of cards – if you move something in the base, everything will break.
Despite stunningly beautiful visuals, the new Mass Effect trailer disclosed very little information about the game to potential new players. The new Mass Effect will compile all three remastered games, and over 40 DLCs, including promotional weapons and armor, into a remastered 4K UHD title. All games and their respective DLCs were visually enhanced, with significant technical improvements that take advantage of powerful modern hardware and certain gameplay adjustments – most notably the original game’s M35 Mako’s horrific controls.
Gameplay-wise, some minor quality-of-life-changes were made, like the updated HUD and UI, which is now shared across all three games, a unified and expanded character creator, and some updates to casual outfits. Naturally, the first Mass Effect game suffered the most rework, on both visual and quality-of-life front, but that’s what remastering a 14-years-old game looks like.
The Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will run on the updated Unreal Engine 3, with a release date set for May 14, 2021, for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The game will run and feature all the enhancements on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 through backward compatibility, but BioWare has no plans for releasing Legendary Edition specifically for those consoles. With that said, releasing the new Mass Effect trailer showcasing the new graphics is undoubtedly a sign of the team’s dedication to the title and good marketing.
