After being unveiled last year on N7 Day, BioWare and Electronic Arts have today announced that Mass Effect Legendary Edition will release later this year on May 14, 2021. The remastered collection of the iconic trilogy will be heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and will also be compatible on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.
Much as expected, Mass Effect Legendary Edition will package in all single-player content from the original trilogy that BioWare initially released between 2007 and 2012. This doesn't just include Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 in their entirety, but it also packs in nearly all of the accompanying DLC and add-on content for all three installments. Basically, if anything was was at one point released in the original trilogy, whether it be as downloadable content or as a pre-order bonus, it's pretty much here in the Legendary Edition.
As for what longtime fans can expect from the graphical boost in this collection, BioWare has revealed that all three Mass Effect games will be able to take advantage of modern hardware to run at 60 frames per second at 4K. "Remastering a game, let alone three, is a huge undertaking as there's over 100 hours of gameplay included, but we wanted to do this for our fans as well as a new generation of gamers looking to jump into the iconic story of Shepard," said Mac Walters, BioWare's Project Director for Mass Effect Legendary Edition. In addition to receiving a general performance bump, all three games have also had their textures, character models, lighting, cutscenes, and more improved compared to what was seen before.
And on the gameplay front, BioWare has made a few upgrades as well. Longtime complaints that have been associated with the series, such as the wonky Mako controls in the original Mass Effect, have been refined. And to help make the trilogy feel that much more united, the character creator across all three games has also now been improved and unified so that your own iteration of Shepard looks the same across every entry. The default female version of Shepard, which wasn't introduced until Mass Effect 3, will also now be able to be used in the previous titles.
If you'd like to get a look a what Mass Effect Legendary Edition will look like, you can check out the game's new trailer down below. And while you're at it, you can also check out some of the new screenshots showing off this collection's graphics compared to the original games. Pre-orders are live here at Best Buy now - including the Legendary Cache bundle.
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