“For people who have had an extended cut, this has become the experience for them and therefore will be the experience for everyone who is playing the Legendary Edition,” he said. “And finally … you finish a game and there are things that I would have liked to be able to do or things that you want to add, and for me the Extended Cut was that opportunity to add a little more love and a little more context in around the end. So for me, that’s part of the canon. “
Mass Effect 3’s endings were notoriously controversial after launch, with director Casey Hudson defending the game at the time. The subsequent expanded cut was launched to add more context to these endings: “This does not fundamentally change endings”, said a 2012 press release “, but instead expands the meaning of the original endings and reveals more details about the impact players’ decisions. “
Walters also confirmed to IGN that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition would not only include content added to the original games later via DLC, but would also include some minor new tweaks to the gameplay – specifically for certain boss fights that were unnecessarily frustrating for players. As an example, Walters cited the fight against Asari Matriarch Benezia in Mass Effect 1.
“Many people were very frustrated due to a number of things: there is a lack of coverage in that fight, so you are constantly flanked; her ability to almost immobilize him almost instantly, ”he said. “So fine-tune some of them. Not so much that the fight is not yet a tough fight – it should be a tough fight – but just so that you could not be completely knocked down on your back immediately.
“And also, just on the frustration side, adding discrete autosaves at certain points as well. I believe in that specifically that you had to back off a lot if you lost that fight, and now, if you lose the first time, you just start with the fight ; you don’t have to go through all the scenes. So, things like that. And then it would vary depending on the boss’s fight what we’d try to do, often just do make sure the player has enough coverage and adjust things according.Today, BioWare announced that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will be released on May 14, 2021 for PS4, Xbox One and PC, and although it is compatible with next-generation consoles, the studio also confirmed today that it currently has no plans for a dedicated next generation release or optimization patch.
Legendary Edition includes the entire single player base and DLC content from the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with improvements like better frame rate and Ultra HD 4K optimization. It is now available for ordering using our ordering guide, and you can read our first impressions of the collection here.
Rebekah Valentine is an IGN reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.