The remastered trilogy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition contains almost every BioWare sci-fi RPG epic, with two notable exceptions: the ME3 multiplayer and the ME1 Pinnacle Station DLC. While the absence of multiplayer is a blatant absence (I will honestly miss it), when BioWare announced the release date yesterday I initially didn’t realize that Pinnacle was not on the long list of included DLCs. It turns out that the source code was corrupted and rebuilding it from scratch would take centuries.
Pinnacle Station sends Shepard and his friends to a space base for virtual combat training missions. It didn’t have much history and it wasn’t exciting, but it rewarded Shepard with her own little retirement bungalow on a distant planet – which also allowed her to buy powerful equipment in advance and easily. It is not huge, but it is practical. This will not be in the legendary edition.
Made by Demiurge Studios, the DLC was not even in all versions of the original game. The font was corrupted, so it never came to the PS3. In the last round of press interviews, BioWare said it sought out Demiurge to try again for Legendary Edition, and his hopes were raised, but the backup they received was corrupted and broken. They would need to rebuild it. The whole process was “an emotional roller coaster,” said game director Mac Walters.
“Basically, it would take us another six full months just to do this with most of the team we have,” Walters told Game Informer. “I wish we could do that. Honestly, just because it was meant to be everything the team has ever created, it brought it back together – all the content for one player. And so, leaving everything in the edit room, it was moving.”
The whole trilogy touched up textures and models and things like that, while the first game is being reworked more substantially with adjustments in everything from combat to direction. It’s also about unifying character creation, allowing us to play the standard ME3 Femshep on all of them, while adding new skin tones, hair styles and more. The Legendary Edition has the rest of the DLC, as far as I can see, from big story missions to small promotional items like Shepard’s sweatshirt.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will be released on May 14 through Steam and Origin for £ 55 / € 60 / $ 60. If you have ME3 on Steam, you can get a small discount. It will also be on PlayStation and Xbox.