Bioware reveals all of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition gameplay changes

Bioware today released a new blog post revealing more details about the upcoming Mass Effect Legendary Edition — more specifically, details about how the gameplay will differ between this remaster and the original games. It seems that, for the most part, changes have been made to the first game, and they include updates to the rocky combat and the clunky Mako vehicle.

The gameplay (can it wait for a bit? I’m in the middle of some) calibrations listed centered mostly around Mass Effect’s combat, which was significantly different from its two predecessors. The developers recognize that “weapons in Mass Effect often felt less accurate and reliable than the gunplay in Mass Effect 2 and 3.” To combat this, they’ve rebalanced the weapons for better accuracy and you’ll no longer have the reticle widen wildly after you take a couple of shots. In addition, weapons in the first game — which ran on a heat system rather than ammo — will cool down much faster.

Another major change is to the Mako, the vehicle which Shepard and company used to explore planetary surfaces. The Mako was known (infamous, really) for being very difficult to control over the often rocky landscapes on which the player had to drive it, and doing so was often a frustrating, if amusing, endeavor. Now Bioware proposes to fix the Mako by improving its handling, giving it thrusters for speed (before it only had those for “bounce”) while improving the physics around it.

There are a handful of other updates, including the character creator now being consistent across all three games, with Female Shepard’s default face being her appearance in Mass Effect 3. New achievements have also been added, and the settings are now universal across all three games. A big change to Mass Effect 3 is tweaking the Galaxy at War feature, which was originally influenced by the multiplayer mode that won’t be in the Legendary Edition.

The game launches for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on May 14, 2021, with the Xbox Series X and PS5 getting it via forward compatibility.