Quick Look: Mass Effect Legendary Edition

maaaan I just love listening to Jeff say the first thing that comes to his mind haha

"My name is kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid"

Having played the original trilogy on three different platforms without the one save to rule them all and only a few DLC, this remaster has been a saving grace. Loving every minute of it so far and ME1 looks great.

I'm going to assume that anyone criticizing the visuals has either not touched the PS3/360 version since 2013 or played these exclusively on PC. This looks a TON better than the old console versions. I mean, there's a half dozen people in here complaining that this console version doesn't looks as good as the current fully modded PC version..... gee, YA THINK?

Came really close to picking this up and really glad I didn't after watching this. This look like they did the minimal work needed to repackage the collection and cash in on people's desires for re-releases of favorite franchises. I knew this wasn't going to be an RE2 or FFVII level remake, but that's actually what I would have preferred. I recently reinstalled ME for a new play through and to be honest the MEUITM mod looks so much better than what I have seen here for ME. I wish they would have put in the work, maybe in another 10 years.

I haven't watched the QL yet but going by the comments I'm not sure what people were expecting. Having played a few hours of the LE version of ME1 I can tell you the shooting and combat and are objectively better than the original release by a significant margin. The models and facial animation is not up to 2021 standards but still an improvement from the original release. If you were expecting this version on PS4 to somehow be better than a modded experience on PC...I don't know what to tell you. There is no way that would ever happen.

Honestly, I am super happy just to play through this trilogy again on my PS4 Pro.

I don't understand this sentiment at all. The PC mods out there aren't swapping out models or animations. They're mostly just higher res textures and shader after-effects. They're certainly not doing anything that PS4 wouldn't be capable of running. The simple fact is that fan artists did a better job of creating higher res textures that preserved and fit in with the game's existing art style than the paid artists employed by EA. It reminds me a lot of the pretty awful character texture work from the original release Andromeda, it would not surprise me at all if that was the team was tasked with doing the remaster work...looks like they still have not gotten better since then.

I mean look at Ambassador Udina's face at 10:39. He barely looks human his skin tone is so all over the place. Why is his forehead like 20 shades lighter than his chin? Why are his lips purple? It's like whoever redid his face texture didn't bother to check how it would look with the in-game lighting.

@sweetz:

So you’re telling me that THOUSANDS of artists were able to put more detail into their mods over the span of TEN YEARS than BioWare was able to do over the course of developing this remake? I’m shocked!

Maybe if you compare to the PC version with high res textures. It looks much better than the console versions. Going from 720p30fps (that often dipped down to 20fps) to 4k60fps makes a huge difference. And there are much faster loading times. And they improved the water effects and lighting as well. Not to mention changed the gameplay in the first game to be more like ME2 and 3.

It is not a remake. For a remaster they did alot. You probably havent played the console versions in awhile. Just having a steady frame rate helps a lot and the texture pop in in the first game was really bad on original consoles.

This is very ambitious for a remaster. I can't really think of another remaster that has attempted so much in one package. Pretty much every texture has been touched in some way and most of the character models have been touched up a little bit while maintaining the same art style as the original. The combat changes in the first game make it play like a somewhat competent shooter.

Anyone saying this looks the same probably hasn't seen the original Mass Effect in a while (yes, even the PC version).

@nevergameover: LOL what thousands? The most popular texture mod for ME1 is the product of one person with some tool support from a few others. All told, it's maybe a couple dozen creators involved if you're running a "fully modded" ME1. Outside of Bethesda games, the modding community for upgrading older games is pretty small, even when they are popular. It's mostly thankless work done by a dedicated few.

It's not even that Bioware's job isn't as good as mods, it's that it's straight up bad in some cases, like Udina's weird face. I know singling out one character is a nitpick, but then again he's a notable character from the impression making opening act of ME1. He's not like some sidequest NPC you see for 30 seconds. How did no one take a look at that and say, "ok, you know what, that this stands out, let's touch this up". Between stuff like that the terrible ME1 uncharted worlds being pretty much untouched, this is demonstrative of this remaster being a "let's make it good enough" effort and not a "let's make it great" effort. Once again, just like Andromeda, EA not putting the resources or respect deserved to one of few good IPs they still had...

Really looking forward to playing these all over agian although I have the series on my Xbox 360 its worth the upgrade. Also missed out on a lot of DLC.

Would have loved to get Vinny, Brad, and Alex's perspective on this since Jeff was always the one most negative on ME3. In many ways I agree with him; ME3 took away a lot of the player's agency, story points felt rushed, choices from previous games were either tacked on or had no consequence, and the galactic readiness was a very bad system that was extremely bad at launch. Brad was always positive on ME3, Vinny loves the series almost more than any other game, and Alex just finished ME3 last year and would have had a great perspective on this compared to the games with mods.

Decent package of beloved games put together. Is it an impressive release though? Not really. But this will sell well between the new gamers and the folk that have a deep love for Mass Effect and just need to have it all together.

Personally i don't feel a need to pick this up.

switch release please, thank you