Mass Effect is an extremely important series for me on a personal level. I am not exactly sure when I came to the realization, but it might be the single best piece of Science Fiction that I have experienced. During my formative years I bonded heavily with Star Wars and Dune so I am already wired to love great Science Fiction storytelling. A little over a decade ago I played my very first Mass Effect game with the release of the second game in the series. Mass Effect 1 was originally an exclusive for the Xbox 360 Console, and as such I completely missed out on playing it as I did not have one at the time. It got a PC release in 2007 but I never actually got around to playing it for one reason or another… more than likely it was due to the fact that I was knee deep in the raid scene during Burning Crusade in World of Warcraft.
There are a lot of games that I play repeatedly, but other than Castlevania Symphony of the Night there is no game that I have “finished” as many times as Mass Effect. While I have only actually done the start with the first game and play all the way through to the third game once, I have played some semblance of other sequences on four other times, having played the first game to the second game sequence probably the most. I did not exactly love the wrap of and conclusion brought by the third game, so I am guessing that more or less halted my fairly regularly revisiting this franchise. Though admittedly my in sequence play through was before the revisions brought on by the later Mass Effect 3 patches which I have never gone back and played.
Even though it did not do as well, I have a deep love for Mass Effect Andromeda as well and I was enterally frustrated when the media backlash effectively destroyed this franchise that I love so much. I still want to see a continuation of this storyline, and I want to know more about the Andromeda expedition. I have a whole slew of theories that are more or less going unrequited other than some occasional conversations via DM with Pixel One. I was extremely happy when the teaser came out during the Video Game awards and hinted that maybe we are going to be getting a new story that blends both Mass Effect timelines/settings.
More exciting than anything however is when I found out that finally we had a firm confirmation of the rumored remaster of the series. Then yesterday we found out that this Mass Effect Legendary Edition would be releasing on May 14th 2021, just over three months from now. One of the biggest questions for me personally is whether or not this would do anything to remedy to awkwardness of that first game. I’ve suffered through it a number of times because an in sequence play through largely requires it being there in order for everything to flow together neatly. However in 2007 they had yet to really land on the sort of interface and feel of the game that was going to win it the masses.
The biggest problem that the first game has is the mechanical control and UI elements. The controls just feel wrong as compared to my first entry in the series which was technically the second game. The graphics are fine and the dialog and acting is still fairly solid. However actually navigating and experiencing the world feels off. Playing Knights of the Old Republic 2 recently, I am realizing just how far Bioware has come as far as interfaces go. It wasn’t really until 2009’s Dragon Age Origins that they truly “stuck the landing” and then steadily improved on that feeling ever since with Mass Effect 2 landing a year later in 2010. My biggest hope with this remastered version would be to blend everything together so that ALL of the games use the same user interface and same controls for a seamless experience.
Ultimately all I really wanted was for them to take the User Interface from Mass Effect 3 and carry it down to the other games. What instead appears to have happened is that all of the games got reworked with a new UI. On the Mass Effect Legendary edition website, they have one of those split screen videos with a slider allowing you to shift back and forth between original and new versions of some Mass Effect 1 footage. In this you can see wildly different interface elements between the above screenshot and the one before it. This gives me hope that the first game got the significant work that was needed.
In all of my plays through the game, the one thing I have never actually managed to do is complete a fun as “FemShep”. Everything that I have heard is that the Jennifer Hale voiced Female Shepard is the better way of playing the game. However my deeply engrained need to keep trying to “create Belghast” in every game I play… has always steered me down the path of playing the Male Shepard. One of my goals on this replay is to dive down the rabbit hole of the Jennifer Hale experience. I can’t say that I will succeed, because supposed the character creator is significantly better than the previous versions allowing you to create wildly different looking Shepards rather than just awkward versions of the stock character.
I am excited to revisit this old friend. I look forward to it much the same way as I might look forward to some day sitting down and re-watching all of the Marvel movies in sequence or revisiting the Lord of the Rings movies at Christmas time. I would love to see Mass Effect adapted as a high budget series, because the story that is told is so good and I am slightly disappointed that more people have not gotten to experience it. If you yourself have never played through this series, then you really should pick up Legendary edition and give it a fair shot.