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Mass Effect LegendGary Edition

Started by Mobius, May 10, 2021, 10:11:43 PM

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Mobius

This comes out on May 14th

For many months now, our team at BioWare has been hard at work updating the textures, shaders, models, effects, and technical features of three enormous games. Our goal was not to remake or reimagine the original games, but to modernize the experience so that fans and new players can experience the original work in its best possible form.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition will include single-player base content and DLC from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, plus promo weapons, armors, and packs – all remastered and optimized for 4k Ultra HD. It will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, with forward compatibility and targeted enhancements on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.


Never played ME1 because it was too dated and loved ME2 and 3 (bar shit ending) so really looking forward to working my way through all of these. Will be nice to keep your save and have your decisions flow through each game.

Anyone else looking forward to picking this up?

Bazooka

I've beaten them all on PS3, will grab this eventually at a lower price as I'm in no rush, also a 100GB download.

evilcommiedictator

They've used the HD mods to benchmark their own remaster

Mobius

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on May 11, 2021, 12:11:53 AM
They've used the HD mods to benchmark their own remaster

I don't know what that means, is it good or bad

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Bazooka on May 10, 2021, 11:41:19 PM
I've beaten them all on PS3, will grab this eventually at a lower price as I'm in no rush, also a 100GB download.
Same here - not really sure I'd pay half of full whack to play through slightly better looking versions of games I've already completed.

Funny to think it's gone four years since the Andromeda fiasco.

Thursday


brat-sampson

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on May 11, 2021, 09:59:36 AM
Funny to think it's gone four years since the Andromeda fiasco.

Good lord.

The Culture Bunker

I sometimes think I'll give Andromeda another go sometimes, but never do. The characters just weren't that interesting (in contrast to Garrus, Tali, Joker and the rest) - very telling they never even bothered to churn out a load of DLC for it like they did with ME2 and 3.

druss

Not sure LG would approve of less ass shots.

JamesTC

What if you told him that the asses that are there have more polygons?

druss

"Polygons? Sounds pretty gay, Daz".

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: Mobius on May 11, 2021, 12:20:39 AM
I don't know what that means, is it good or bad
Just means that what the fans made to make it look better as mods over the past few years are what the developers are looking at now to see if their work is good enough

Mobius

Oh that's good then

Got this downloaded and ready to go when I get home. I'm guessing ME1 might be a bit of a slog as it's probably somewhat dated and lacking QoL features of its sequels, but I'll persevere

brat-sampson

If only they'd had the perfect opportunity to add in some qol features at some point.

Thursday

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on May 11, 2021, 11:22:20 AM
I sometimes think I'll give Andromeda another go sometimes, but never do. The characters just weren't that interesting (in contrast to Garrus, Tali, Joker and the rest) - very telling they never even bothered to churn out a load of DLC for it like they did with ME2 and 3.

To be fair, I think it was EA that scuppered those plans when Bioware were planning to.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Thursday on May 14, 2021, 01:17:56 PM
To be fair, I think it was EA that scuppered those plans when Bioware were planning to.
Given they presumably hold the purse strings, can only imagine they concluded there wasn't really that much interest to make it a worthwhile investment?

The way it was released buggy as fuck sort of set a tone, I suppose, that we've seen continue with the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 - an attitude of "get it out to the public, no matter what, and we'll try to fix it after".

Thursday

With Andromeda and Anthem it seemed like there were a lot of issues, but mainly some terrible Project Lead/Management that screwed them.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

The dlc would have explained what happened to the
Spoiler alert
Quarian fleet.
[close]

To be honest, I'm annoyed that they didn't release any dlc. They should have acknowleged their mistakes with the main game, resolved to fix them and come out with a really good, comprehensive dlc story with more interesting characters that would at least try and wash out some of the bad taste of Andromeda. It would have redeemed the developer and the game so much.

As it is we're left with an unresolved cliffhanger plotline that'll probably never get resolved.

Barry Admin

Eeeeh, you get male and female Shephard gun charms if you log into Apex at the minute.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on May 14, 2021, 07:23:02 PM
The dlc would have explained what happened to the
Spoiler alert
Quarian fleet.
[close]

To be honest, I'm annoyed that they didn't release any dlc. They should have acknowleged their mistakes with the main game, resolved to fix them and come out with a really good, comprehensive dlc story with more interesting characters that would at least try and wash out some of the bad taste of Andromeda. It would have redeemed the developer and the game so much.

As it is we're left with an unresolved cliffhanger plotline that'll probably never get resolved.

They did announce a new ME game last year and the trailer suggested it would link Andromeda to the originals so those plotlines will hopefully get some closure.

They'll hopefully also take on board the criticisms of Andromeda, given how those criticisms affected the game's commercial performance. Then again, Andromeda took most of its worst aspects from their previous effort Dragon Age: Inquisition[nb]a game I did like a lot, but it suffered from a stretched central story, way too many oversized areas full of dull fetch quests, and general overlength,[nb](and an irritating Colin Hunt elf character)[/nb] all things that Andromeda took and ran with[/nb] so maybe they've just decided that's their "model" now...

The Culture Bunker

I enjoyed DA: Inquisition a lot too, but I wonder how much of that was down to returning characters and all my various choices from the first two being called back to. Would have liked a bit more of the Grey Warden, though - in my playthrough there a passing reference to him from Leliana and that was about it.

Jerzy Bondov

I couldn't be bothered with Andromeda because I had planned on playing it as a kind of a rude headstrong arrogant character, and none of the conversation options would let me. It felt like you had even less freedom than in the original trilogy when it came to being a rude prick.

Inspector Norse

I think it was definitely the worldbuilding, characters and "feel" that were the strong points in Inquisition. All the little details and things make it work despite the actual meat of the game being a pretty lame story: old undead dude turns up then runs straight off to hide until the endgame, in between which you do one big showdown quest, go to a ball and otherwise spend absolutely ages wandering around doing sidequests just to boost your level and plump up the backstory.
It'd have been a killer game if they'd expanded some of the companion quests[nb]apart from the stupid elf girl[/nb], beefed up the main story and ditched pointless shit like the shards. The castle is one of the best home hangouts in any game though.

Never played DA2 but I remember going back to play the first one and it does now feel very primitive by comparison.

Bazooka

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on May 19, 2021, 02:58:30 PM
I couldn't be bothered with Andromeda because I had planned on playing it as a kind of a rude headstrong arrogant character, and none of the conversation options would let me. It felt like you had even less freedom than in the original trilogy when it came to being a rude prick.

This coupled with the 'been there done that combat', made for a completely hollow experience. I do like Dragon Age Inquisition, as others have alluded to, it would have favoured from being much more streamlined, it suffers the same as most big world games.  Had my fill at closing 6 rifts, but oh there are 30 more to go, the shards sucked and were cleverly(lazily) made important by making them a requirement to open the elemental doors in the desert.

And the combat became excruciating as you got around level 20, enemies with huge health pools providing measely XP.

Inspector Norse

So, how many people ended up playing through this then?

I just completed it: downloaded it when it came on GamePass, but then got distracted by Elden Ring and other stuff and ended up starting it in January. I burned through the three games one after the other and have fallen in love with them all over again.

Long unstructured post of my thoughts:

The series really hits a particular sweet spot for me, a great combination of story, character, worldbuilding and action: nothing too technical or complicated in the playstyle, and obviously not high art in the writing or anything, but perfect for what they are and what it represents, which to me is absorbing escapism. In Garrus, Tali, Mordin and the rest, the series has some of the best characters in games. And, crucially, the feeling that you really are influencing proceedings makes a big difference. You can actually be the protagonist and drive the story, you're not just following a pre-ordained path or watching an actor do it.

I found that coming to them again ten years later - having in the meantime just had a couple of half-finished nostalgic playthroughs of ME2 - meant I could come to them fresh, with only a handful of details remembered from the first and third games, and a few Mandela effect things too (for example I'd somehow been under the impression that the suicide mission to the Collector base in ME2 was actually the ending of the whole trilogy).

The first game is, as expected, heavily dated now, with the actual gameplay and map design pretty rudimentary, but it is still worth going through to get the plot going and meet the characters. There are some memorable missions, too, particularly the one where you meet the giant plant intelligence and the one with the top-secret lab doing experiments on the rachni.
What makes it work as a game is still the worldbuilding and the characters. You emerge into this huge galaxy of relationships and politics and it all seems to work and is set up fascinatingly, with backstory that is neatly woven into the plot, such as the genophage or the Quarian-Geth war. The different species are all really well-designed and developed.

The second game, though it has a pretty messy set-up with the whole "now you work for Cerberus" plot requiring some serious suspension of disbelief, takes things to another level with improved combat and action and an elegant, nicely-paced plot. I managed to keep everyone alive during the final mission, which set things up well for the third.

And the third is improved too by age, with the DLC and extras now there from the off. It's in many ways a faster and less sprawling, perhaps more professional experience, as your focus is on pushing toward the final battle, with less of the freedom that marks ME2, but that sharpness works well for the most part as throughout the whole series the writers do an excellent job of blending the developing characters, relationships and situations in your crew with the wider picture. The DLC that adds more hangout time on the Citadel is really welcome: some of the best bits of the games involve just chatting to the people around you. And there are some fun moments of self-awareness in the dialogue, too, the game poking fun at its own plot devices and characters making self-referential comments about stock dialogue (there's a bit where the Turian general says that Garrus had brushed him off by saying something about calibrations, for instance).

Many people felt the ending was a let down, and I understand that: whatever you've done during the games, whatever the results of your actions and the situation with the various political factions and crewmates, you end up in the same place with the same three or four available choices. That didn't matter too much to me: I felt that seeing how your decisions played out in the actual game was reward enough. Things like the choice of whether to kill Wrex in the first game having an impact on Mordin's fate in the last game.
What disappointed me about the ending was simply that in pretty much every scenario, Shephard dies.
I don't need a happy ending, but after all that time spent with the character, building friendships with the squad, exploring the galaxy and ultimately saving it, I feel like I deserve to survive as well.
I did some research and it seems that to get the one ending where Shephard is shown to have lived, you need to have 7800 war points or whatever they're called. I looked again at my save right before the final mission and I had 7642. So close. Not sure there's anything more I could do to improve that if I reload.
In general, though, that's a minor issue: I can tell myself that in my story, Shephard survived and retired to live happily ever after on that little patch of land on the Quarian homeworld with his germophobic purple partner.

There are flaws in all the games, of course. The side missions are largely poor, though they improve with each game. The planet scanning, initially quite chill and enjoyable, quickly grows tedious. The paragon/renegade system isn't always implemented well: sometimes the moral dilemma is too murky for it to make sense, sometimes the renegade action is too out of character for my Shephard: he's a good guy who can be sneaky and isn't afraid to use violence when necessary, but I wasn't expecting him to punch a lady journalist in the face just for asking annoying questions (especially as that single action might have been what cost me the best ending). The human characters are generally less interesting than the alien squadmates, but they have their moments. And the galaxy-saving super soldier Shephard has a lot of trouble with climbing and only learns to jump in the third game.

On the whole, though, it's the kind of series where I can just throw myself into it and ignore the issues. There are probably more things that are wrong with it but what the hell, it works for me.
The decision system means it should have a lot of replay value, but I don't feel like that. I feel like the story I lived through is the definitive one. Wrex and Ashley lived, and Mordin and Kaidan didn't. Shephard got together with Tali. The Quarians and Geth made peace. I cured the genophage. Everyone surived the Collector mission.

They've started work on a new sequel: Andromeda was OK, not terrible but not great, but it'd be good if this was a proper sequel and the characters came back. Hard to see, though, how they can work in all the many variables from people's different saves. I don't think anyone would want them going fuck that and just making a particular scenario "canon".

But yeah, one of the very few times I've found myself emotionally invested in a video game and still thinking about the characters and world afterwards the way I do with the very best literature or TV series. Well done lads.

bgmnts

Played through the trilogy about 4 or 5 times now and I'd agree in the sense that it's pure comfort food nostalgia type stuff.

When you strip that away it is a very very cliché story with cliché characters and bare minimum gameplay. It abandoned any pretense of being an RPG after the first one, and then it just became a sub par third person shooter really.

I still enjoy it though, just on those terms of knowing they're bioware games and what that means. Much prefer KOTOR and Jade Empire though.

Inspector Norse

#26
I think when you strip everything away most stories and characters are clichés! In the sense that everything has already been done. None of the ME characters have too many layers or that much development, we're not in Jane Austen territory here, but they're fun and rewarding to hang out with. The voice acting is strong for most of the core characters, they give them identity and charisma, although the facial animations were always a little dodgy (even before the Andromeda mess)... which is perhaps why I made my Shephard fall for the character whose face you can't see.

You're right that the shooting and action is the least interesting bit but that's part of its appeal for me, I love it as a kind of world to explore and not be too bothered by waves of similar enemies attacking me. And I'm not sure that it dropping RPG elements like the tiresome inventory management was too much of a problem!

On the whole I think the trilogy just gets right into the middle of my comfort zone. Not high art or anything, but the right elements in the right places to give me exactly what I want from a game, and to give me that hollow comedown when it's all over.

bgmnts

I think perhaps I mean formulaic rather than cliché, although both are applicable. Bioware had their formula and they stuck to it, and it worked. I didn't play almost every Bioware game multiple times for no reason, its comfort for me.

I suppose maybe it did break into some weighty sci-fi stuff like the Genophage and that but I don't consider it much more than very plain sci-fi action adventure romp personally. 

Obviously 2 is the best one for obvious reasons, but I wish they improved upon the more shittily implemented RPG and exploration elements instead of just binning them and stripping it down to just a shooter with loads of dialogue really.

oggyraiding

Some of the dialogue choices were too ambiguous, for example I didn't think saying I will go ahead with Geth based activities would trigger Tali to jump off a cliff.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: oggyraiding on March 05, 2023, 06:35:12 PMSome of the dialogue choices were too ambiguous, for example I didn't think saying I will go ahead with Geth based activities would trigger Tali to jump off a cliff.

Well I haven't had that scenario play out myself but in general the big things like that usually happen as the result of a combination of decisions across the games. Reading up it's the fact that your siding with the Geth means that her entire species is wiped out that prompts her to commit suicide, which is understandable.
I agree that sometimes it's not that clear from the dialogue choices offered exactly what Shephard will say, but in most cases the actual decisions about what to do are clearly delineated and that the various other characters all have their own reactions to them is a strength of the games.

FWIW I loaded up my save again at the autosave right before the ending, and this time I chose "destroy" (having not noticed that getting this one just meant turning right in the end bit) and despite supposedly not having hit the 7800 war point mark, I did get the ending where Shephard's alive. So that's that, that's the canon ending for me. Shephard lives and flies off to Rannoch to have weird little frog-hipped purple babies.