Mass Effect is one of those things, it can get personal pretty quickly if you like the genre and remember the fondly sacrificed nights in 2007, 2010 and 2012. I even pulled out the original first part last year and played it on my retro PC. However, I quickly gave it up again, because the real feeling from back then just wouldn’t come back. And before you ruin your memories, you’d better not.
Because it’s a really well thought out and also almost perfectly told story, even today, and it plays exactly the way very good books read. It was almost always believable, very logically constructed and extremely detailed. The atmosphere was right, the characters too, there were always great quests to do on the side and some humor wasn’t missing either. Commander Shepard was something of my digital companion for years, and back then many games had to measure up to Bioware’s trilogy. Often without success. And then came the remaster, which I just have to write about today.
It’s a remaster, not a remake, I have to preface that. With all the advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is for sure that you get exactly what you know and expect, only in a nicer way and without any bad surprises in the story as well as the feeling. Because visually, especially the first part could actually only win. That just looked dusty, rough pixelated and yet muddy compared to current titles. With a remake, you quickly run the risk that, in the overconfidence of the remake, some of the content is photoshopped or things are invented without need, which then have a disturbing effect.
The first setback comes with the download, because you’re downloading well over 100 GB of data, even if you only want to play the first part. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea and could certainly have been solved better by including parts 1 to 3 as a kind of optional DLC, since the launcher for the three games is still above it as a standalone program. No launcher means no program selection. A great opportunity has been missed here, including that of a unified settings menu and an overview of progress across versions.
The reason why I chose the first part for this review is simply that it is the part that has changed the most in a direct comparison and the whole thing has to be seen as an example anyway. The pixel wallpapers are very well done, because I’m playing it in Ultra HD, you really end up seeing every slip. It’s all right here. The sound is also okay, only the synchronicity of speech and facial expressions is stuck at the level of 2007. This, by the way, affects almost all animations, right down to running through terrain and the somewhat goofy AI. Everyone still looks like they swallowed a thick and long stick.
Also, the already epic non-controllability of the Mako has barely improved, which I so absolutely cannot understand. Is it really that hard to just spread the movement over two axes when using a controller? I pulled out my own file again here, where I can freely assign keyboard commands to the controller via a third party program and which I had saved as a preset. That’s the first bad impression, because I even take it really personally. The completely stupid controls of the Mako are really legendary and were the subject of many hate threads in the relevant forums at the time. Unfortunately, almost nothing happened here. Opportunity lost, too bad.
Yes, a remake is not a real remaster and a lot of the gameplay is just as old-fashioned as the original was by today’s standards. But at least they didn’t make things worse, they put their hands on characters and textures. Many meshes have become finer, the pixel wallpaper more high-resolution. The immersion is still right and after the first hour you actually don’t want to stop. The addiction is then almost still the same, and this must also be mentioned in fairness.
The settings, even for the graphics, have hardly been adapted or expanded, so it’s all still the natural leaven of yesteryear. You can criticize that, but you don’t have to. I didn’t really miss anything and that’s a good thing.
The advantage of this more naturalistic makeover is the hardware required for it, which almost lands in the entry-level range. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition runs on virtually any overclocked toaster and far from eating hardware. This is also one of the things to mention, as many current games barely look or play any better, but require a much more potent PC.
To revel in the past to some extent, I dug out my good old GTX 580 again here and invested well over 300 watts to improve the indoor climate. Together with a historic Intel Q6600 at a bloated 4 GHz on a legendary DFI Lanparty with X38 chipset and good old ADATA RAM, I had a nice flashback to what could have been possible back then. It is still absolutely playable on this system!
Between us: part two is even better from my point of view (it already was at that time), part three as a conclusion is so-so, but still in the category “I like to take it with me”. I’m a little torn because expectations were high. But you also have to be fair, because the game was only polished up as a remaster, not really relaunched. For that, pretty much everything turned out well. Well, except for the Mako, but you can help yourself there.
And you know what? For once, I’m even going to give it a sort of buy order! You can’t do anything wrong with it and nothing has been made worse, on the contrary. Those who knew and loved Mass Effect are welcome to reminisce here. Sit down, dive in and play again. If you didn’t know it yet: last chance to rediscover one of the best sequel projects of all time for yourself. That was groundbreaking back then. You have fun playing, but now with the remaster your eyes don’t hurt as much. And you’ll get used to the Mako too. I promise
On the next pages I have attached the screenshots of the first part, because it is well worth seeing. And that’s exactly what I’m leaving you with for the upcoming holidays, maybe Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will be a good alternative to the grey rainy weather outside.
- 1 - Persönliches Fazit: Kann und muss man mal wieder spielen!
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