Heroics Never Felt so Smooth
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is the long-awaited remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy, but let’s face it – gaming has evolved, and the first Mass Effect game especially feels outdated, and in need of an update.
While we won’t be getting any changes to the storyline – which sadly means that we’ll still need to wait until the third game to get a male same-sex romance, whereas female same-sex romance is available as early as the first game – the gameplay is getting some significant buffs.
The majority of changes affect the first game, with the aim of bringing it in-line with the rest of the trilogy.
Here’s some of what you can expect:
- Shepard can now sprint out of combat
- Melee attacks are now mapped to a button press rather than automatically occurring based on proximity to an enemy
- Weapon accuracy and handling has been significantly improved
- Reticle bloom is more controlled
- Weapon sway removed from sniper rifles
- Aiming down sights/”tight aim” camera view has been improved
- Improved aim assist for target acquisition
- All relevant enemies now take headshot damage in the first game
- Previously some did not, including humanoid enemies
- Ammo mods (Anti-Organic, Anti-Synthetic, etc.) can now drop throughout the whole game
- Previously, these stopped dropping at higher player levels
- They are now also available to purchase from merchants
- All weapons can be used by any class without penalty
- Specializations (the ability to train/upgrade certain weapons) are still class-specific
- Weapons cool down much faster
- Medi-gel usage has been improved
- Base cooldown reduced
- Levelling benefits increased
- Increased Liara’s bonus to cooldowns
- Inventory management improvements
- Items can now be flagged as “Junk”
- All Junk items can be converted into Omni-gel or sold to merchants at once
- Inventory and stores now have sorting functionality
- Some abilities have been rebalanced
- Weapon powers (i.e., those that are unlocked on each weapon type’s skill tree) have been improved:
- Effectiveness/strength is increased (duration reduced in some cases)
- Heat now resets on power activation
Other changes include tweaks to gunplay, boss battles, and XP, as well as Mass Effect 3’s iteration of Femshep becoming the default throughout the trilogy. For a full list of all the announced tweaks so far, check out the PlayStation blog.