The Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy is looking more likely than ever. For fans who have been waiting since a BioWare employee hinted at a remaster on the NeoGaf forums as far back as 2014, the remaster has seemed like a distant hope, especially after the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Between EA’s planned “HD Title” due before the end of the fiscal year, a Mass Effect art book due for release at the start of 2021, and rumors that the remaster could be announced on November 7 2020, AKA N7 Day, it looks like 2020 might finally be the year fans have been waiting for. Here are some predictions and hopes for The Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy when it finally releases.
Mass Effect 1’s combat pales in comparison to Mass Effect 2’s, where BioWare really figured out how to make the game feel like an action sci-fi, while maintaining its tight writing. The Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy should bring the games’ combat up to the same standard across all three games.
Though Mass Effect 2 is a classic and considered the height of the series in terms of writing, BioWare should really look to Mass Effect 3’s combat and some of the subtle improvements made to cooldown times and weapon control, as well as a faster pace for combat in the third game. It will be important that players who want to play as close to the original games as they remember be able to switch to the combat systems of the original games. It is likely, however, that BioWare will not be able to resist making combat in the first game more elegant in a remaster.
Mass Effect’s Renegade/Paragon morality system is a very simple way to break down decisions. The trouble is that, as a result of the way it does so, the vast majority of players only pick the Paragon options in Mass Effect. This was a big reason that the system was removed for Andromeda.
There are certain interactions like resolving squadmate conflicts later in Mass Effect 2 which can only be done if the player has only 100% committed to either Paragon or Renegade, which removes a lot of roleplaying freedom in the game. It prevents players from making in-character decisions. When trying to find Archangel in Mass Effect 2, for example, the choice to stun-gun a mercenary with his back turned in a Renegade option, even though a player who is roleplaying as a merciful Shepherd might be hoping to spare the man from the upcoming gunfight.
In any case, the remaster should make the Renegade/Paragon system optional or find some way to make choosing mixed decisions a more worthwhile path through the original Mass Effect trilogy. This allows for some less black and white roleplaying decisions to be made, and could make a replay of the remaster an even more compelling story than the original games. Depending on the extent of the remaster, this isn’t the most likely thing to happen, but it would be a welcome change.
Mass Effect 2’s missions were originally planned to be able to be done in almost any order, with players able to pick up all of the dossiers at once from the Illusive Man at the start of the game and compile their squad from there. This was not included in the final game and the dossier missions were divided into a few key acts because the game had to be split up onto two separate disks for the Xbox 360. As a result, some characters like Legion cannot be added to the squad until quite late in the game.
This makes some of the decisions the player has to make as Shepherd in Mass Effect 2 less impactful. Few players would choose Legion over Tali’Zora in their argument on the Normandy, for example, simple because Tali had been a squadmate since Mass Effect 1, while Legion had barely had enough time in Mass Effect 2 to explain their unique worldview to the player.
It seems likely, therefore, that the remaster could reintroduce some of the elements of freedom planned in the original games that the hardware of the time prohibited, especially things like the dossiers that were planned to be open-ended until very late in the development cycle. It is unclear where this would affect the other two games in particular, but there are very likely areas where they could also be made less linear by taking advantage of the current hardware.
The real stars of the Mass Effect series are the squadmates the player meets along the way, as companions like Garrus and Tali are among the most beloved in gaming. The BioWare team should add some extra interactions with them in the remaster that helps unobtrusively develop their characters within the story while allowing the player to spend more time with some of their favorite characters.
More dialog options with certain characters could be added at particular times if they are part of the squad, for example, or the games could take advantage of all of the original voice acting already being recorded to record more specific reactions to the events and choices that Shepherd can make across the series. This could make the players’ decisions and romances in Mass Effect feel even more impactful, making the game feel far more immersive.
BioWare’s own Citadel add-on for Mass Effect 3 showed just how well moments with the squad can be inserted into the established Mass Effect timeline without undermining the events around them, including events in the classic original trilogy. Hopefully, BioWare will let fans spend even more time with the best Mass Effect squadmates the second time around.
Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that a Mass Effect remaster would make significant alterations to the infamous ending of Mass Effect 3, which essentially boiled the trilogy down to the choice between 3 separate paths while not taking into account all of the decisions made by the player so far. Even the “fix” didn’t fix much post-launch.
The ending was released in 2012, and Citadel was partially released as DLC to help give fans the proper goodbye they felt they were denied by the retail release. However, it is unlikely BioWare would go as far as to make any big story alterations to the original game. Nonetheless, the Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy is likely to be a huge hit for BioWare, and many Mass Effect fans will be eagerly looking forward to N7 Day 2020 in the hopes that the remaster, and some of its specific details, will finally be unveiled.
The Mass Effect Trilogy Remaster is reportedly in development.
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