Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was announced on N7 Day, realizing the hopes of fans who has been holding out for a remaster of the original trilogy since shortly after Mass Effect 3 first released in 2012. It remains unclear, however, just how much BioWare will be willing to change in the new version of the games and which areas will be focused on for improvement.
There will be plenty of aspects of the original game that many fans will not want BioWare to change, even controversial aspects like the Paragon-Renegade morality system or the ending of Mass Effect 3. Many will want to experience the original trilogy just as they did the first time around, only with better graphics. Despite this, there is one feature that BioWare could improve on immensely in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition without risking stepping on the toes of players who want to recreate their original experience of the trilogy.
Male Shepard’s default face is iconic in gaming. Based on the Dutch model Mark Vanderloo, it became heavily associated with the character, in part because the default face for Female Shepard was less consistent between games and was not constructed as a separate model like the Vanderloo face.
Players who wanted to create their own Commander Shepard could go to a separate character customization screen where the Vanderloo face could not be accessed, as it wasn’t created using the in-game character customization feature. The Vanderloo face also couldn’t be roughly reverse engineered in the character creator itself, and Mass Effect’s custom character creator was clunky and lacked variety, especially in the first game.
The original Mass Effect trilogy missed the opportunity to let players start with the Vanderloo face as the default in the character creator and allow players to customize from there. This may have been more difficult when the first game was released in 2007, but would likely be far more achievable in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.
If BioWare remasters the Mass Effect character customization across the original trilogy, the studio would need to make sure that the original options or their graphically updated equivalents were still available for players who want to recreate their original custom Shepard in the remasters. However, BioWare could also add far more customization, especially when it comes to hair and facial hair options.
BioWare’s character customization would be one of the few areas of the original trilogy that the studio could improve upon unobtrusively, assuming the original options remain accessible. Unlike most other aspects of the game, any player who didn’t want to see new customization options could simply choose not to use them in the game.
There could also be more opportunities to update Shepard’s appearance over the course of the games, just as many RPGs have barbershops or hair-growth features. It seems strange that the default Male Shepard keeps his hair at the exact same length throughout the series, which remains cropped even after the character awakens from the dead in Mass Effect 2.
Allowing players to feel the passage of time through changes in their character’s appearance could be a great subtle way to let them immerse themselves deeper in the story of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. From Mass Effect 2, Renegade actions can cause Shepard’s scars from the Lazarus Project to reveal themselves even more, though the player can have them healed at a doctor. The game could allow players to choose which scars they would like to keep, allowing them even more control of the character’s appearance.
It remains possible that for the sake of time and money Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s character customization will simply be a graphically updated version of the first original trilogy’s. If BioWare seizes the opportunity, however, the Mass Effect remaster could significantly improve on one major aspect of the series.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is set to release in 2021 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with “targeted enhancements” for PS5 and Xbox Series X owners.
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