Mass Effect Legendary Edition has arrived
Ah yes, "reapers"
It's here! It's here! Put on your best space shoes, it's time to chat up some aliens. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out right now, remastering Commander Shepard's trilogy of adventures, and bringing back all your extraterrestrial pals with some spruced-up graphics. It's been a long while since I last explored BioWare's epic sci-fi RPG series, and I can't tell you how excited I am to zoom off into the Milky Way again.
As well as overall enhancements to the entire trilogy - better textures, lighting, audio improvements and 4K support, to name a few - the Legendary Edition's biggest changes revolve around Mass Effect 1. Combat should be a lot smoother with better accuracy, ADS and weapon cooldowns, you can now control squadmates individually too, and the Mako no longer handles like a tortoise on crack (though you can revert to the old Mako settings, if you're up for the challenge).
As Alice Bee said yesterday, we all already know if we're getting the Mass Effect Legendary Edition: "For Mass Effect fans, it's not really head-thinking time. This is heart-thumping time. This is seeing that cinematic where you first fly down to the Citadel time. This is saving Ash or Kaiden time. This is saving the universe time, baby!"
I feel personally targeted by her post, because of course I'm going to play the remaster. Mass Effect was the series that made me realise I wanted to work in the games industry, and I'm thoroughly enjoying being caught up in all the excitement. So, if you need me, I'll be cuddled up on the sofa sobbing into my controller, because I'm a nostalgic numpty.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out right now on Origin and Steam, priced at £55/$60/€60. It's also available on Xbone and PS4 (which, admittedly, is where I'll be playing it - how could I not buy a hard copy of my fave game series?).
If you're also jumping into the remasters today, hardware queen Katharine has the low-down on Mass Effect Legendary Edition's PC settings. Fair warning with the PC download too: you can't install the games separately, they all come as one big 120GB package, so make sure you have enough space for all that space.