Things I Want To See On The Mass Effect Remaster

It’s official, the original Mass Effect is getting remastered and is set to release sometime this spring. Perhaps BioWare is working on it right now as I write this.

I wrote earlier that I was originally skeptical because of how precious the trilogy is to me, and that a remaster may make some experiences no longer the same as they were before. But perhaps that’s my way of letting nostalgia cloud my judgment without doing what most people do online when that happens.

I spent some time thinking and realized that while the trilogy is great, not everyone has had the chance to play it, and some of the games within it didn’t age as well (especially the first one and to be honest that one deserves to be remastered the most!). Then there were some other factors, so I’ve decided to give it a chance after all.

Here’s what I want to see in this remaster, and I’m sure a lot of you would like to see it too.

Easy access to DLCs

DLCs are what make the Mass Effect trilogy so much fun to have side stories that we remember. Even Bring Down The Sky was a good DLC, and I remember the first time I played the trilogy, I didn’t have any of these DLCs, but the more I played, I discovered them and looked forward to playing them just as much as the main game. I always had a habit of saving them for last before completing the main story though. For example, in the third game, I would go all the way up to completing Sanctuary, and then I would do Leviathan, Omega, and Citadel.

If you play primarily on console (I used to play them on Xbox), obtaining them should be no problem, but if you now play on PC like me, it’s a little more challenging. Whether you use Steam or Origin, EA requires you to sign up for the latter just so you can get the DLCs with the base game. Got Origin already, then you’re good to go.

If you prefer Steam, downloading the DLCs can be a pain, not just because you also need an Origin account, but also because not all of them are available in the store. Players have posted guides of how to obtain them which makes you to download links from an EA help site, but not everyone wants to go through this. Many players just like to have everything there or to easily purchase the DLCs from the same location.

BioWare has announced that all the DLCs will be present in the remaster, both campaign and multiplayer ones so yeah we need those DLCs!

Simple Shepard Imports

Again, not a problem if you do this on console, but when I first played the trilogy on PC two years ago, importing my Femshep from ME1 to ME2 was an annoying process. I had to look up guides and copy saves from folders and paste them in others just to make it work, whereas from ME2 to ME3 it was much easier.

Now, since this remaster is going to include all three games, this should fix the problem. Hopefully it’ll still allow us to change Shepard’s appearance or specialization if we want to before we begin; even though what I’ve always done is I would just stick to the same class for the entire run of the trilogy.

Controller Support for PC

Playing Mass Effect on PC has its disadvantages that it only offers keyboard controls, which aren’t bad, but they are clunky in the first game. I mean, playing with your keyboard isn’t bad, but I prefer use that for smaller and simpler games. Given how many things there are you can do in the game’s combat, I just find it easier to use the Xbox controller I have hooked up to my computer, so hopefully BioWare includes this.

Better Graphics

Duh, I mean I like how the graphics evolve as you go from one game to the next, but there were some graphical bugs I saw in gameplay and cutscenes that didn’t go unnoticed and BioWare never patched them. For example, in the cutscene where you go with Garrus to the top of the Presidium, if you’ve romanced him, there was a bug I noticed when Garrus reacted to my Femshep confessing her feelings before they kissed.

With improved graphics, it could fix a lot of bugs that were present in the original versions of the games and it will also look a lot more modern and badass like playing through a movie. Who doesn’t want that?

Improved romance scenes

I doubt this is going to be implemented, but it would be nice if it did. Right now, we only get the most intimate scenes with our squad as long as they are either the same race as Shepard, or asari. For those of us who love Tali, Garrus (me), Thane, etc. we might get something romantic, but nothing that gets steamier beyond that.

The screen would always fade to black as soon as my Femshep was about to get close to Garrus en route to the Cerberus HQ, maybe I’m just being horny writing this, but I want to see what happened!

An universal combat and weapon/armor customization system

This is a feature in the Mass Effect trilogy that has always been changing. In the first game everything was in one place and it was a bit overwhelming at first.

The second game only allowed us to switch weapons due to its primary focus being upgrades, and the third game took things up a notch allowing us to fully mod and upgrade them. Armor on the other hand didn’t become fully customizable until the third game.

Not sure how the remaster will carry this out, though it would be nice if BioWare was able to come up with something that works that is easy to use, but doesn’t have so many features to the point where we get lost in what is there.

I’m not really going to ask for too much to conclude this article because I believe BioWare is going to blow us away, knowing this may be their one chance to turn things around.

I don’t believe that upgrades from the second game and war assets from the third are going anywhere. The multiplayer from the third game was the only multiplayer I still enjoyed to this day, and I regret never unlocking the Turian Cabal or the Geth Juggernaut, so it makes me wonder will they keep some features from that as well.

The soundtrack, I hope they don’t tweak it too much, because there are some pretty iconic tracks too, but no guarantees on that either.

Only time will tell, what do you wish to see in the remaster?

👽Emily