BioWare wanted to go one step further than the mods, but in case you prefer the original handling model of the Mako, you can still utilise it.
A Lot of Textures or A Lot of Videos have served as a benchmark for BioWare, Mac Walters, the project director of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, told PCGamer. „We early on looked at some of those, and said, ‘OK, well, this is our minimum bar and from here we have to then go bigger, right?’ They have limited access as a modder to the assets that are in there. We have full access to them.”
„They’re getting these great results with the A Lot of Texture mods and those other up-res ones, so that started us down that kind of the path with some confidence. We knew we could go in and hit base-level AI up-res on all the textures and receive the same amount of visual upgrade or even more than the mods because we have a lot of advantages they don’t have. We get to work on the uncompressed source, full-resolution textures. Whereas what they have, it’s been crunched down, it’s been compressed, it’s put onto a disc, and then they up-res off that,” environment director Kevin Meek added. He previously was sceptical of AI upscaling, but he is now on its side.
„There’s a lot of really popular mods about adding different types of hairs to Shephard. People who are popular into wanting some new casual outfits as you’re walking around. Things like that kind of helped give us again a bit more confidence. Yeah, it is worth it to spend a little bit of time to create some new hair options and some new clothing options,” Meek said, confirming that they also took some inspiration from cosmetic mods.
What about other mods, such as ones that support same-sex romances in Mass Effect 2 or restore cut content? „I don’t think any content has explicitly been removed from the depot that we have. Hopefully, they’ll still be able to have access to do all that. That’d be the hope,” Walters said. So he’s not 100% sure that Mass Effect Legendary Edition will support all the mods that were made for the original trilogy. Meek added that BioWare wants the re-released trilogy to be as altered as the original: „Mods have an advantage, where they don’t have to be constrained about certification requirements, and size-on-disc issues, and any ripple effects that come from pushing some effects too far or not far enough, or whatever.”
Walters also talked about Mako’s controlling scheme: „For those people out there who do like pain, we’ve left the option to leave it back kind of closer to the original controls as well if you want. You’ll never get a consensus, whether some people love it, or some people hate it. We’re making a big point of it often in marketing, but it’s a lighter touch than I think some people might think. And the optional control scheme is optional, so you can drop back and forth.”
And finally, he admitted that they have also worked on the cameras, which could have been a nuisance in the original three games: „The close aim, that’s a big one. We forget to talk about that. Anything that was within probably 20 meters of you was almost impossible to track and hit. And then also things in the distance that was at a different altitude than you were just like, ‘It says I’m aiming there but I’m shooting down here? What is going on?’ Fixing some of that too makes it a little bit more fun.”
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will release on May 14 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One (supporting the new consoles, too), and PC.
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