BioWare has announced some of the changes they are making to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, which only serves to make the wait for the remastered trilogy on May 14th all the more painful.
One of the most exciting changes coming to the remastered Mass Effect trilogy is the fine-tuning of the combat system. As the games became more and more popular, each installment evolved and implemented new features, meaning the first game was kind of left behind, as it relies too much on an RPG feel compared to the FPS-style gunplay of the second and third games. Well, no more! According to BioWare, the Legacy Edition will increase accuracy across all weapons, improving the "aiming down sights camera view" to be tighter and more accurate like subsequent games, while the aim assist has been fine-tuned to give better precision in combat.
Likewise, the first game now gives Shepard the ability to sprint out of combat, so you can finally run across the entire Citadel in less time than it takes to run an actual marathon rather than press the sprint button like a dummy without it doing anything. Another change that seems obvious in retrospect is the ability to flag items as "junk" that you can convert to Omni-gel that you can use for breaking locked chests or repairing the Mako, and also sell to merchants more quickly.
Another big upgrade to the original game comes not in combat, but in exploration, with the Mako vehicle now getting new "calibrations" that BioWare says will make it smoother to control and ride. The Mako now gets a speed boost and improved physics so it feels heavier and more realistic — don't worry, though, the devs say you can still drive the vehicle off cliffs like you always did.
Of course, the original Mass Effect isn't the only game to get upgrades, as Mass Effect 2 is also getting tweaked ammunition, which BioWare promises will increase the drop rate for ammo in the game, especially when using a sniper rifle, which was unfortunately almost pointless in the original version since ammo was incredibly scarce.
Here's another cool new feature: "Galactic Readiness" in Mass Effect 3 is "no longer impacted by external factors that aren’t part of the collection, like multiplayer or the old companion app for ME3." Before, you could impact the single-player campaign and your preparedness in facing the Reaper invasion by playing outside the regular story — not anymore. According to BioWare, the final battle will still depend on things you do, but this time it will be contained to the actual trilogy. The more content you complete across the three games, the more likely you'll be prepared for the endgame. This means that, should you skip straight to the third game and skip the first two, "you’ll have to do just about every option available in the game to be eligible for an ending that doesn’t result in massive galactic losses." Heavy stuff.