The Latest MASS EFFECT Blog Covers the Visual Improvements to the Remake
EA and BioWare have dedicated this week to showing off the visual improvements in Mass Effect Legendary Edition. This game looks so good compared to the original. You can find out more details over on the official blog, but I’ll walk through some of the highlights. The team started by identifying and cataloguing every asset from the original trilogy. Then, they set out to improve over 30,000 individual textures to meet the new 4K resolutions. The team even upgraded their version of Unreal Engine 3.
From there, the team went in to improve the assets by hand. They worked to make assets more uniform across the entire trilogy, but certain aspects were maintained including the way the Alliance Admirality uniforms changed throughout the trilogy. The Mass Effect games don’t use physically based rendering, but that didn’t stop the team from working on textures and materials to react more convincingly to light as well as improving skin, hair, and eye shaders. They also improved and added new environmental particle effects.
In addition, all cinematics were improved. When possible, the team re-rendered the pre-rendered cutscenes and when it wasn’t possible, they used an AI upscale program. They then tweaked things like the color correction to help modernize the cinematics.
The team then revisited the various levels and went to work breathing new life into them. Here are some examples of some of these improvements.
Feros has a few very visually distinct sections, including the colony and the highway that leads to the ExoGeni Corporation building, the aqueducts, and the Thorian lair. The former of these now features stronger smoke and fire effects, more buildings to fill out the skybox, and much more damage and debris to better showcase the attack by the geth. We also leaned into the visual atmosphere of the creepy, dark interiors with directional light shafts guiding players to uncover the mysteries of the Thorian (that sounds creepier than ever, thanks to its new audio mix).
Edmontonians are no strangers to brutalist architecture or the blistering cold, so we’ve always felt quite at home in Noveria. Lighting was reworked throughout the level, the storm outside was intensified, and we accentuated the differences between the hotel area and the Synthetic Insights lab to hopefully improve your ability to navigate the mission’s early sections.
Eden Prime is the first location you land on in Mass Effect. It’s described to you as a verdant paradise planet under attack by an unknown alien ship, but the sight that greeted players didn’t always align with that image. Luckily, in the Mass Effect 3: From Ashes DLC (which is, of course, included in the Legendary Edition) we’d already revisited Eden Prime, so we could incorporate its overall atmosphere and specific buildings. We’ve moved the sun’s placement so that the player’s path forward is now illuminated by evening light while the burnt red sky looms behind, punctuated by falling ash and tracer fire. We also improved the planet’s surface with additional fire and battle damage, more foliage, and destroyed structures littering the crater Sovereign leaves behind.
I am loving everything that I see about Mass Effect Legendary Edition. It looks so incredible! The lighting changes alone really help the games. The remake will be available to play on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on May 14.
