Missed Opportunities of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

[Winter]

So I just finished replaying Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and while I do think it is an improvement over the original games I can't help but notice that the game missed several opportunities to improve the trilogy. Not in big ways like the ending of ME3 but in small ways, smalls ways that just kinda pile up over time that become more noticeable upon several replays.

For example ME2 is now the only game in the series which has limited options for weapons for classes. In ME1, ME3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda you are free to use whatever weapon you want with ME3 even allowing you to remove which ever weapons you don't want and keep which ones you feel best suit you. ME2 doesn't allow this AND it locks off certain weapons even if you pick said weapon half way through the game. Again this is unique to ME2 as the other games allow you to use whatever weapon you want with no such restrictions.

Another issue is that the series still insists on many of the old time sinks from the original versions even though many of those same issues remain largely disliked among fans. The most notable one being scanning in ME2 and ME3 which remains annoying and tedious and is just a massive waste of time. I actually timed it, it can take up to 5 hours in ME3 and TEN hours in ME2 to scan for everything you need in both games respectively and the Remasters offered no true fixes for this. Fans on PC actually went out of their way to fix these issues and I'm amazed that BioWare didn't think to include these fixes because they kept going on about how they would work to improve the games and yet this remains as annoying as it was in the original.

Nobody asked for this to return and nobody wanted it to return. There is no one in the fanbase who looked at the original ME2 and ME3 and went "Man I cant get enough of this scanning mechanic, I hope that this remains in any and all remasters in future games."

Another missed opportunity is NOT returning original romance options from the original game before it was altered due to the moral guardians at the time.

Original Ashley, Kaidan, Tali, Jack, Jacob, Miranda and Thane could be romanced by Shepard regardless of their gender. BioWare claimed that they had just lost the dialogue files and therefore couldn't restore these options but that's BS because FANS have been able to restore most of these and most you would need is to get Shepard's voice actors back to record lost dialogue which would be, at most, 10 or 20 minutes across all three games.

There's also the full final conversation between Shepard and Anderson in ME3 which was removed and for some reason not restored in the remaster and for all my issues with the ending that final scene with Anderson is great but the original conversation was even better and frankly the ending needs all the help it can get.

The worst missed opportunity is one fix that WAS in the original game and it's been stated by BioWare that they still have it fully intact, is the option to install the Reaper IFF whenever we want in ME2. Originally after getting the IFF and Legion the option to install the IFF was left up to us soon after getting the IFF it WOULDN'T be installed until we decided to do so. There is actual audio of EDI telling we can install the IFF whenever we want that you can find online and again BioWare stated that this audio was still intact so they COULD have included this.

Even if they couldn't just have it where we can install the IFF whenever we want so we can get Legion and get his unique dialogue that is sadly locked off due to him being tied to the abduction of the crew.

For me this is worse then locking off romances that were originally opened to all players because it needlessly screws over one the series' best characters for no real reason and really hurts the second game.

While I don't like the ending of ME3 I get why BioWare didn't remove or change it despite the temptation to do so. It is part of the series and we shouldn't get rid of such a big part of the game just because it's controversial especially since this was being sold as a remaster not a remake.

But there is no such excuse for not restoring cut content or getting rid of tedious especially since BioWare went out of it's way remove tedious and annoying elements from ME1. You can now sprint outside of combat, you skip elevator rides even though their much shorter then before (seriously you're only skipping 3 seconds if you stay don't hit the skip button) and included a booster on the Mako.

They even created a new character model for an enemy we met in the original game as it was seen as a minor continuity error as he was a human in the original game but changed him to a Turian in the Remaster. So BioWare is perfectly capable and willing to make changes to improve the experience of the game so why not do that here?

There are other things that bug me, like how sprint in the first two games still has a cooldown instead of being unlimited like in the third game and MEA, or how we can only get level 10 upgrades for weapons in ME3 on New Game+, or how we can only see Tali's face if we romanced her and even though in a pretty bad picture of her that feels like a rip-off of fan art. Or how the didn't fix ME3's journal to make it easier to figure out where you need to go for certain missions or make figuring out which systems had unfinished missions in ME1. And how ME2's NG+ is still poo poo garbage that for some reason removes all upgrades you made to armor and weapons so we have to get them every time we replay the game means we have to do the scanning mini-game EVERY SINGLE TIME WE REPLAY THE GAME! Or how there is no way to skip the hacking mini-game like we can in the first game.

There's just so many missed opportunities that would like be universally embraced by fans and most of these are rather minor inclusions that fans WANTED in the first place.

But no we can only get this stuff or get rid of this stuff with fan mods on PC. Ugh!

[Riedquat]

Personally I didn't see the point in changing ME2 or 3 much (given that they weren't going to touch the train wreck of an ending), and 1 needed a remake rather than a remaster.