Four years after the disappointment of AndromedaMass Effect is returning to its roots. Legendary Edition will bring improved versions of the original trilogy to PC and last gen consoles, with backwards compatibility allowing them to run on next-gen machines as well.

Mass Effect is part of a wave of classic games receiving re-releases on new platforms. Remasters and remakes, like last year's Final Fantasy VII Remake, are a regular part of the video game release schedule nowadays. However, while some may use the terms interchangeably, that is simply not the case. Remasters and remakes are very different things, and here's how to tell the difference.

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What Is a Remaster?

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A video game remaster takes an existing game (sometimes an older title like Mass Effect, other times a relatively new one like Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered for PlayStation 5) and gives it a new coat of paint. While remastered games may receive some quality of life improvements, such as the elevator sequences from the original Mass Effect being shortened for Legendary Edition, they mostly exist to make the games polished enough to meet modern standards.

Occasionally, remastering a game for new hardware leads to changes that cause fan backlash, like Peter Parker's new face in the Spider-Man remaster. The modern tweaks in Warcraft 3's remaster led to apocalyptic user review scores. Those are outliers, though. Remasters are usually a welcome way to play older games on new hardware, whether they're next-gen upgrades or originally from much older systems.

In the era of digital games, remasters have become the only way some games can be played. When Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game was pulled from digital storefronts, only people who had already purchased the game had access to it. However, its recent remaster gave a new audience a chance to see if it lived up to the nostalgia.

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What Is a Remake?

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Where remasters are faithful recreations of old games, remakes take more artistic license. In addition to modernizing the graphics, remakes can incorporate different story and gameplay elements, making them functionally new games. The remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 are good examples of this. Taking cues from Resident Evil 4, Capcom ditched the original games' tank controls in favor of more fluid gameplay and an over-the-shoulder third person perspective. Resident Evil 2 also made the game's intro playable and changed where Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy first meet.

Other remakes, like the PlayStation 4's Shadow of the Colossus and the recent PS5 version of Demon's Souls use modern hardware to create definitive versions of classics. They don't radically change what made those games special, but they're improved enough that they aren't simple remasters.

Why Is Legendary Edition a Remaster?

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition cover.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is taking the remaster route. It will feature graphical improvements, including enough lens flare to make J.J. Abrams blush. It will also excise some of the excessive camera shots meant for the male gaze from the old games and offer other quality of life improvements. It will also be missing certain features, like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer and DLC from the original.

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That said, the games will play like they did when originally released with some minor tweaks. The shooting mechanics will also be smoothed out to make the first game play similarly to its sequels. That said, it won't be a radically different experience than the older games, which are currently available as part of the EA Play subscription service.

Perhaps most importantly, the trilogy's storytelling won't change. Your Commander Shepherd's moral alignment and relationships will also be built in the same way as the original games. As archaic as some of Mass Effect's storytelling might be at this point, fans of the original can rest assured that it will remain as they remembered it. However, that also means that the trilogy's controversial ending won't be altered any further than it was in 2012, when Bioware added an epilogue in response to fan backlash.

Why Is Final Fantasy VII a Remake?

2020's Final Fantasy VII Remake earns its title by making numerous changes to the classic. It adds many things that would have been unfeasible in 1997, like voice acting, but its changes goes beyond that. For one thing, the game focuses on only a small portion of the original's story, set in the city of Midgar; the rest will be told episodically.

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In spite of that, Final Fantasy VII Remake is still as lengthy as you'd expect in a modern RPG, clocking in at 40 hours. That expanded focus on what took place in the first eight hours of the original allowed certain characters to shine. Thinly drawn NPCs like Jessie became memorable characters in the remake. That's something that won't be afforded to minor characters in the Mass Effect trilogy in the Legendary Edition.

Final Fantasy VII Remake's gameplay is also radically different from the original. Instead of classic JRPG turn-based battles, FFVII Remake employs a real-time combat system with strategic elements. The Active Time Battle meter of the original is now used for special moves.

While Mass Effect Legendary Edition will remind fans old and new why the original trilogy remains beloved, it won't offer a glimpse of the franchise's future. That will have to wait for the forthcoming sequel, which can only be speculated on for now. It won't be an entirely new experience like Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it will hopefully be the definitive version of the Mass Effect trilogy.

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