Ahead of the launch of Mass Effect Legendary Edition next week, BioWare has outlined how the game will perform on all systems and it’s good news for anyone who owns Sony or Microsoft's new consoles — especially players on Xbox Series X.
BioWare revealed that the game will offer two gameplay modes: favor quality and favor performance. The former will prioritize the highest level of visual fidelity possible while the latter will instead focus on a consistent framerate even at the cost of some graphical features.
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You can see a full breakdown of the technical targets for each mode on every platform below but what stands out immediately is that even gamers still playing on a PS4 or Xbox One will be able to enjoy the entire Mass Effect trilogy with various graphic enhancements at 60 frames per second.
The best console experience will, unsurprisingly, come if you’ve been lucky enough to score a PS5 or Xbox Series X.
In quality mode, you’ll be able to enjoy all three games in the collection in 4K while still playing at 60 fps. However, favor performance mode on the Xbox Series X takes the framerate a step further offering 120 fps at 1440p, while the PS5 offers only 60 fps at 1440p.
This discrepancy isn’t actually due to hardware limitations, but rather it’s thanks to the way the PS5 hands backwards compatibility. There isn’t a next-gen native version of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, instead the game will be playable on next-gen consoles thanks to backwards compatibility. While the Xbox Series X offers support for 120 fps in non-native games the PS5 locks backwards compatible titles at 60 fps.
This has been an issue flagged in the past by developers of games such as Rocket League, and it’s a shame that Sony hasn’t taken steps to fix this issue yet. As it stands if you want the absolute best console performance when enjoying the Mass Effect Legendary Edition then you’ll want to opt for playing on Xbox Series X. On PC, the collection can be played at up to 240 fps, if you’ve got a rig that can handle it.
This technical breakdown wasn’t the only interesting Mass Effect Legendary Edition news this week. BioWare has also released several pieces of content for download that were previously only available as part of the Mass Effect 2 and 3 deluxe editions.
This bonus digital content includes 88 music tracks from across the trilogy, two digital art books, two digital comics, and a lithograph. It can all be downloaded from BioWare’s website for free. If all that wasn’t enough BioWare has also launched a box art creator web app, allowing you to arrange your favorite Mass Effect squadmates on a custom cover for printing.
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