Mass Effect (2007) News

Mass Effect teaches us never to assume we can't learn from others

Confession time: I play lots of games but often find myself turning down the difficulty. The shame of it all keeps me awake at night. The nightmares, you see, punctuate my once peaceful slumber. "Dispatching Nazis with hatchets shouldn't be that easy," I murmur to myself in a cold sweat. While medium is my go-to difficulty, I tend to bump things down for the twitchiest of titles.

Mass Effect is an exception to this rule. Every year, I launch the game and crank the difficulty up to veteran. The reason I do this is the same reason Mass Effect is permanently installed on my computer: I want to make the experience last as long as possible.

But what makes Mass Effect so special? BioWare spent nearly a year in pre-production, ruminating over the galaxy's alien worlds and tying together loose threads of the plot. Breathing life into the vastness of space is no easy task. Mass Effect's building blocks, from its otherworldly architecture to its diverse roster of alien races, have been placed with extraordinary care. This painstaking effort has culminated in some of the most epic moments in the history of gaming.

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EA Play comes to Game Pass PC in December

EA Play is becoming part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on November 10 alongside the launch of Xbox Series X - but that addition only applies on console. On PC, we're going to have to wait a bit longer for EA Play, as Microsoft has confirmed that it'll get bundled up with the home computer library in December.

EA Play will be available through all PC flavours of Xbox Game Pass in December. That includes both the basic $9.99 / £7.99 Xbox Game Pass PC subscription, and the $14.99 / £10.99 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate bundle, which includes both PC and console Game Pass, Xbox Live Gold, and access to xCloud streaming services.

It's important to note that EA Play is $4.99 and only includes access to the publisher's vault of older titles, like Titanfall 2, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, and older Battlefield and EA Sports titles. New games are typically added about a year after launch, though that's not a consistent rule.

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Mass Effect remasters reportedly taking longer because the first game isn't good enough

The rumoured next-gen ports of the Mass Effect trilogy probably won't be out until next year, mainly due to fundamental problems with the original sci-fi game, a new report says. A games reporter with inside sources at EA says the main roadblock for the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is the fact that the first Mass Effect might "disappoint fans" who play it expecting the same level of polish as Mass Effect 2 & 3 had.

Writing for VentureBeat, Jeff Grub says COVID-19 has played a role in keeping the remastered trilogy from coming out this year, but that's not the only thing that's slowing down progress on the project.

"The primary factor holding up development, beyond the pandemic, is the original Mass Effect game. It currently does not live up to the quality of the rest of the package," he says. "It would make a poor impression for new players, and it might disappoint fans who then won't go on to play and experience the impressive upgrades from Mass Effect 2 and ME3."

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Mass Effect Trilogy Remastered could release before the end of the year

The long-rumoured remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy is set to arrive before the end of this year, though it might be delayed. A journalist with insider knowledge believes an upgraded version of the RPG games is still due for October, but might slip.

Speaking on the GamesBeat Decides podcast (ta, VGC), reporter Jeff Grubb delivered some good news, and some possible bad news, on the imminent next-gen ports. "Up until, like, this last week, I know the plan for sure was to announce it in early October, release in later in October. So good news," He says. "Maybe bad news, it's 2020, maybe that could start to slip, it sounds like maybe that's a possibility, nothing for sure yet."

EA already has space game Star Wars Squadrons as a major October release at $40, and the plan, as far as Grubb has heard, is for the Mass Effect trilogy to be a combined $60 title alongside that for the holiday season. Unfortunately, nothing is static for too long at the minute, and the publisher might err on a delay of BioWare's action-adventure games. "With everything else falling apart, like across the board, I could see them also wanting to just delay," Grubb explains. "But that's not for sure, that's not a guarantee yet. It just seems like it's a possibility that's on the table but last I heard, October for both."

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Daily Deal - Mass Effect, 75% Off

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