The remastered trilogy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition contains almost all of BioWare’s sci-fi RPG epic, with two notable exceptions: ME3’s multiplayer, and ME1’s Pinnacle Station DLC. While the absence of multiplayer is a glaring absence (I’ll honestly miss it), when BioWare announced the release date yesterday I’d initially not noticed Pinnacle wasn’t in the big long list of included DLC. Turns out, the source code was corrupted, and rebuilding it from scratch would’ve taken ages.
Pinnacle Station sends Shepard and chums to a spacebase for virtual combat training missions. It didn’t have much story and wasn’t exciting, but did reward Shepard with her own little retirement bungalow on a distant planet – which also let her buy powerful gear early and easily. Not huge, but handy. That won’t be in the Legendary Edition.
Made by Demiurge Studios, the DLC didn’t wasn’t even in all versions of the original game. The source was corrupted, so it never came to PS3. In the latest round of press interviews, BioWare said they reached out to Demiurge to try again for the Legendary Edition, and their hopes were raised, but the backup they received was corrupted and broken. They’d need to rebuild it. Whole process was “an emotional roller coaster,” game director Mac Walters said.
“It would basically take us another full six months just to do this with most of the team we’ve got,” Walters told Game Informer. “I wish we could do it. Honestly, just because this is meant to be everything that the team ever created, brought together again – all the single-player content. And so, leaving it all on the cutting-room floor, it was heartbreaking.”
The whole trilogy has touched-up textures and models and such, while the first game is being reworked more substantially with tweaks to everything from combat to driving. It’s also unifying character creation, letting us play ME3’s default Femshep in them all while adding new skin tones and hairstyles and such. The Legendary Edition does have the rest of the DLC, as far as I can see, from big story missions to wee promo items like Shepard’s hoodie.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is coming May 14th via Steam and Origin at £55/€60/$60. If you own ME3 on Steam, you can get a wee discount. It’ll also be on PlayStation and Xbox.