Though Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will launch with 40 pieces of DLC from the trilogy, the original title's Pinnacle Station won't count among such offerings; according to BioWare, this omission is due to corrupt code. After a couple of years of rumors, leaks, and speculation, Electronic Arts and BioWare finally unveiled the Legendary Edition during last year's N7 Day.
The eagerly-anticipated collection of games will launch this May, complete with remastered versions of all three original Mass Effect titles. Upon returning to the spacefaring adventures, players can anticipate a host of visual improvements. Notably, the trilogy's visual fidelity will benefit from increased textures, 4K resolution, and HDR. Higher frame rates are expected to greatly enhance each game's performance, too. And, yes, faster loading times have been confirmed, meaning those frustratingly long elevator rides in the first Mass Effect are now a relic from a bygone era. Long loading sequences aren't all BioWare excised; the studio also scrapped Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. Unfortunately, another of the trilogy's bonus modes will ride the bench for this upcoming release.
Legendary Edition game director Mac Walters recently spoke with Game Informer, and confirmed Mass Effect's Pinnacle Station DLC, developed by Demiurge Studios, will not feature in the package. The content's absence comes down to corrupted code, he explained. Longtime fans may recall that lost source code is the reason Pinnacle Station never made it to PlayStation 3. Walters said EA and BioWare reached out to every Demiurge developer who may have taken part in the DLC's creation. For a time, hope peeked over the horizon, yet diminished when BioWare learned the backup code was replete with corrupted data. Thus, Pinnacle Station's inclusion in Legendary Edition would demand a ground-up remake, but the extended production cycle such an endeavor requires is out of the question. Walters told Game Informer:
"It would basically take us another full six months just to do this with most of the team we've got. 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."
It's a shame there are players who won't get to experience Pinnacle Station. As opposed to other Mass Effect DLC that focused on expansive narrative arcs, Pinnacle Station offered additional gameplay-centric content in the form of wave-based combat scenarios aboard a secret Alliance station. In some respects, it represented a preview of Mass Effect's multiplayer potential long before ME3 introduced online functionally.
The trilogy's Legendary Edition arrives in a few short months. While PS5 and Xbox Series X|S owners can enjoy the spacefaring RPG via backwards compatibility, BioWare has said native versions for the new consoles aren't in the works. And, though rumors have long suggested as much, it's not yet clear whether a Nintendo Switch iteration will see the light of day.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition hits PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 14.
Source: Game Informer
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