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Mass Effect Legendary comparison and dev overview

cormack12

Gold Member


From PSBlog too

Phase 1: Building the Foundation​

We started Phase 1 by identifying and cataloguing every asset in the trilogy. How many particle effects, 3D models, textures, levels, GUI (Graphical User Interface) elements, sounds, cinematic movies, etc. actually exist across the trilogy, and on average what are their quality levels? Do the source assets (content creation files) still exist? What percentage of those assets should we improve, and on average, how long will each asset type take to improve? Knowing the sheer numbers of assets and their quality levels shaped our strategy for improving each “type” of asset.

First, we increased the engine limits on texture sizes, so any textures that were authored larger than could be used on-disk could now use their full resolutions. We then wrote some batch processes that worked along with an AI up-res program to increase the original uncompressed textures to four times their originally authored sizes. Our batch tools made special considerations to maintain the validity of special texture types, like normal maps or masks to ensure colors didn’t contaminate each other.

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Phase 2: Modernization Efforts​

Some assets—most frequently, characters and generic props—were shared between the games, and many had already been improved in a later title or DLC. For those cases, we generally used the improved asset as our base, improved it further, and then ported it across the whole trilogy. This resulted in more consistent and higher-quality assets, but we had to carefully ensure this process didn’t flatten the sense of the passage of time and the overall narrative.

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Our character artists worked their way through a prioritized list of hundreds of armors, creatures, characters, guns, and vehicles across the whole trilogy. They would frequently take an asset back to its original high-poly sculpt, focus on achieving a consistent texture resolution, add supporting 3D geometry where needed, and fix errors with baked normal maps or texture mapping. Central to our efforts was increasing the sense of realism in the surface response.

While the games don’t use PBR (physically based rendering), we could still work with the textures and materials to ensure plastics, fabrics, and metals reacted to light in a more convincing way. Similarly, we dedicated a significant amount of time to improving skin, hair, and eye shaders across the trilogy. Our tech animators then re-skinned (i.e. set each vertex to move properly when attached to an animated skeleton) each improved mesh and imported it back into each game as needed.

The VFX (particle effect) artists were busy extending the length and smoothness of animations for things like smoke and fire, while also adding more secondary emitters to beef up the overall look of each effect. A fire might now have secondary smoke trails and sparks, explosions fling chunks of rubble, and the muzzle flash on your weapons now subtly illuminates Shepard and their surroundings. New environmental particle effects were added throughout the trilogy to better enhance the mood and a space’s sense of life. As many of you have already noticed, we also sharpened up and added secondary elements to the trilogy’s iconic horizontal lens flares.

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During this phase, environment artists completed passes through each level of the trilogy, performing targeted fixes on any asset or location that visually detracted from the overall experience. This included adding props to exceptionally barren areas, remaking low-resolution or stretched textures, smoothing out jagged 3D assets, and modernizing shaders on surfaces with poor lighting response. At this point, we also began resolving hundreds of bugs, from minor things like floating assets, to major game-breaking collision issues—including a very frequent global issue where players could easily teleport on top of assets and become completely stuck.

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Phase 3: Rebuilding Worlds​

In Phase 3, we began looking at opportunities to make broader improvements to levels and features, rather than just updating the individual assets. By this point, we’d manually improved thousands of assets, but there was still a significant quality jump between the first two games.

To guide this effort, we compared the levels we shipped to their original concept art, design intentions, and artistic inspiration. We also took dozens of screenshots of our currently up-res’d levels and sent them over to Derek Watts (the Mass Effect trilogy’s art director), who used them as a base for new concept art paint-overs. These “broad brush” adjustments were much faster to work on in professional photo editing software.

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Matt_Fox

Member
Hopefully a new crop of gamers who were pre-teen when the games first came out and will be early twenties now, get the chance to dive into this world for this first time.

I suspect the games will hold up well and whilst the remasters don't look like they offer a huge amount for those who already experienced the games I'm quite jealous of those who get to experience the trilogy fresh!
 

LMJ

Member
Nice to see the lighting and models look much better overall, but I see the third generations "shiny" effects live on along with bloom and BROWN lol
 
It's not lazy, just shit.

These guys don't understand mood and why lighting is so important for this. It's the same problems in video production, you can just have everything 'lit' or actually shape light to create a mood and story. These guys went with the former, and it ruins a lot of these scenes.
 

Miles708

Member
It looks like they've made a lot of small changes . I've expected a much sloppier work, I'm quite surprised to be honest.

I just hope it'll launch without day one patches or gigantic bugs, because I'm considering buying this and finally play Mass Effect 3
 

Rikkori

Member
Maybe they have the Original/Legendary labels mixed up.... right?
The saddest thing is that the original atmosphere even got amplified by autoHDR, it's just SO GOOD! They utterly ruined the art direction for many of these environments simply to add more advanced lighting. It's garbo.

 

Kuranghi

Member
I don't think the new one is bad in isolation but as others said it changes the tone of the game, its more like a tech demo now than something where they considered the how the lighting affects the mood. Some all better overall I'd say but most are worse, sometimes they add harsh contrast that looks naff but other times they make it uber flat too, not sure what the vision was here.
 

TheAssist

Member
The fact that the eyes dont look as dead anymore is probably one of the greatest enhancements and really helps a lot for immersion during cutscenes.

I think it looks good. Too much doom and gloom in here as usual.
 

Derktron

Banned
The fact that the eyes dont look as dead anymore is probably one of the greatest enhancements and really helps a lot for immersion during cutscenes.

I think it looks good. Too much doom and gloom in here as usual.
Well because developers should put more effort into a remastered game. Look At Capcom.
 

Hugare

Member
Looks damn good most of the time

Original will look "better" to some people in some places due to lighting changes.

But overall its an improvement, clearly, in textures and models alone, not to mention QOL improvements.

They put waaay more effort than I was expecting

Some nitpicking from fans is just embarassing ...
 
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