There are obvious visual upgrades that were noticeable back in 2010 but get some added oomph in 2021: the colors are more vibrant (lots of bisexual lighting), the area maps are far more detailed, and newer character models are impressive (I couldn't stop staring at the weave on Tali Zorah's hood). Notably, Black skin tones look better here than in Mass Effect 1 (although the darker tones are often terribly lit, making it harder to read their expressions), with Captain Anderson's older skin texture looking far less ruddy.

While the yeoman aboard the Normandy, Kelly Chambers, gets a facial update that unfortunately robs her appearance of any sort of flavor, Miranda Lawson (famously a facial scan of The Handmaid's Tale's Yvonne Strahovski) looks more like a live human and less like an uncanny sex doll. But the more time I spend in Mass Effect 2 (arguably the best game of the trilogy), the more I notice how damn good it looks. You get some of the smoothness of the newer Mass Effect titles along with the challenges you'd expect from a 14-year-old game.Īt first glance, it's harder to notice graphics changes in the sequel - a side effect of playing the game immediately after the impressively overhauled Mass Effect 1. But that's what makes BioWare's approach to combat changes so brilliant. It's (somewhat) easier to go into cover and there's more cover available, but even these necessary tweaks won't save you from dying a whole lot. Despite this, you're still comically squishy, especially at higher difficulty levels.

Now, however, Shepard can use any weapon in the game's arsenal, and firing those weapons feels notably better than it did in the original title.

Gone are the weapon restrictions that made it impossible for certain classes to use certain weapons - you'd take out a weapon you were untrained for and have better luck hucking it at a geth stalker's head than trying to shoot it. The end result has a strange jankiness that's actually somewhat endearing. The studio faced a unique dilemma when bringing its combat up to 2021 standards - go too far and you lose the game's original charm, but don't go far enough and you risk alienating new players (and frustrating old ones). Mass Effect 1 came out in 2007, so the echoes of BioWare RPGs from that time resulted in unreliable weapons and clunky combat.

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