Mass Effect Legendary Edition 120Hz Ultrawide Tells a Story of Three Decades

Mass Effect Legendary Edition from BioWare and EA now supports 4K, 120Hz, and ultrawide on PC and Xbox Series X. Time to rediscover these classic action RPG sci fi titles

When the first Mass Effect from BioWare released in December 2007 as an Xbox 360 exclusive, the game ran at less than 720p and managed to reach 30Hz in some scenes, but that didn’t matter. An action role playing success, the first title spawned a franchise that quickly moved to PS3 and PC. Fast forward to 2010, Mass Effect 2 offered vastly improved graphics on consoles, with a firm 720p, good upscaling to 1080p, exponentially better texture handling, and a locked 30Hz. The same applied to Mass Effect 3, which released in 2012. Nearly ten years later, a remastered trilogy has unsurprisingly arrived thanks to EA to coincide with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The Legendary Edition not only includes three titles with all their DLC, but importantly runs at 1440p 120Hz on Xbox Series X, with 4K 60Hz the other option. On PS5 for now you only have 4K 60Hz, but 120Hz may be added later. EA and BioWare made sure to support 21:9 ultrawide resolutions on PC, so if you have one of those nifty curved monitors we’ve been hearing so much about lately, you’re covered.

Saying that Mass Effect has been around for three decades is a bit of a stretch. More like fourteen years. But the franchise does tell the story of how fast video games evolve, and it has been released across three very different decades. The 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s all have their distinct characteristics in many regards, some better left out of this article. As far as gaming goes, they’re all very different and Mass Effect Legendary Edition makes that very clear.

We’ve been enjoying the Legendary Edition since it launched May 14 on Xbox Series X in 120Hz. It’s charming, and almost has us convinced that third person action titles could benefit from 120 frames per second just as much as first person shooters. Comparing 2021 Mass Effect part one to 2007 Mass Effect part one is quite a shock. You can’t help but gasp at how much time has gone by, and how much that shows in the game’s look and performance. Because on top of the quadrupled frame rate you also get several times the pixel count, HDR, much better textures and shading, and a fraction of the loading times. Ironically, these remasters are often better showcases of tech advancement than new “AAA” game releases.

In any case, if you’re not super keen on 4K and prefer 120Hz then you have several monitor options. A beautiful 1440p IPS will work great. If you’re on PS5, for example, or simply want 4K 60Hz then there’s a monitor for that as well.

On the PC side of things, Mass Effect Legendary Edition offers full 21:9 ultrawide resolution support. So, if you have a curved gaming monitor there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy the wider field of view the settings allow for. From brief testing, Mass Effect Legendary Edition ran great in 3440 x 1440 with everything set to ultra, and you don’t even need a monster graphics card. While remastered for 2021, all three Mass Effect titles still run on their core engines from back in the day. By the standards of modern graphics cards, none of the three offer much of a graphics load or challenge. Framerate goes up to whatever your PC can handle, with 120Hz and 144Hz obviously possible.

Do note the Legendary Edition does not contain Mass Effect Andromeda. Released in 2017, that game still strains modern GPUs when set to ultra and runs on a completely different engine than the first three, which shows in how spectacular it looks on PC.

But if you want to relive the first three Mass Effects, there’s no better way than the Legendary Edition. Going back to the original versions would be pointless now. And if you’ve never played Mass Effect, once more we need to ask – what are you waiting for?