Mass Effect Legendary Edition's character creation evolves for consistency and inclusivity

Mass Effect Legendary Edition
(Image credit: EA)

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition comes with more than just a 4K upgrade, it's also getting a better character creation system to make sure your Shepard looks their absolute best. Bioware revealed the changes during a special Mass Effect Legendary Edition preview.

"The custom character creator, especially in the earlier games, it might have had limited options," explained Kevin Meek, environment and character director.

"Options for things like eye color or makeup or hairstyles, they get expanded throughout the trilogy. So you might be able to make something you really connect with in Mass Effect 3, but not actually be able to reproduce that look in Mass Effect 1 or 2 again. So one of the first things we really wanted to do was, throughout the trilogy, unify the options. If something exists in 3 we want it to exist in 1 and we want that to be able to be consistent."

Beyond just making the look of your Shepherd consistent, the move marks a step towards better inclusivity for the series. 

"We wanted to really expand choices for things like skin color and hairstyle. They just weren't wide enough originally to support the diversity of our player base or to be able to give fans the ability to create that Shepherd that they really wanted to play as."

If you're more of a default character player, it's worth noting that the FemShep from Mass Effect 3 can now be used in all the games in the original trilogy.          

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition release date is May 14 on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, with improvements for Xbox Series X and PS5. It includes the original trilogy as well as over 40 DLC packs. 

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Rachel Weber
Managing Editor, US

Rachel Weber is the US Managing Editor of GamesRadar+ and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She joined GamesRadar+ in 2017, revitalizing the news coverage and building new processes and strategies for the US team.