Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remaster reportedly pushed back to early 2021

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition still has not been officially announced, but its reported release window has been pushed back.

VentureBeat first shared the news that Electronic Arts was working on a remastered version of the original Mass Effect trilogy earlier this year. Since then, reporter Jeff Grubb has pointed to an October announcement for the game and a release date later that month, as well as a proper name of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

Grubb now says that EA and BioWare have elected to push the release back into early 2021, with the current quality of the original Mass Effect remaster being a sticking point. Both the visuals and gameplay are reportedly subpar compared to the following two games, which is especially troublesome since it's the first thing new players would experience. The second and third Mass Effect games have a lot more in common with each other in terms of visuals and gameplay style, so I'm not surprised the original would end up the odd one out.

According to the report, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will also leave behind the multiplayer mode from Mass Effect 3. Your multiplayer progress tied in to a "Galactic Readiness" rating that affected the course of the single-player campaign, so BioWare will probably need to revise the system to make sure the Reapers don't win just because we can't team up to fight big waves of Husks and Cerberus goons any more.

Even if the remasters are coming later than expected, you can still get your pre-order in for a new Mass Effect Trilogy art book coming in February.