BioWare spent time taking into account fan feedback to refine as much as possible.

BioWares remaster of the famed Commander Shepard trilogy is coming out May 14, and while fans have certainly pined for this remaster, one question that keeps coming up is: Why not a remake Its a valid question, especially since many series, like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy, have instead opted to remake beloved games to appeal more to modern audiences.

However, BioWare didnt feel like that was the right approach for the trilogy at this point in time.

In fact, making it a remaster in the true sense was one thing the team agreed upon early on, before they even really got going.

Every year, a small team investigated what it would take figuring out logistics and determining exactly what avenue would be best for it.

The team always leaned more toward a remaster as they envisioned this undertaking.

Mass Effect 2 Adult Mods Mac Walters Calls

However, once they finally got everything greenlit, the team also wanted to approach it with what project director Mac Walters calls fresh thinking.

This led them to ponder once again what it would take to create a remake or make large-scale changes, leading them down the path of considering upgrading engines.

Mass Effect 2 Adult Mods Upgrade This And

And so we did open sort of the Pandoras box of, What if this was a remake We actually sat down with a team from Epic and talked to them about Unreal 4 and said, What would it take if we were going to upgrade this and work on it What we quickly realized was that, aside from the complexity, the cost, and all of those things, the trilogy really would have lost the essence of what it was.

Theres no way to take that scripting and just automatically have it work in the Unreal 4 engine, so that means youre rescripting scenes, combats, the way levels work, the way our U.I.s work, all of that would have to be redone.

Inherently, it would lose just the essence of what Mass Effect was.

Not to mention, just the way it renders and everything else as well.

And so ultimately, we decided that Unreal Engine 3 was probably going to be the best version to keep it feeling like what it was, but also provide an opportunity to uplift it as well.

For a remake, I do feel like we would have found ourselves chasing our tails to find the magic, Walters says.

If we had just said, Were leveling everything and were just going to try to recreate that from scratch you cant.

It was about the people, it was about so much of the intangibles not just the tech and everything else that brought that together.

If you look at the way fans talk about Shepard, they say, My Shepard, right Theyre very possessive about Shepard in a really good, really strong way.

And, of course, that doesnt just mean the character Shepard that means that Shepards story.

And so, very early on, we realized, Look, if the choices and the plot points, if were gonna say that those are what everyone loves, holds on to, and wants to call it their own in the sense of their memory of this, a remake is off the table.

That really pushed us more in the direction of just a proper remaster, where its like, I love this game and I want to experience it all again, but Id really love to play it on my current and future hardware, and Id like to see it brought up to todays standards.

It was like a Ship of Theseus type thing of, How far can you change this before its not the same as it was Meek asks.

Whereas in a remaster, its the same toolset, the same level, the same characters, just polished up.

Thats where I get that nostalgia factor, and I would have definitely lost a lot of that if wed gone the other way.