Mass Effect 3 Legendary Edition

Mass Effect 3 is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. It first launched in March 2012 for Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, with a Wii U version called Mass Effect 3: Special Edition following in November 2012. A remastered version is part of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a compilation of the original trilogy that released on May 14, 2021, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

The game closes out the original Mass Effect trilogy. It takes place in the Milky Way in 2186, six months after Mass Effect 2, as the Reapers, an advanced race of synthetic-organic machine starships, invade galactic civilization. At the start, Commander Shepard has been relieved of duty and is held on Earth awaiting a court-martial, while other conflicts involving the krogan, the quarians, the geth, and the Cerberus organization unfold across the galaxy.

Players control Shepard from a third-person perspective, choosing the character’s gender, appearance, background, and one of six classes, each with its own skills. Combat centers on cover-based shooting, with weapons that can be fitted with mods, scopes, and ammo types. Much of the campaign is about building military strength for the war effort by completing missions and gathering resources, using the Normandy SR-2 and its galaxy map to travel between destinations. Choices from earlier games can carry over by importing a saved character.

The original release offers Action, Story, and RPG campaign modes that change how conversations and combat difficulty work, along with New Game+ and a multiplayer component. Legendary Edition includes the single-player content from all three games and nearly all of their single-player downloadable content, with updated textures, models, and effects, higher resolutions and frame rates, a shared character creator, and a new photo mode. It does not include the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode.

Mass Effect 3 was widely praised for its characters, art direction, combat, music, and voice acting, though its ending drew strong criticism from fans, and BioWare responded with the Extended Cut pack. It won several year-end awards, including Best RPG at the Spike Video Game Awards. BioWare began work on Legendary Edition in 2019 under director Mac Walters, choosing to remaster the games on their original engine rather than remake them, and the compilation received very positive reviews.