The Mass Effect: Legendary Edition Hype Train

The Mass Effect: Legendary Edition hype train has been barreling along at amazing speed this week in advance of its May 14th release.  BioWare has offered up some advance goodies to keep that train chugging along--you can design your own personalized Legendary Edition wallpaper to deck out your PC!  The design involves selecting your favorite companions, locations, and morality.  I thought it sounded kind of goofy, but it is actually oddly fun to see the finished product (you can check it out here). 

I would be remiss if I didn't share my own personal creation.  My girl Liara and best space-friend Garrus take the most prominent positions.  No squad would be complete without some serious  Krogan muscle, so Grunt and Wrex are a must.  From there I just wanted to reflect the diversity of the Normandy's crew--EDI, to represent the robot perspective; Tali'Zorah the intrepid Quarian; Miranda, the Cerberus cheerleader, keeping it real for humanity; and Mordin from the Salarian union.  Since I've only ever been able to complete one full renegade run (it's just too painful!), I went for a nice Paragon blue.  You also get to choose a prominent setting from the series--I chose the Collector base because the suicide mission is one of my favorites.

BioWare/EA also offered up the deluxe edition content from Mass Effect 2 & 3 as a free download (for a limited time--until May 31st--you can find it here).  The content includes digital versions of the art books from the second and third games, the soundtracks from all three games, digital editions of two Mass Effect comic books, and a digital lithograph of the Normandy from the third game.  The art books are a lot of fun to look at and give insight into the design process for the series.  It's always interesting to see the thought process and how it evolves into the final form that gets put into the games.

The real question remains--have I pre-ordered?  No, I've resisted the urge (it's painful).  I've just been burned too many times by release day shenanigans that I've decided to take a wait and see approach.  There were already rumors circulating of a day one 11GB patch (which, isn't really anything abnormal) and I think I've mostly learned my lesson about how crazy day one can be.

I'm looking forward to replaying one of my absolute favorite series (at some point) in its new and improved version.  Crossing my fingers that the combat in ME1 is improved and that the chunky-block people bug that afflicts people with AMD CPU's (when you are in Peak 15 on Noveria) is fixed. One funny feature, the ability to toggle between the original version of the Mako and the new, improved version has made me ponder some serious Mako-related questions.  Am I a real ME player if I don't leave the Mako as it should be? (An out-of-control war beast that can traverse almost any surface and will suddenly jolt you off in a random direction if you're not careful)

Happy Legendary Edition dreams to all the ME fans out there!