Just a couple of days ago we’ve moved one year closer to the birth of the savior of galaxy, the one and only Commander Shepard. Such a momentous occasion certainly calls for a replay or at least a revisit into the Mass Effect trilogy or, more specifically, its newer and snazzier version: Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
While the vanilla game is great as it is, there is also a number of great mods created by the community with love and care. Some of them restore content that didn’t make it into the final version of the game(s), others add new stuff or revamp Bioware’s own work as it happens with ALOT and ALOV. Check out the list of mods below if you want to freshen up your playthrough.
The Mass Effect Legendary Edition mods are split into categories based on which games they affect: Mass Effect 1 (LE1), Mass Effect 2 (LE2) and Mass Effect 3 (LE3). There is also a section for mods that affect multiple games or are, in fact, supporting programs. Make sure to check out the installation instructions on the mods’ pages!
Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition Mods (LE1):
LE1 Community Patch
A spiritual succession to ME1Recalibrated, this mod is a simple, unopinionated bugfix collection. It also contains a number of other mods that do not need to be installed separately, such as the Medigel fix, Feros data recovery, Saren Virmire Biotic VFX fix, etc.
Saren Stages
Have you ever wondered how stupid the Citadel Council is to trust Saren when he literally has tubes sticking out of him? Saren Stages aims to fix that problem. This mod aims to both resolve and add to Saren’s transformation throughout the game using hand created new meshes and HD textures. It introduces early forms of Saren before his heavy Geth implants. These looks should be less conspicuous and should help explain why the council could see him and still trust him.
Galaxy Map Trackers
This mod, coming from creator 55tumbl, makes it easier to explore the galaxy map and complete the side tasks by tracking active and undiscovered UNC assignments on the galaxy map. Exploring the actual planets is easier to do with the help of the Charted Worlds (LE1) mod from the same creator!
Pinnacle Station DLC
The Pinnacle Station DLC, available for the original version of Mass Effect 1, was missing from its Legendary Edition counterpart until a resourceful group of fans released this mod. According to Bioware, the original source code for the DLC was lost which would have required the company to recreate the DLC from scratch.
“Mass Effect Legendary Edition: Pinnacle Station is an enhanced port of the original Pinnacle Station DLC, which was not included in the Legendary Edition due to lost and corrupted source code. The ME3Tweaks group has ported this DLC across from the original game, while remastering it in the same vein as the Legendary Edition and fixing numerous issues. This is the complete DLC: Pinnacle Station including all simulator maps. No content was cut for this port.”
Skip Minigames (LE1)
I am sure there are people who love ME1’s bypass/hack minigames and in the second half of the game you should have enough omnigel to just slap it on every terminal in the general vicinity but why go through the hassle? You can use this mod to safely skip all the LE1 minigames and concentrate on your companions, story and fighting instead.
Keepers Finders
Ever spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to find that one Keeper you’ve missed for your completionist playthrough? Yeah, we’ve all been there. This mod marks unscanned Keepers on the Citadel maps and adds a new secret assignment on the Citadel.
LE1 Diversification Project
LE1 Diversification Project is an initiative designed to bring the NPCs and hub design forward to create a greater sense of asset and population diversity that was not possible in the original release of ME1 due to memory limitations, as well as make many other improvements to the game.
The mod also introduces a significant level beautification passes, NPC population overhaul, and more. Check out the video below to see the mod in action!
Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition Mods (LE2):
Early Recruitment
Due to the size of the original Mass Effect 2, certain companion recruitment had to be pushed to the post-Horizon timeline or ME2 would have required 2 discs to fit the game. This mod aims to change that and allows the early recruitment of Thane, Samara and Tali, early access to the Illium Hub and early access to the Tuchanka hub if Wrex is the clan leader. Thane and Samara are available immediately after Freedom’s Progress. Tali’s recruitment mission will become available after a short delay (as she is completing her mission for the Migrant Fleet), but before Horizon.
Follow the link above to find all the details.
One Probe All Resources
While some may consider it cheating, I see it as saving time! This mod makes it so scanning any planet once will detect all resources and anomalies. A single probe will deplete all resources and make all anomalies available.
Skip Minigames LE2
Similar to the mod above but aimed at the various terminals and whatnot, Skip Minigames LE2 allows you to skip hacking and bypass minigames, both in classic ‘click to win’ and modern ‘complete skip’ style.
Unofficial LE2 Patch
The Unofficial LE2 Patch is a comprehensive bugfix mod, currently in stable public beta. It features a variety of changes, such as numerous floating and/or misaligned level props being pushed into their own place, Hammerhead sound fixes, missing Codex entries, etc.
ME2 LE Combat Remastered
This mod overhauls the Mass Effect 2 gunplay flow to make it more balanced and hectic. Weapons are deadly and dependable, enemies behave more naturally, and initiative and movement on the battlefield is rewarded.
Mass Effect 3 Legendary Edition Mods (LE3):
LE3 Community Patch
Similar to the mods above, LE3 Community Patch is a comprehensive bug and continuity fix mod for Mass Effect 3 Legendary Edition, addressing a whole bunch of the game’s issues: from Joker’s black teeth to Kai Leng’s disappearing sword, messed up animations and more.
LE3 Diversification Project
The LE3 Diversification Project is an initiative that aims to improve the immersive elements of Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition by overhauling species population numbers, introducing female aliens for most humanoid races, and making the world feel less static. The mod is built from the ground up to work for vanilla players, while also serving as a foundation for new content introduced by content mods such as Spectre Expansion Mod.
Expanded Galaxy Mod
This mod features a number of quality of life features from Expanded Galaxy Mod (ME3) ported to LE3. Players can expect to find new weapons, gameplay improvements, Normandy conveniences and radio, immersive improvements such as the restored conversations and more.
The mod also features Immersive Galactic War addition that is currently in its Alpha stage. The Normandy becomes a small part of a galactic spanning war. Read customised Intelligence and see a map that reflects the war situation.
The Squadmate Pack lets you dress your friends in some casual outfits that can be used on the Citadel and aboard the Normandy. You can also invite bonus squadmates such as Wrex or Aria on N7 missions if the Normandy module is installed.
Dreams Remade
To reflect the Commander’s rising anxiety and the toll the Reaper war has taken on the Normandy family in particular and the galaxy at large, Shepard goes through three creepy dream sequences featuring that one child from Earth. Enter the Dreams Remade fan-made mod for Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a way to modify that sequence and make the wear-and-tear of war much more personal for your Commander Shepard.
Coming from Nexus mod-maker Pauju, Dreams Remade mod changes gameplay and cutscenes to give more representation of player choices and reduce the presence of the child. According to the description, Shepard’s movement speed has also been increased while in the dream sequence, although it stays in slow motion.
Spectre Expansion Mod
The purpose of Spectre Expansion Mod is to improve the under used Shadow Broker and Spectre terminals, to give the player new difficult choices to consider via Spectre authorisations, to improve the presence of background races in ME3, to expand the galaxy map and provide clues to the battles happening beyond the scope of Shepard’s missions.
The mod is currently in its beta stage, however, it is fully playable and should have few bugs. If you want to partake in the Spectre Expansion’s Galaxy Map, you must install the Expanded Galaxy Mod (mentioned higher on this list) with the Galactic War Alpha.
“Spectre Expansion Mod was first created to address one section of the game that I felt was lacking; the Spectre Terminal. Since then it has grown in scope to include updates to the Shadow Broker terminal, a new shop and items, combat mission additions, address some item gamification, improve the content for the less powerful aliens and to expand the galaxy map to include homeworlds from the background lore and new anomalies and galaxy map assignments.”
Take Earth Back
This mod is an immersive overhaul for the final mission of Mass Effect 3 with the aim of representing the allies you have gathered over the course of the trilogy, fixing bugs and adding ambient immersive events. In addition, this is natively built to be compatible with story mods such as Expanded Galaxy Mod and Spectre Expansion Mod.
“Take Earth Back is a community mod designed to address one of the weakest sections of Mass Effect 3 – Priority: Earth. Bioware’s mission was adequate, but it didn’t account for the war assets you collected across the trilogy. Take Earth Back primarily focuses on these with an overhaul of the Earth hub to feature more than 28 war assets, as well as cut content restorations, new interactive conversations and more. Additionally, the Hammer landing sequence and beam run have had minor overhauls, and the mod is built from the ground up to work for vanilla players, as well as those who play Expanded Galaxy Mod and Spectre Expansion Mod.”
Audemus’ Happy Ending Mod
The Mass Effect 3 ending, at least before the Extended Cut, shook the gaming industry with how unhappy fans were about its contents. Starchild, Crucible Magic, traffic light endings… AHEM is here to change it all.
Audemus’ Happy Ending Mod is a rework of the ending to LE3, and a spiritual successor to the Happy Ending Mod. The primary focus of the mod is to allow Commander Shepard to survive the final mission, as well as provide satisfying closure to this incredible trilogy through tweaked cutscenes, edited videos, new ending slides, and an overhauled memorial scene.
MELE Trilogy-wide + Supporting Apps:
A Lot of Textures (ALOT)
A Lot Of Textures (ALOT) started as a visual upgrade of the Mass Effect Original Trilogy (OT) (ME1, ME2, ME3), endorsed by Bioware as one of the main inspirations and benchmarks behind the Legendary Edition (LE). While the Legendary Edition did an admirable job in terms of upgrading graphics, many textures remain superior in ALOT even now.
“Additionally, the original ALOT’s Improved Static Lighting (ISL) component was remade and vastly improved upon for the LE. Much of the lighting and shadows you see in-game are pre-rendered and stored as textures. These textures have not been improved for LE, which results in blocky shadows pretty much everywhere in the games (see screenshots). ISL fixes this by running the textures through a state-of-the-art, neural network-based denoising, antialiasing and upscaling process for about 40,000 light and shadow maps across the trilogy.”
A Lot of Videos (ALOV)
Similar to its sibling mod above, ALOV is an exhaustive and comprehensive 4K 60fps video overhaul project powered by AI and augmented with faithful in-game remakes, error corrections and other misc improvements.
“Our project uses a far more aggressive and carefully considered upscaling approach. Every single shot of every single video has been analyzed and upscaled with individual settings that produce the best possible result. This meant that on a shot-by-shot basis, the videos were downscaled to their ‘true’ resolution. upscaled with the best suited AI model, sharpened with manually calibrated AI settings, interpolated to 60fps (in most cases) and then encoded at a much higher bitrate than vanilla. In a few cases, we were able to recreate a video completely from scratch by recreating the scene in-game and recording natively at 4K 60fps. Additionally, several visual bugs such as mesh clipping, rogue UI elements, glitches etc have been corrected.”
ME3Tweaks Mod Manager
ME3Tweaks Mod Manager is a mod manager that supports all three Mass Effect trilogy games, as well as all three legendary versions of the games, plus the Legendary Edition launcher. This program is designed to make it easier to install mods for the Mass Effect series for end users. It has tools for developers, as well as advanced game diagnostic features that can be used to troubleshoot both the program itself and games.
Trilogy Save Editor
Have you ever gone through an exhaustive completionist playthrough only to notice that one page of Matriarch Dilenaga’s research is missing and preventing you from getting that scene with Conrad Verner in LE3 as well as the appropriate War Asset? Worry not, the Trilogy Save Editor allows you to edit that and more to match your desired level of completion. You can also change certain decisions you have previously made to see different outcomes.
Speaking of that scene with Conrad Verner, check out the video from FluffyNinjaLlama to see all those painful little ME1 fetch quests finally pay off:
