Mass Effect Legendary Edition May Have More Patches Than Actual Game
"Mass Effect" is a legendary trilogy — gamers like to treat "Mass Effect: Andromeda" as a bad dream — so of course EA is rereleasing the original three games in a "Legendary Edition" collection. But, technology has evolved faster than FTL transportation, so in order to ensure the games keep up with current-gen graphics, the collection will ship with patches. To bridge the gulf in graphical fidelity and implement new visual techniques and greebles, audiences can essentially expect more patches than game.
Recently, Twisted Voxel broke the news that "Mass Effect Legendary Edition" would most likely follow the current-gen tradition of utilizing day one patches. According to the site, the downloadable game files will introduce fixes such as improved Ambient Occlusion, lighting, and game performance and stability. Orbis Patches confirmed the news, and while the patch's fixes and updates are important, the major takeaway is its size: 11.8 GB.
In the current gaming landscape, 11.8 GB is a paltry number. For instance, according to Orbis Patches, titles such as "Grand Theft Auto 5" and "Ghost of Tsushima” are regularly updated with fa -bigger patches. However, those games require 72 GB (according to Steam) and 50 GB (according to GamesRadar) out of the box, respectively. The "Mass Effect" titles are comparatively tiny.
On the Xbox Marketplace, the vanilla renditions of "Mass Effect," "Mass Effect 2," and "Mass Effect 3" require 6.83 GB, 9.25 GB, and 10.6 GB, respectively. In other words, the day one patch for "Mass Effect Legendary Edition" is effectively larger than each of those titles, albeit not all entries combined. However, you need to remember those are the unaltered sizes. As time went on, those games were patched. The current PC renditions available through the "Mass Effect Trilogy" package on Origin are 12 GB, 18 GB, and 15 GB, adding up to a grand total of 45 GB.
While the last-gen versions of "Mass Effect" almost doubled file sizes thanks to patches that built on the original games, "Mass Effect Legendary Edition" will see those updates and raise the ante. According to Origin, the "Legendary Edition" will require 120 GB, more than triple the space of the current collection, which is likewise approximately 1.5 times as big as all three games in their original states. That's more than 90 GB worth of integrated updates for games that originally required less than 27 GB, not accounting for DLC. Not only that, but it's worth remembering that the "Legendary Edition" will be missing at least one of the first game's DLC. It's not every day a rerelease features updated lighting effects that take up more hard drive space than the original title.