Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is a compilation and remaster of the entire original Mass Effect trilogy--at least, most of it. Unfortunately, BioWare left some beloved aspects of the games on the cutting room floor, citing expense and time commitment. One of the biggest elements cut from Legendary Edition was multiplayer support.
Multiplayer support was introduced in the final game of the original trilogy, Mass Effect 3, and was very warmly received by gamers. The news that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition would not feature multiplayer disappointed many. However, it's possible that multiplayer will be making a comeback--there's a rumor floating around on Twitter that a remastered version of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer will be announced in the future.
Nick "Shpeshal Nick" Baker, co-founder of XboxEra.com, tweeted recently about a rumor he'd heard that multiplayer could be revealed or announced for Legendary Edition at EA Play. Although he doesn't provide dates, a bit of research leads Mass Effect fans to conclude that he's referring to the EA Play Live currently scheduled for July 22, 2021. If true, this would make for one less item on the list of things players dislike about Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. The question, then, is whether this rumor has any substance to it.
According to longtime Mass Effect developer and Legendary Edition project director Mac Walters, the team was simply unable to include multiplayer on top of everything else, so they opted to cut the mode entirely and focus on single-player enhancements. However, he also confirmed that it was possible for Mass Effect 3 multiplayer to make a return, even if it did so in a different form. He stated that he and the rest of the Legendary Edition crew were waiting to see how the remaster was received by fans and if there was a demand for multiplayer before committing themselves. As Mass Effect: Legendary Edition has been warmly received worldwide, at least one of those demands has been met.
Despite an overall interest in seeing multiplayer added to the remaster, some Mass Effect fans believe the removal of multiplayer was a good decision. Multiplayer was never integral to the Mass Effect experience, especially as all of the series' most iconic features--evil living spaceships, a strong protagonist in Commander Shepard, and BioWare's classic in-depth romance options--are rooted in the games' single-player campaigns. From this angle, it could be argued that multiplayer would simply drag Legendary Edition down, especially since much of the original code was built on dated systems and is now gone. A bad multiplayer mode could ruin the memories fans have of the original games.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
