Mass Effect Legendary Edition | The Community Isn’t Going Anywhere #SaveMassEffect

Saturday 7 November was something special. We took a break from our usual Bethesda night and Oblivion Remastered to return to my absolute favourite game series, Mass Effect, for N7 Day.

This was about more than starting another playthrough. I wanted to support the global #SaveMassEffect community protest, with fans expressing their concerns about BioWare’s future and what that could mean for Mass Effect 5. I encouraged everybody to play Mass Effect and show that the community is still here.

I absolutely love this series. I’ve played all the games to 100%, read the books, read the comics and consumed practically everything Mass Effect. Any excuse to bring it back onto stream is a good one!

🌌 About the Game

Mass Effect Legendary Edition brings together the remastered single-player campaigns of Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, including over 40 DLC additions, promotional weapons, armour and packs, optimised for 4K Ultra HD.

We follow Commander Shepard across a galaxy filled with alien civilisations, political intrigue, difficult decisions and an ancient threat that could destroy everything. Your choices shape the story and the relationships you build along the way. It’s one of the reasons I keep returning to these games.

🚀 Where We Are in the Journey

We’ve visited this galaxy several times on stream. We originally played Mass Effect on the Xbox 360, and I apparently used my magical powers of remastering again. Halfway through our first stream, Legendary Edition was announced! We continued our original 100% walkthrough anyway, then completed the remastered trilogy and Mass Effect: Andromeda to 100% as well.

You can revisit those adventures in:
Mass Effect 1 Xbox 360 100% Walkthrough
Mass Effect Legendary Edition 100% Walkthrough
Mass Effect: Andromeda 100% Walkthrough.

This time we’re doing what I called a casual speedrun. We’re not skipping dialogue, but we’re concentrating on the main storyline rather than investigating every conversation, chest and side quest. I’ve also got plans to record the entire game in one sitting for a standalone video, but tonight we were simply seeing how far we could get at a steady pace.

🎮 What Happens in This Episode

We began the evening in the character creator, where I immediately discovered just how long it had been since I last created a new Shepard. I wanted to play as my usual Sentinel class, but I also wanted to use the default female Commander Shepard. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite remember how to get the character creator to do what I wanted. After going backwards and forwards, exiting and returning to the creator several times, we eventually worked out how to get everything set up properly.

With our new Shepard ready, we boarded the Normandy and headed towards Eden Prime. I was also debating whether to do something a little different this time. In our previous playthroughs, we’ve generally followed the Paragon route, so I considered trying a Renegade playthrough for a change. That’s quite unusual for me, as I almost always choose Paragon. We did make a couple of sharper dialogue choices as we progressed, but most of our decisions still ended up being Paragon.

Once we landed on Eden Prime, we made fairly quick progress through the opening mission. The Geth had attacked, Jenkins didn’t survive his first encounter, and we picked up Ashley Williams as we pushed through the colony. We also discovered that Saren had betrayed and murdered Nihlus, setting up the investigation that would take us to the Citadel.

I was mostly using my pistol throughout the fighting, although I kept having to remind myself that weapons in Mass Effect don’t work quite like they do in other games. They overheat rather than needing to be reloaded, which meant I occasionally found myself pressing the button I would normally use to reload and throwing a grenade instead. It takes a little while to get back into the controls!

Of course, we also had Kaidan in the squad. Kaidan, who we will be disposing of at our earliest convenience. I still cannot understand who actually chooses to save him later in the game. He’s such a wet blanket! I don’t even know whether they brought his voice actor back for the later games, because surely nobody actually saved him in their playthroughs.

We continued through Eden Prime, disabled the explosives the Geth had planted and eventually reached the Prothean beacon. Shepard received the mysterious vision, the beacon was destroyed, and we woke up aboard the Normandy. That gave us our first proper introduction to the threat behind everything that was happening, and it was time to head towards the Citadel to find out what Saren was doing.

Once we arrived at the Citadel, we made our way straight to the tower to speak with the Council. Naturally, they weren’t particularly interested in believing our accusations against Saren, despite what we’d discovered on Eden Prime. We needed more evidence, which meant heading down into the Wards and following up on the information we’d been given.

For once, I actually used the Citadel’s rapid transit system. Normally, I tend to walk everywhere in games, and even in our modern playthroughs we don’t use fast travel particularly often. This time, though, we were trying to make reasonable progress, so getting a taxi across the Citadel seemed like a sensible idea.

We headed towards Chora’s Den, spoke with Harkin and followed the information that eventually led us to Dr. Michel’s medical clinic. After dealing with the trouble there, we recruited Garrus Vakarian into the squad. Garrus is one of those companions you definitely want to collect, so it was lovely having him back with us.

Unfortunately, after recruiting Garrus, I managed to get a little bit lost. I couldn’t quite remember how to reach C-Sec, which was where we needed to go to find Wrex. We eventually worked out where we were going and recruited him as well.

Naturally, everybody loves Wrex, so there was absolutely no question about bringing him along. Who on earth would let Wrex die on Virmire? I genuinely cannot imagine anybody making that decision.

I’m looking at you, Mr Smith.

That particular incident from Mr Smith’s previous Mass Effect playthrough came up several times during the evening. He insisted that it wasn’t his fault and that somebody else was responsible for what happened to Wrex. He also maintained that he’d wanted to keep him alive. I’m still not entirely convinced, and I don’t think chat was ready to let him forget about it either.

With Garrus and Wrex recruited, we continued our investigation and returned to Chora’s Den. We fought our way through the enemies, confronted Fist and dealt with him before racing off to rescue Tali. She was carrying the Geth recording we needed, which provided the evidence linking Saren to the attack on Eden Prime, the Conduit and the Reapers.

Armed with that information, we returned to the Council, and this time they had no choice but to listen. Saren was stripped of his Spectre status, and Shepard became the first human Spectre. That’s always a lovely moment in the first game, and it meant we could finally start pursuing Saren ourselves.

We also took command of the Normandy, giving us the freedom to choose where we wanted to go next.

There were some lovely conversations happening in chat throughout all of this as well. We were discussing the original Mass Effect games, the improvements in Legendary Edition and those old Citadel elevator journeys that used to take such a long time because they were hiding loading screens. cheesecollector31 also found a Mass Effect ship model priced at £70, which led to a conversation about the Normandy models I already own.

We had plenty of our usual community conversations going on alongside the gameplay, from tea and biscuits to other games people were playing. cheesecollector31 was also celebrating having followed the channel for more than three years. It was lovely having so many familiar people joining us for N7 Day.

We were also raided by kingironblood, who brought members of his community over to join us. It was particularly nice because he was another Mass Effect fan who had been supporting the #SaveMassEffect campaign. We spent some time talking about the games, the characters and why the series means so much to everybody.

With the Normandy now under our command, we had several options for continuing the story. We could have headed to Feros or Noveria, but I knew that either of those planets might take well over two hours to complete at a casual pace. As we were approaching the end of the evening, I decided that we’d head straight for Liara instead.

Liara’s recruitment mission is relatively short, so it seemed like an ideal place to finish this particular stream.

That was the plan, anyway.

We travelled into the Artemis Tau cluster, selected a planet, landed and then realised I’d gone to completely the wrong place. We’d arrived on one of the explorable planets rather than the one containing Liara’s dig site.

The next problem was that I couldn’t actually remember which system Liara was supposed to be in. Despite having completed these games so many times, I had completely forgotten where we needed to go. We ended up travelling between the different systems in the cluster until we eventually found the correct planet, Therum.

Once we landed, I immediately commented that we’d clearly arrived on Mustafar from Star Wars. There was lava everywhere, and I was expecting that at some point we’d find a burnt-to-a-crisp Anakin Skywalker lying somewhere near the edge of it.

We climbed into the Mako and started making our way towards the ruins. Because we didn’t really need to fight most of the enemies along the route, I decided we would simply drive past them. We pushed through the area, firing the Mako’s cannons at enemies as we passed, rather than stopping to clear every encounter.

We did have to get out briefly to open the gates, but otherwise we made fairly quick progress towards the end of the vehicle section. Eventually, we reached the point where the Mako could go no further, so we had to get out and continue up the hill on foot.

That was where things became a little more challenging.

We encountered one of those large Geth battle tanks, a Geth Armature, which we had to deal with more or less by hand. Fortunately, we were far enough away that I could stand back and keep firing at it with my pistol. It took a bit of shooting, but we eventually brought it down.

The Armature wasn’t really the most annoying part of that encounter, though. That honour went to the Geth that constantly leap between different surfaces.

They don’t have particularly large amounts of health, and they’re not especially difficult to defeat once you actually hit them. The problem is that they keep jumping around so quickly that getting a clear shot becomes quite frustrating. You line up your pistol, and before you can properly deal with one, it’s already moved somewhere else.

Eventually, we cleared the enemies and continued into the Prothean ruins.

We made our way down through the mine until we reached Liara, who was trapped behind a barrier. To reach her, we needed to activate the mining laser, which allowed us to open another route and come back around underneath her position.

Once we released Liara, we had to escape the ruins. Naturally, that wasn’t going to be as simple as walking back out. We encountered a Krogan battlemaster and several Geth, leading to another fight before we could finally make our escape.

We defeated them, got out of the collapsing mine and returned to the surface, where Joker arrived with the Normandy.

And this is the bit of that mission that always amuses me.

Afterwards, Commander Shepard is incredibly adamant that Joker saved us from the disaster. She keeps talking about how he pulled us out of there, as though he performed some extraordinary rescue.

But if you actually watch the cutscene, all Joker does is fly over and park the Normandy nearby!

We’d already escaped the tunnels ourselves. We’d fought our way out, made it back to the surface and dealt with the Geth that were trying to stop us. By the time Joker arrived, we were perfectly safe.

I’ve never understood why Shepard gives him so much credit for that particular escape. Don’t get me wrong, Joker is a fantastic pilot, but on this occasion he didn’t really do anything beyond turning up to collect us. We weren’t trapped underground waiting for him to save us. We’d already done all the difficult work ourselves!

Back aboard the Normandy, we had our conversation with Liara about her research into the Protheans, the mysterious vision Shepard had experienced and the possibility that entire civilisations had been wiped out by the Reapers. With Liara now part of the crew, we’d completed another important piece of the opening storyline.

That seemed like a sensible place to stop for the evening. We’d started a brand-new character, completed Eden Prime, investigated Saren, become the first human Spectre, recruited Garrus, Wrex and Tali, taken command of the Normandy and travelled to Therum to collect Liara.

For what was supposed to be a relaxed, casual speedrun, we’d actually made quite a nice amount of progress.

We saved the game and discussed how we might continue this particular playthrough in a future stream. At this pace, we could probably complete Feros and Noveria together in one sitting. Then we might be able to work through Virmire, the second Citadel visit, Ilos and the final return to the Citadel in another session. Depending on how things go, we might even manage to fit Virmire in a little earlier.

We’ll probably return to the save in a few weeks, once we’ve worked out where it fits into the schedule.

To finish the evening, I thanked everybody who had joined us for N7 Day, whether they’d been chatting, lurking or simply enjoying Mass Effect alongside us. We then raided Bumblewave1, who was also streaming Mass Effect, so everybody could continue enjoying the game together.

It was a lovely evening, and I thoroughly enjoyed returning to the first Mass Effect. I’ve completed this series so many times, but I never get tired of it. The characters, the story and the universe are still just as enjoyable to me, and sharing that with the community makes returning to these games even better.

📺 Watch the Episode

If you missed our N7 Day return, you can watch the complete Mass Effect Legendary Edition livestream and see how our casual speedrun worked out.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow the Mass Effect Legendary Edition series playlist.

If you enjoy the episode, leave a like and let me know in the comments whether you’d save Kaidan, what happened to Wrex in your playthrough, and whether Joker really deserves all that praise!

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The Normandy is always more entertaining with a crew, particularly when everybody has opinions about Shepard’s decisions.

Come and join me live on Twitch or YouTube. Whether you’re a longtime Mass Effect fan, joining us for the first time or simply enjoying the conversations, you’re always welcome.

And if you’ve got a different opinion about Kaidan or Wrex, I’m sure we’ll have plenty to discuss!

🛰️ Community & Links

There’s plenty happening beyond the Normandy. Here’s where you can join our community, catch the streams, listen to my music and explore my other projects.

Live — Join the crew for our next livestream and see what we’re playing:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — Keep the conversation going long after we’ve saved the game:
Discord

Socials — Follow the latest updates, conversations and occasional chaos:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — Enjoy my music when we’re away from the games:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — Help keep the streams and community projects going:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — Discover what else I’m working on beyond the livestreams:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🌋 Apparently Joker Saved Us!

We made some lovely progress tonight. Eden Prime is behind us, Shepard is a Spectre, we’ve recruited several of our favourite companions, and Liara is safely aboard the Normandy — with or without Joker’s heroic parking manoeuvre.

We’ll probably return to this save in a few weeks. At this pace, we might manage Feros and Noveria together in one sitting, then work through Virmire, Ilos and the remaining Citadel storyline in another. Nothing is fixed yet, but there’s plenty more Mass Effect to enjoy.

Thank you to everybody who joined us, chatted, lurked and supported the stream on N7 Day. Mass Effect means an enormous amount to me, and it’s always a pleasure sharing it with you.

#SaveMassEffect — the community isn’t going anywhere.

— Dr Ravenholm