With the recently released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition bundling together the original trilogy into one galaxy-spanning package, players have been diving back into the remastered games to relive Commander Shepard’s glory days. The sci-fi RPGs are known for their well-written characters, stellar voice acting, and expansive universe. They are also known for some odd graphical glitches.
With such a heavy emphasis on story and spoken dialogue, the Mass Effect games all feature numerous cutscenes in which the protagonist has lengthy conversations with various characters. These scenes usually involve lots of up-close camera work on the character's faces, which can reveal some oddities in the animations and faces of the Mass Effect crew. Sometimes these are minor, like poor lip-sync, but sometimes they can be much worse.
Reddit user TheSilversky64 has uploaded a video clip to the Mass Effect Reddit community that showcases one of these trips to the uncanny valley. In the short clip taken from Mass Effect 3, when Commander Shepard goes to speak to Asari archaeologist Dr. Liara T’Soni, her head twists around until it is facing backward like something out of The Exorcist film. Of course, player character Commander Shepard doesn't acknowledge Liara's strange behavior, further adding to the hilarity.
The post has been a hit on Reddit, earning over 1,000 upvotes and nearly 100 comments as of writing. Other Reddit users have begun poking fun at the bizarre glitch, citing that it reminds them of a poorly received title in the franchise, Mass Effect: Andromeda, which became infamous for its flawed facial animation and graphical glitches. Andromeda was developed by a different team than the original games and follows a different set of characters and narratives, though the controversy around the game is what is remembered most.
While Mass Effect: Andromeda wasn’t a particularly well-received title, the original Mass Effect games featuring Commander Shepard were critically acclaimed. So much so that publisher Electronic Arts has revealed that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition greatly exceeded sales expectations, although it has not released any concrete sales numbers. With the remastered trilogy being such a big success for EA, it will be interesting to see if the company continues remastering more titles.
Of course, many fans would like to see new titles in the Mass Effect franchise rather than remasters, and it has been confirmed that Bioware is in fact working on an unnamed title to continue the franchise. Very little is known about the next Mass Effect, but being that Bioware is currently also working on the next game in the Dragon Age franchise and seems to have released more information on that title, it is possible that the new Mass Effect is still early in development. When it does come, hopefully Liara's terrifying head twist does not re-appear.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.