The Mass Effect Legendary Edition was finally announced on N7 Day earlier this month. The new release will be a remaster of the original three Mass Effect games, bringing back Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy with better graphics and, many fans are hoping, some restored cut content.
However, there’s one issue that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition probably won’t fix. It’s a common issue among BioWare games, and there are reasons to think it may be one of the hardest features to upgrade in the upcoming Mass Effect remaster: BioWare's hair problem.
BioWare’s Hair Problem
The hair in BioWare games has faced a lot of criticism over the years. Dragon Age: Origins, despite its success as an RPG, was known for its relatively poor graphics for the time, and hair was often singled out as one of the weakest parts of character customization. The same can be said for the original Mass Effect, released in 2007. While many players opted for the default male Shepard’s buzz-cut look, the low quality of character hair was still visible on many human NPCs.
Even in BioWare’s newer releases like Dragon Age: Inquisition, hair has come under fire as a big limitation of character creation. For many hair options, the hair blended poorly into the character’s head. This was particularly easy to see with beards, which often appeared to be a single level of thickness at all points, and instead of blending back into the face, simply suddenly stopped.
This has led to hair mods being among the most popular for both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, but it also has other implications. Unlike some earlier BioWare RPGs, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda make use of EA’s Frostbite engine. Not only has the Frostbite engine caused problems for BioWare animators in the past, but the fact that hair was not able to be significantly upgraded in the Frostbite engine suggests that BioWare’s hair problem is hard to solve with a mere engine upgrade at this time. Not that Frostbite itself is particularly good for RPGs, just that technical limitations aside, it still seems to be a problem.
Rendering Hair in Mass Effect
Hair can be one of the trickiest parts of the body to render in real time. For hair to look realistic means creating hair which is able to react naturally to movement, rather than hair which operates as a static block. Even hair with limited movement needs to be rendered in extreme detail to allow for a realistic fade along the hairline to avoid the blocky problem BioWare’s hair often faces.
The Mass Effect Legendary Edition trailer already seems to confirm that hair will not be among the major graphical upgrades taking place in the remaster. The shot of Miranda Lawson shows her hair rendered very similarly to her appearances in Mass Effect 2 and 3, largely as a single block with a few strands around the edges to create the illusion of individual hairs. For fans of the franchise, this probably isn't a game-changer, but for anyone hoping to give their Shepard some luxurious locks, it doesn't seem to be in the cards.
Fortunately for Mass Effect fans, human beings are among the least interesting species put on display in the Mass Effect series. With upgraded textures and lighting physics, it’s likely many of the alien races of Mass Effect will look a lot better in the remaster. Mordin Solus’ appearance in the trailer already shows how the remaster complements some character designs more than others. Though some fans may be disappointed in the hair in the Mass Effect remaster, between Mass Effect’s array of bald aliens and the cropped hair common among many of its military characters, many will be hoping that it is less noticeable in the sci-fi series than in some of BioWare’s other games.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is in development for 2021.