With the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, BioWare has given fans of the series the definitive way to play all three games in the original Mass Effect trilogy. While plenty of plenty update gameplay features and elements have been added to the games, there are bound to be a few things that might slip through the cracks. Unfortunately, there's a bug preventing players from obtaining the high ranking Spectre gear in the remastered version of Mass Effect 1.
At the beginning of the game, Commander Shepard becomes the first-ever human Spectre as appointed by the Citadel Council. The honor grants the commander complete authority to do whatever it takes to complete their missions. It also allows Shepard to receive special Spectre training in the Citadel as well as some exclusive gear. As players of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition have found out, there's a bug stopping them from taking advantage of the Spectre's high-level gear.
Spectre Gear Bug Fix
At the current time of writing, there hasn't been an officially published patch from BioWare addressing this issue. However, a save exploit discovered by Reddit user u/Xecil can fix the issue without a patch. The bug is that after Shepard is given Spectre status, the C-Sec officer who usually has the Spectre gear isn't stocked with any when revisiting him between missions. To fix the bug, players need a save file from just before being inducted as a Spectre by the council. Load the save and trigger the cutscene when Shepard is inducted. Afterward, head straight to C-Sec and talk to the C-Sec Req. Officer. The store should be updated with all of the proper gear.
If no save file is present before the council meeting, players will need to start a new character in a new career and mainline the story to get to that point. Once the store inventory is fixed and restocked, load the desired character and the store should be fixed. While having to replay the opening sections of the game can be a hassle, a commenter on the original post pointed out that it shouldn't take much more than 30 minutes if the player doesn't waste any time doing things not related to the induction.
Hopefully, an official patch will go through in the coming days so that players won't be required to replay sections or load old saves if they're looking for high-level gear. If not, it seems like once the store inventory is loaded once in one save file, it's fixed and loaded across all others.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.