Bioware's new and improved take on the Mass Effect franchise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, will allow players to utilize their old save game files. However, players will only be able to load up old saves from the original Mass Effect 2 and 3, due to the various improvements made to Mass Effect in the Legendary Edition causing the saves to be incompatible.

For many Mass Effect fans, one of the more interesting features of the series was the ability for Mass Effect 2 and 3 to read save game data from previous games and assess the decisions you made as Commander Shepard, allowing your Paragon or Renegade choices in Mass Effect to influence the events of the following games in the series. As a large-scale RPG based around choices, Mass Effect no doubt has a number of fans who have cultivated several playthroughs that they would like to be able to return to with enhanced graphics.

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Luckily, as long as players are booting up Mass Effect 2 or 3, they will be able to access save files from the original games in Mass Effect Legendary Edition and load them up without issue. By simply locating the files on their PC, under Documents/Bioware by default, Mass Effect fans can move the files from either the Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 3 folder into the corresponding location in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition folder. The saves will be entirely playable with Mass Effect Legendary Edition's enhanced graphics and settings, allowing players who have created the perfect Paragon or Renegade playthrough to experience them in a new way.

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Unfortunately, save files for the original Mass Effect will not work, as the game has undergone significant changes in order to update it for the new Legendary Edition. Specifically, the developers have improved the Mako controls, removed weapon restrictions for different classes, and made certain morality checks easier to meet. Notably, the Pinnacle Station DLC will not be included in Mass Effect Legendary Edition as the original source code for it became corrupted some time after its development by Demiurge Studios. The absence of this DLC would likely cause issues with save files on its own, on top of the other large alterations to the game.

For RPG fans, a save game is often something to hold onto for sentimental value. Sometimes it is due to having a 'perfect run' of the game, where everything was unlocked and each choice was perfectly executed, on the other hand, a save can be valuable to someone for simply being their first playthrough. Despite not being able to use save files from Mass Effect 1, technically, fans who have their Mass Effect 2 save files, with their Mass Effect 1 Shepard's decisions loaded at the beginning, could still experience Mass Effect Legendary Edition with the original choices they made 14 years ago.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

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Source: GameSpot