The existence of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition means many things, but one promise is chief among them - a chance to play the trilogy again and make different choices. Of course, many are going to succumb to the temptation to romance Liara all over again. It’s also likely that few will have the stomach to genophage the Krogans, or make it so Tali meets a sorry end. But when it comes to Shepard builds, players are far more likely to experiment. The thing is, Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer was letting us try on multiple class combos years ago.
Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer looks and acts much like the standard horde mode. A team of four players are dropped into a closed-off battlefield drawn from one of the ME3’s planets. There, they fight off waves of Collectors, Geth, and other minions of the Reapers. Waves will sometimes carry objectives like activating devices or carrying cargo. What made it fun, aside from how stellar combat had become by ME3, was the ability to play as different races and classes.
You get a stable of characters you can play as in ME3 multiplayer. None of them are Commander Shepard, your single-player avatar. More importantly, this selection includes famous alien species like the Asari, Turians, and Krogan. No longer were you bound by the narrative’s need for you to play as a human. In fact, if you were lucky with your drops, you could play as the most powerful being in Mass Effect history. I speak, of course, about the Volus Biotic God.
A Volus Adept was the rarest of drops, which makes sense as the concept had achieved meme status by that point. And despite how frustrating it can be to unlock one, its existence is a great showing of how Bioware knows its audience (or did in the pre-Anthem days). You can also play as Geth and Awakened Collectors, great for fans of the typically antagonistic species. Lore fans can delight in how these various species are implemented. You can play as the famed Asari Justicar, or take some of Cerberus’ questionable experiments for a spin.
On the gameplay side of things, you can pick the same classes Shepard uses in the single-player game. The benefits are obvious here - you can play as whatever classes you didn’t in your solo run. Better yet, you can do it without having to sit through cutscenes and tutorials. The multiplayer is purely for tinkering with combat, and is welcome considering the ways tech powers and biotics evolved from what they were in the first Mass Effect.
The multiplayer of ME3 could have easily turned into the “obligatory online multiplayer” that was a trend at the time. Instead, it took the best parts of ME3 combat, the bones of Battlefield, and let players play as their favorite alien species. It struck such a chord that people still play it today. Sadly, it’s not returning in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, so you’ll have to bust out your old copy if you want to bring the Volus smackdown.
