TheMass Effect Legendary Editionwas finally announced on N7 Day earlier this month. The new release will be a remaster of the original threeMass Effectgames, 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 theMass Effect Legendary Editionprobably 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 upcomingMass Effectremaster: BioWare’s hair problem.
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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 originalMass 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 likeDragon 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 theMass EffectandDragon Ageseries, but it also has other implications. Unlike some earlier BioWare RPGs,Dragon Age: InquisitionandMass Effect: Andromedamake use ofEA’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.
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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 problemBioWare’s hairoften faces.
TheMass Effect Legendary Editiontrailer already seems to confirm that hair will not be among the major graphical upgrades taking place in the remaster. The shot ofMiranda Lawsonshows her hair rendered very similarly to her appearances inMass Effect 2and3, 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 forMass Effectfans, human beings are among the least interesting species put on display in theMass Effectseries. With upgraded textures and lighting physics, it’s likely many of the alien races ofMass Effectwill 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 theMass Effectremaster, betweenMass 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 Editionis in development for 2021.
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