Mass Effect: Legendary Edition Doesn’t Include Multiplayer, Here’s Why

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition collects the trilogy of games into one convenient place, bringing together over 40 pieces of DLC to make it a complete single-player experience. However, one notably missing aspect of the original trilogy is Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, which didn’t make it into Legendary Edition because of the amount of work that would have been required.

According to project director Mac Walters, restoring the multiplayer component of Mass Effect 3 would have been a significant undertaking, comparable to updating the entirety of the first game.

“At least at one point in time, everything was on the table and ultimately we looked at what it would take to [add Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer]–it obviously had a lot of challenges,” Walters explained. “You look at everything from what you do with cross-play–because that’s kind of an expectation now–what do we do with people who are still playing multiplayer now, how do we honor that, how do we bring them in, can we somehow bridge that gap? And, of course, these aren’t insurmountable challenges–they’re all things that we could do to fix that problem and get multiplayer in there.

“But when you look at the amount of effort that it was going to take to do that, it was easily commensurate if not greater than uplifting all of Mass Effect 1. And I think our focus really was on the single-player experience and, at some point, we just had to draw the line. I love Mass Effect 3 multiplayer–and like I said, people are still playing it today, but ultimately the product, the overall Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, is a better representation of the original trilogy because we were able to focus on those single-player moments.”

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s release date has been confirmed as May 14. It will launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game will be playable on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 through backwards compatibility. For more on Mass Effect, check out the latest episode of Audio Logs, which features a look at cut characters, and our breakdown of the changes in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.