When it comes to epic sci-fi RPGs, it doesn’t get much better than the original Mass Effect trilogy. Over the course of three incredible games, BioWare delivered a gripping story of love, war, betrayal, and the impossible fight against an endless cycle of destruction. With great characters, a great concept, and some pleasingly deep relationships between the crew, the trilogy remains a sacred text for gamers everywhere.

In 2021, EA and BioWare released Mass Effect Legendary Edition, an upgraded compilation that included all three games, every expansion from those three games, and improved gameplay and visuals. It’s a pretty excellent remaster, overall, but now fans are going one step further and making Mass Effect look truly next-gen. I’m just not so sure if that’s a good thing, overall.

Mass Effect 2 With DLSS 5.0 Sure Is… Something

As I’m sure you’re probably aware, Nvidia’s recently released DLSS 5.0 “is a neural rendering model that takes the game’s color and motion vectors as input for each frame, then infuses the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to the source 3D content and temporally consistent from frame-to-frame.” That’s a fancy way of saying this: it’s basically an AI filter that makes everything look more real.

DLSS 5.0 has proven extremely controversial since its announcement, but that hasn’t stopped gamers from slapping it over their favorite titles to see the results. The latest game to get this treatment? The original Mass Effect 2. I have to say, while a lot of the games that have been the victim of DLSS 5.0 look like genuine poop from a butt, this isn’t too bad at all. There’s still a touch of the uncanny valley, and a disconnect between the more realistic-looking faces and the way they’re animated, but overall? It looks like a pretty decent next-gen remaster of a classic RPG. Then again, you could just go play Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which still looks pretty good today.

Using DLSS 5.0 isn’t the most straightforward process if you’re not used to fiddling around with game files and programs, and obviously, this tool is still only available for PC. At the moment, it looks to me like it’s not much more than a novelty than a genuinely game-changing way to transform video games, especially since so many of these remasters look more than a little wrong. But if you want to play around with it yourself, go nuts.

If nothing else, doing a scary, hyper-realistic playthrough of the Mass Effect trilogy will help pass the time until Mass Effect 5, a game that some fans are now genuinely concerned may never see the light of day following EA’s recent $55 billion takeover led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners.

Systems

Released

November 20, 2007

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Violence

Developer(s)

BioWare

Publisher(s)

Electronic Arts

Engine

Unreal Engine 3

Cross-Platform Play

doesn’t have cross-play between PC and consoles,

Cross Save

yes