Mass Effect Legendary Edition is just over the horizon, bringing the full original trilogy remastered to modern consoles next month. Ahead of its release, BioWare and EA are showing off the extensive visual improvements that have been made over the originals with a brand new “Remastered Comparison Trailer” that puts scenes from the Legendary Edition side by side with the same scenes from the original trilogy.

Alongside the trailer, BioWare released an extensive blog detailing their process for remastering the original Mass Effect games. They likened a final release of a game to a house of cards, and even “blowing the dust off, let alone implementing foundational changes like updating the version of the engine” can cause a wide variety of issues to happen, which is why it’s not as easy a process as just slapping a fresh coat of paint on it. Their three-step approach began with building a foundation by cataloging every single asset in the trilogy.

How many particle effects, 3D models, textures, levels, GUI (Graphical User Interface) elements, sounds, cinematic movies, etc. actually exist across the trilogy, and on average what are their quality levels" Do the source assets (content creation files) still exist" What percentage of those assets should we improve, and on average, how long will each asset type take to improve" Knowing the sheer numbers of assets and their quality levels shaped our strategy for improving each ?type? of...