Mass Effect is one of gaming’s most beloved science fiction franchises, featuring an original setting brimming with personality. While Mass Effect: Andromeda did not live up to expectations, the series remains popular, and many fans are looking forward to Mass Effect’s upcoming return. As with many BioWare games, the Mass Effect trilogy owes much of its popularity to Shepard’s squad. The relationships players can build with these characters are among Mass Effect’s main draws.
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Reddit user BardMessenger24 edited the video together and posted it on the Mass Effect subreddit. It has a runtime of 2 minutes and 14 seconds. It features the female Commander Shepard, all of her primary squadmates, and other Normandy crew members like Joker, Specialist Traynor, Doctor Chakwas, and Admiral Anderson. The video shows most of the characters in an assortment of painful or embarrassing situations, usually but not always involving their death or injury. Each scene pauses on a splash screen showing the character’s name paired with a humorous nickname or epitaph, while the cheery music gives it the atmosphere of a bizarre sitcom intro.
The video opens with a clip from the scene in Mass Effect 2’s prologue where Shepard falls into space as the Collector Cruiser destroys the first Normandy. BardMessenger24’s editing is impressive from the start, managing to synch the music with Normandy’s explosions. Many of the clips likewise show crewmembers getting thrown about by explosions or Biotic attacks, falling off or onto things, or otherwise suffering some form of bodily harm. Often, the freeze frame comes at the most embarrassing moment of the character’s misfortune, such as the exact moment before Miranda gets hit in the face by the Shadow Broker’s desk.
Not everyone gets caught in such an undignified position, with a few characters spouting a one-liner before their splash screen. Joker, Traynor, Cortez, and Kasumi are also among the handful who manage to avoid grievous injury throughout the video. The character epithets include several popular Mass Effect memes, such as Garrus’s obsession with calibrations in Mass Effect 2, Jacob’s infamous “high risk” line, and Wrex’s overused “Shepard” greeting from Mass Effect 1.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
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