BioWare released Mass Effect Legendary Edition on 14 May 2021 to an eager fanbase. Each day – each hour, really – fans share more little details online about the games, including new bugs, fresh perspectives, tips and tricks for new players, reasons to try Mass Effect for the first time, and more.

With so much information – and so much updated to admire and explore – it’s easy for little details to fall between the cracks. No one can keep up with everything and no one would expect you to. These are some things you may not have noticed about Mass Effect Legendary Edition between all the hype.

10 Finally See The Prothean Vision

In the very first Mass Effect game, Shepard gets a head-splitting vision when they come in contact with a Prothean device. Until now, it’s been difficult to parse much of the images that rush on and off screen.

However, the remaster has allowed and encouraged players to screenshot or record the vision in order to pull the images out. The above image of (presumably) a Prothean city was saved by Reddit user Edrac. Or, players on 8th and 9th generation consoles can just export this scene altogether.

9 Viewing Earth From The Moon Isn’t Inverted

Mass Effect has repeatedly depicted Earth from space all wrong. It started in the first Mass Effect when players noticed that, when looking at the Earth from the Moon, it was inverted (like a mirror image).

Since then, players have repeatedly noted that Earth is spinning backward in Mass Effect 2 and 3. It seems to have become an inside joke from the developers – in the Citadel DLC, the news can be spotted reporting on how Earth is spinning backward. All these previous errors have been fixed now, though.

8 You Can Design Your Own Cover

BioWare launched a ton of free content for fans as a way to generate hype for Mass Effect Legendary Edition. There’s a free soundtrack, downloadable comic books, and more. However, not enough people know about the custom box art that fans can create for themselves.

This is done through the remasters’ online site and only requires a few simple choices about which characters to prioritize, which location to show, and which alignment you chose.

7 We Can Read Liara’s Uniform

When Shepard meets Liara in the first Mass Effect, they may have noticed the patch sewed onto her uniform. No one could comprehend it – until now. Updating every character in every game means that players can read the previously blurry text.

For some reason, BioWare has reversed the order of the phrases (the longer one is now on the bottom) but didn’t bother to make them comprehensible. They read: “weriidhf hsdhsh jhhohasd oahsiohj.” It’s like a little inside joke, that they’ve kept it completely ridiculous, for players who are keen-eyed enough to notice.

6 Players Can Reach Max Level In One Playthrough

Fans of the original trilogy will remember the absolute slog they had to push through in order to reach the level cap. It often required more than one playthrough. Along with the “Classic Mode” and “Legendary Mode” updates to leveling, BioWare has made the max level more obtainable.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition players shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting the level cap. It’ll still take more work than the average player would invest but won’t be nearly so tedious as fans may remember.

5 “Improved” Graphics

Mass Effect’s remaster occasionally fails to meet expectations, considering how much the improved graphics were a cornerstone of the games’ rerelease. In certain lighting and environments – like Ashley above, caught by u/CosmicStarfall on Reddit – the characters can look plastered on and inexpressive.

Fans have described it as feeling “artificial” compared to the original, which may have been technically worse but evoked the desired emotion more effectively.

4 Updated Pluto

Since the release of the Mass Effect games, humanity has obtained newer, more detailed photos of Pluto. In Mass Effect Legendary Edition, BioWare has updated Pluto’s depiction to match these images. Interestingly, though, they have kept the color scheme of their previous depiction of Pluto (which was all beige), rather than including the reds, blues, whites, and beiges of the updated photos.

Many people fawned over Pluto’s “heart” (on the bottom right of the images) when they first saw Pluto, so this has only brought up warm feelings for the dwarf planet again.

3 Tali’s New Face

In the original Mass Effect trilogy, players can only spy on Tali’s face behind her mask once: if they romance her, she gifts the player a picture of herself. That image was actually a portrait of Hammasa Kohistani, the woman who won the Miss England beauty contest in 2005, photoshopped for Mass Effect’s purposes (with a pretty significant lens flare, to keep her face a little mysterious).

In Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Shepard still receives Tali’s photo, but it’s clearly different. This time, Tali is depicted in her familiar gear, having only removed the glass she normally has in front of her face. While the new photo feels slightly less intimate than the old version, it’s nice that Tali finally has her own face.

2 Improvements May Have Been Based On Your Favourite Mods

The updated graphics in Mass Effect Legendary Edition have been amazing to some fans, but others may find them familiar. BioWare used techniques that it actually discovered in fan mods – like “A Lot Of Textures” – and improved upon (since the company has access to the original assets).

Developers confirmed that they examined fan-created mods when they started the process and even reached out to some modders to find ways to work together. It’s amazing that fan-created content, made in people’s spare time and entirely unpaid, helped create this masterpiece.

1 Updates To Galactic Readiness

When Mass Effect 3 came out, fans felt forced to participate in the game’s poorly constructed multiplayer because of the Galactic Readiness scale. This was a rating in the single-player game that determined how prepared Shepard and their allies were for the final confrontation against the Reapers.

However, the player’s multiplayer matches contributed to this score, so if someone wanted to achieve one of the best endings, they were stuck. Thankfully, in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, there is no multiplayer (yet). As a result, the player’s progress in Mass Effect 1 and 2 will replace the multiplayer bonuses.

NEXT: Mass Effect: Every Race Ranked By Wealth