BioWare says getting multiplayer to work for Mass Effect Legendary Edition would be "really hard"

The undertaking would have been "too complicated," the studio says.

Developer BioWare has said that it hasn't included multiplayer in the upcoming Mass Effect Legendary Edition due to the sheer amount of work it would take to get right.

Speaking to Game Informer, project director Mac Walters said that people would mostly be playing these remasters for the story elements; getting the multiplayer aspects to work would have been "too complicated."

"I had all of these analogies early on to try to help people understand what this remaster is going to be about," Walters said.

"It's one thing to take a 1982 Porsche that needs to be fully restored, but now I want you to imagine that it was actually buried in concrete. So you've got to chip away at all of that, and every time you go to try something it's like 'is this even going to work?' Do I blow the engine turnover? You know, it's just a lot of work. And I think people underestimate what it's like to do this game, because - at every step - you are given an agonizing choice of 'is this the thing that we want to spend our time on and really try to improve it' and 'where will this lead us down the road?'"

He continued:  "I feel strongly that we've chosen the things that are what the majority of our fans were most passionate about. On the topic of multiplayer, it was just really hard. Getting all of the online systems working and functionality would have been another large chunk to do but at the same time, there are a lot of other logistics involved. The economy is built completely differently. Then questions came up like, "Do we support it post-launch? What about people who are still playing multiplayer today? Do we try to find a way to somehow do crossplay between the PS3 and PS4?"

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out on May 14 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as well as the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S via backwards compatibility.