Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (Bootcamp)

[jjsanderson]

So far, I have 100Gb of anticlimax. Some might suggest that sums up the ME trilogy, but (a) rude! and (b) I was looking forward to replaying it after all these years. Sadly, it seems my increasingly-decrepit Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) has finally met its match. I’d hoped the RX580 it’s currently packing would be adequate, but I haven’t even got to the point of finding out: the Mass Effect Launcher doesn’t, er, launch.

My hunch is that the processor doesn’t do something critical, SSE4.2 being the obvious suspect. Which may be terminal for my enjoyment of the game, my bank account, or very likely both. I’ll fiddle about with Intel’s emulator tools, but it’s Windows so… yeah, I’m pretty much bashing keys at random and hoping to get lucky.

Can anyone else report success (or otherwise) with MEL?

 

[amarmot]

nope. I have dual X5690s, but it won’t run. AVX issue? EA can be so lazy sometimes.

 

[jjsanderson]

Thanks for the report @amarmot. There's a growing thread on the EA forums which is coming to the same conclusions about AVX being required. That said, there are also people with recent Ryzen and i7/i9 CPUs with problems, so there are clearly other things going on too.

Ooh, but this morning: this post, which suggests only the Launcher uses AVX and the games themselves don't. They may still need SSE4.2, however… but that might be possible to emulate using Intel's development tools.

 

[amarmot]

Has anyone running a classic mac pro been able to run this game?

 

[thekev]

Thanks for the report @amarmot. There's a growing thread on the EA forums which is coming to the same conclusions about AVX being required. That said, there are also people with recent Ryzen and i7/i9 CPUs with problems, so there are clearly other things going on too.

Ooh, but this morning: this post, which suggests only the Launcher uses AVX and the games themselves don't. They may still need SSE4.2, however… but that might be possible to emulate using Intel's development tools.

EA is very silly. One of those thread posts also sounds like a misleading exception if the issue is AVX support. The exception code seems to be a memory access violation, whereas I would expect one corresponding to a bad opcode.


A few AVX instructions are very slow on most AMD hardware compared to Intel hardware, but Intel tends to issue the specs for these things without consideration for AMD. AVX support in itself is a pretty common requirement now though.

 

[jjsanderson]

I can confirm that Mass Effect Legendary Edition will run on a Mac Pro 3,1. The games themselves don't appear to need AVX, only the new launcher app does... but all that's needed is an app of the same name. A user on the EA forums whipped up an AutoHotKey script to take the place of the official launcher, and that's working for me. Eden Prime here I come.

 

[diamond.g]

I can confirm that Mass Effect Legendary Edition will run on a Mac Pro 3,1. The games themselves don't appear to need AVX, only the new launcher app does... but all that's needed is an app of the same name. A user on the EA forums whipped up an AutoHotKey script to take the place of the official launcher, and that's working for me. Eden Prime here I come.

How is the performance?

 

[jjsanderson]

How is the performance?

On an 8Gb RX580, in ME1 at 1080p – seems fine so far. I haven't done any measurements but it's fluid enough for a non-discerning casual gamer like myself. Loading times (off a USB3 SSD) are fine; Xbox controller support is nice. I've only just arrived at the Citadel, though, so who knows if it gets janky later?

 

[diamond.g]

On an 8Gb RX580, in ME1 at 1080p – seems fine so far. I haven't done any measurements but it's fluid enough for a non-discerning casual gamer like myself. Loading times (off a USB3 SSD) are fine; Xbox controller support is nice. I've only just arrived at the Citadel, though, so who knows if it gets janky later?

Nice, I am not sure if I want to get it on the PS5 or the PC. Kind of waiting on DF to do a video on the PC version.

 

[jjsanderson]

ME1 is quite pretty now. It's rather obviously an old game that's been worked over, but at times the visuals are very nice indeed. The best way I can think of describing it is that it now looks like the ME1 you remember, rather than how it actually looked at the time. Which was pretty janky.

I believe there was discussion from the devs about mod support and the like, but also that more recently EA have been very tight-lipped. So it's not clear if (presumably PC) mods might factor into your decision.

 

[Huntn]

I played Mass Effect 1&2 when they first came out and was impressed. Wondering how dated it seems today?

 

[diamond.g]

I played Mass Effect 1&2 when they first came out and was impressed. Wondering how dated it seems today?

Did you see DF did a comparison that showed the difference between the 360 and the XSX/PS5?

 

[Huntn]

Did you see DF did a comparison that showed the difference between the 360 and the XSX/PS5?

I did not, link?

 

[diamond.g]

I did not, link?

Here you go!

 

[Huntn]

Here you go!

Looks impressive! thanks!

 

[amarmot]

Has anyone with a Mac Pro 5,1 been able to run LE:LE?

 

[panjandrum]

Looking forward to playing these again. Good to hear they are working in some of the old Mac Pros. Heck, I used my Mac Pro 1,1 as a freaking stereoscopic game-rig clear up through the Skryim era (using TriDef 3D, which has gone out of business); so these machines are still quite capable once you put in a decent GPU.

 

[George Dawes]

I've got it on a PS5 and it's great fun , although the environments are very sparse , I suppose a limitation of the technology in graphics when these games were originally made