Mass Effect, as we all know, has always hungered in its secret heart to become a twitchy first-person shooter. To cast aside the aged moniker of "RPG", whatever that means, and to transform into the helter-skelter, thrill-a-minute Call of Duty-like it was always meant to be.
Well, some dreams cannot be denied. Thanks to the ongoing MassFPS mod series, you can now transform two thirds of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition into a first-person cover shooter. Okay, I admit they're still very much Mass Effect games, so it's probably a bit more like turning them into proto-Starfield rather than COD, but I still find myself rather impressed by how well these things work.
Created by a modder named Aphar, the MassFPS mod got its most recent release—for ME2—at the beginning of this month, and differs from prior mods that go for the same effect by extending the first-person mode into combat, too. I've messed around with first-person mods for Mass Effect before, but they've always had the disappointing drawback of reverting to third-person mode as soon as you whip out your gun. Aphar has managed to overcome that drawback, though, meaning you'll only ever see your Shep from the third-person in conversations.
It doesn't just stick the camera behind Shepard's eyes and call it a day, either. Aphar says they went in to adjust "all combat cameras" in ME1 to better fit a first-person view. Likewise, movement has been tweaked a little to make Shepard feel a bit more responsive. The ME2 version has "feature parity," but with the added bonus that Aphar is working on adding a crouch into that game to make it feel a bit more coherent with ME1's mechanics.
It works strangely well. Admittedly, the weapon bob is wildly enthusiastic in first-person mode, but apart from that it all looks quite natural. For whatever reason, the plasticky-looking guns and ME1's trademark zany physics makes the whole thing strangely reminiscent of Deus Ex: Invisible War. In a good way.
You can pick up Aphar's first-person mods for ME1 and 2 over at Nexus Mods, where you can also find their recommendations for a range of additional mods to use alongside them, and the author themself says a similar project for ME3's Legendary Edition version is underway. They can be installed (relatively) easily by using ME3Tweaks Mod Manager.
One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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