Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s Mako Sections Are Good, Actually

Just saying.

Mass Effect
Mass Effect

Look, I’ve been partial to some bad takes in my time. I was the guy who at one point argued that God of War isn’t exactly great, which might just give you an idea of where I’m at with my opinions. Anyway, here I am to argue that the Mako sections in Mass Effect are actually pretty decent.

Alright, so the Mako in Mass Effect is a bit of a wild beast. The buggy is quite unwieldy, bouncing around off objects without a care in the world. To quote famed space commander Zapp Brannigan, the Mako is “built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro”. The jump-jets often send you careening off the slightest incline so violently that it’s almost more dangerous to your safety than any enemies you find, usually leaving you crashed in some weird crater. “You win again, gravity.”

To be fair to BioWare, the Mako has received significant upgrades since the original version, with features such as speed boosters allowing for quicker traversal (or funnier hit and runs on the Geth), the removal of the Mako’s XP reduction during combat, and some quality of life upgrades to the weapons and shield recovery. There’s still the option to have the old version of the Mako, if you prefer, but even with all the improvements, the Mako’s still a bit of a mad lad.

Mass Effect
Mass Effect

Clearly, the Mako isn’t for everybody, but I’m not here to sell the benefits of controlling a sci-fi off road buggy specifically. I’m more interested in talking about the sections of gameplay as a whole. Aside from a few moments in the main story quests, the Mako is used as an exploration vehicle to conquer the galaxy’s uncharted worlds.

These uncharted worlds are largely empty areas with the occasional outpost, artifact or dead Alliance squad to discover, and for the most part, these sections largely serve as distractions from the main story. They’re there if you want them, and you enjoy earning XP and Paragon/Renegade points, but if you just want to slam the main quest, that’s a fair enough way to enjoy the game too.

My reason for arguing that the sections “are good actually” is onefold: Agebinium. A small world located in the Voyager Cluster, Agebinium is in close orbit to Amazon, a red giant star that blasts the planet with so much radiation that it stripped the planet of its atmosphere. Turns out those little text blurbs that appear when surveying a planet are kind of interesting. The more you know.

Mass Effect
Mass Effect

Upon landing on Agebinium, you find a desolate planet that’s noteworthy only for some ancient debris and being the location of an Alliance probe sent out during the First Contact War. On the face of it, Agebinium seems like a very insignificant rock in the middle of nowhere, but upon landing on the planet, I was immediately blown away by how fantastic the planet looked.

Agebinium is bathed in the red light and radiation of its nearby sun, creating an appropriately otherworldly vibe. The red hue is simply stunning to look at, and is great fodder for the Legendary Edition’s new photo mode. What’s even more interesting is that I have no memories of Agebinium previously, despite having a lot of experience with the Mass Effect series. Perhaps the improvements made to the lighting, textures and overall graphics for the Legendary Edition, along with the power of the Xbox Series X, accentuates the strengths of Agebinium’s aesthetic, or perhaps this is a bit of a hidden gem world, nestled amongst the intriguing story and world.

Of course, we know that the planet and its side quest has received a pretty sizeable update since the previous game, since the quest concerns one Elanos Haliat, a noted figure in the first game because he was a human-hating space pirate who also was a human. In the Legendary Edition, Haliat was updated to be a turian instead, which makes way more sense.

Mass Effect
Mass Effect

A lot of the planets or explorable areas can feel quite like you’re stuck on some generic planet that’s not really noteworthy. Here’s grey wasteland, and here’s snowy landscape. Perhaps you’d enjoy an asteroid as a bit of change? For some areas, it feels like you’re piloting a buggy through an abandoned quarry rather than an faraway alien planet that’s teeming with new discoveries. Agebinium is a brilliant break from the norm that sells the worth of the Mako sections alone.

The Mako buggy itself might lead to some of the least engaging or contentious sections of the original game, but being able to touch down on uncharted worlds and discovering such untouched beauty allows the Mako to find a place in Mass Effect’s cacophony of intricate systems. The gameplay certainly won’t be for everyone, but the worlds and locations you can discover with the Mako? That’s pretty good, actually.

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