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Mass Effect Mod Reviews

**EDIT** - Updated for 2017!

I’m near to finishing up yet-another complete playthrough of Mass Effect. In ME1 and ME2 I just used texture mods (MEUITM in ME1, for example, is a must-have.) But in ME3 I went all out, using several game-changing mods to overhaul the experience of ME3.

One thing that should be pointed out before starting is that setting up these mods for use in ME3 isn’t difficult, but you really need to be prepared to read every readme, make sure you get every patch to make them work together, and follow instructions very carefully. You also need to be prepared to learn how to use ME3 explorer, at least a little bit. If you pay attention, read everything on both the front page, the first post on each mod’s forum, and in the readmes, you shouldn’t have problems. The rest of the comments for each mod also were valuable.

Be prepared to take at least one long day of pre-game setup before playing the game.

Now, onto the mods... This gets really long so.... click the readmore.

Quick Reminder...

If you lost your ME1 or ME2 saves, you can download a save at masseffectsaves.com (for ME1 saves to import to ME2, and there are some ME1 mid-game saves to start playing from a certain point) or masseffect2saves.com (for ME2 saves to import to ME3). Full disclosure, I run those sites. There are some mods for ME1 & ME2 under the Mods sections there, and the Nexus also has ME1 & ME2 sections for you to explore as well.

But this post is about ME3, so let’s talk about ME3 modding.

Change your character’s look!

NOTE -- Anything bolded below is a link.

Okay, so before we really get started, know that you can fairly easily these days mod the way your Shepard looks. There’s some good texmods out there, and the newest gibbed’s savegame editor makes changing your Shepard’s hair / eyes / lip colors a snap. There’s also some great tutorials out there which will help guide you through some of the more complicated stuff. (There’s a lot more than this, but I’m not going to walk you through all of ‘em.) But if you want to mod your look, it’s possible for PC, and hey, also for Xbox 360 - there’s tutorials out there to walk you through it.

There’s also now this amazing “Hair Mods as DLCs” mod with a couple hundred new hairstyles to choose from for Femsheps, and dozens for Msheps. It came out after I was into my current ME3 run, but you bet I’m going to be using lots of them in the future.

Femsheps should also consider adding some variety to their wardrobe with Femshep’s Closet.

DLC mods are super easy to install, they’re basically just drag-and-drop folders (and two files somewhere else, which you only have to do once), so anyone can easily do these.

Using gibbed now to change the color of hair/lips/eyes etc is even easier now than in the tutorials above because now you can just pick colors out of a color wheel. I used this to add a nice purple highlight to my Shepard’s bright red hair you could only find in some lighting conditions.

Thanks to modding, this is how my Shepard progressed throughout the series.

If you want to do this, start the game, run through the beginning of the prologue, and then once you get control of your Shepard, after the meeting with the human council in Vancouver but before starting to actually move through Vancouver, save your game. Create a new save after every major change you make to the way your Shepard looks. Be prepared to be at like Save 10 or something before you’re happy. Take your time. You can just delete all the saves you don’t need after you’re happy.

NOTE -- From here on out, every section title (like “Lights Effect” directly below this sentence) is a link to the mod discussed.

Lights Effect

This is JUST a graphics mod. (lights, ambient, etc.) I loved this mod so much, it made the game so much more colorful and pretty. And then about two weeks ago (After doing Rannoch, before Thessia) it just stopped working, and made it so I couldn’t launch the game, Origin was giving me an error about a license not working. It took an entire day of me troubleshooting, and two un/reinstalls of the game to realize the these files were the common denominator and removing them. I have no idea what happened, but it was really frustrating.

If Lights Effect works for you and you like the way it makes the game look, awesome. I wish I could still use it.

There is a new version of Reshade which was made to be compatible with Windows 10, and a couple of premade settings on the Nexus to use with it, so you may find one of those you like, instead.

ME3Recalibrated

Okay let’s get into actual mods that change the content of the game!

ME3 Recalibrated (ME3Re) Maybe the least noticeable of the mods I'm using, but definitely does some nice things. Some bug fixes, restored dialog, a few bits of subtracted dialog. Maybe the best one is keeping you from getting stuck behind Joker on the cockpit, but not having that one area flashing on the galaxy map for no reason anymore is great, too.

Definitely recommended, just to get rid of a bunch of those little annoyances.

Ken and Gabby Recruitment

A small one, just restores a cut scene so you can recruit Ken and Gabby at Purgatory. The Spectre terminal thing still shows up, too, just don't accept the Ken & Gabby reinstatement until after you see the scene at Purgatory. I like Ken and Gabby, so I was glad this was there.

My only disappointment was that NEITHER of these restored Ken and Gabby's getting together scene. I'd forgotten that was a thing until it was too late to go back and manually do the fix to see it. Here’s a good tutorial on how to do that.

Expanded Galaxy Mod

This is a big one. It's hard to sum up everything this mod does, because it does a TON of things. To put it lightly, it populates the Normandy, it populates the galaxy map with a ton more systems, it creates more scanning missions, but it also makes those missions more relevant.

War Table - It adjusts the values of items on the war table, and makes the war table much more dynamic. There are many more resources on the table, and the value of those things go up and down much more often, depending on where you are in the story. It makes the war table worth checking out after every mission, to really see where the Galaxy is at readiness-wise. Some resources will be worth like 200 at one point, but by the end of the game that resource will be so depleted it will be at like, 20. At one point I was at 4000 EMS, (didn't do any multiplayer, so this was really high) only to be down to about 3700 before the end of the game, and that's with a Shepard imported from ME1 to ME2 to ME3 and doing most of the right things to keep my EMS high. I really liked feeling like I had a reason to check the War Table often again, and the realism that gaining and losing resources brought.

Galaxy Map - In addition, it adds a couple of interesting missions to the galaxy map. Some missions borrow cutscenes from ME1 and ME2, for instance, you can visit the asteroid from Bring Down the Sky and get the BDTS cutscene from when you arrive. That was a nice surprise. There are also a couple of actual times you have to make decisions during galaxy map missions, brought up via a datapad interface, and one that turns scanning and reaper avoidance into its own mini-game. I loved that this brought a sense of "Wow I don't know what's the right choice" back to the game. I actually messed up and made the wrong choices on one or two of these and I enjoyed feeling a a little fallible again.

Scanning - I typically would use a guide of which systems to go to and exactly which planet to scan when playing ME3 before. This time I decided to forgo that and just discover everything on my own, and I actually found myself enjoying the galaxy map again. Here's a hint though -- there will be several systems that don't show up with a %. If there's no place to go inside that system, ie just the solar system you arrive into, you can stop checking there for more stuff. Like in the main game, there will be times where you're given a scanning quest you can't complete yet, too, so don't worry when that happens. After you go through each system once, just keep checking the galaxy map before and after plot missions for the % complete to not be 100, and head there. The drawback to having a ton more systems on the galaxy map is that it takes awhile to figure out where to go sometimes, and checking all those systems can get a little tedious. Let the labels, flashing lights and % completed be your guide, stop trying to memorize where systems are.

Normandy - The other big thing it does is populate the Normandy. You can assign some of your crew to have certain roles, though I don't think that makes much of a difference in the game itself, but it was nice being able to officially say that Kaidan was second in command on the ship, and give Javik an actual role as well. And then it also places more NPCS on the ship. Most of them are generic marine NPCS (and I was slightly annoyed that those are ALL men), but also you can acquire a chef/bartender and a couple more people in both the medbay and engineering who have little backstories and aren't all human. It definitely made the Normandy feel more alive.

Another thing it does is also lets you customize the Normandy. You can change the shuttle bay into a shooting range to test out guns easily, and that bay is customizable. You can swap out the vehicle on the left side of the bay to several other craft, such as the Mako or Hammerhead. It also adds several shops to both the galaxy map (write down where these are when you find them because at least one is hard to find again and not labeled anywhere) and the Normandy, letting you add a few items around the ship.

Companions - With an add-on mod, it will allow you to keep MANY of your ME2 companions on the ship after they appear in-game. So, for instance, if you romanced Jacob, and want him to stick around after you rescue him? He does. Combine that with BackOff (below) and you almost start to feel not shortchanged. The companions do not have dialog, but they can be brought along on many missions. Also, bringing an addon companion has the added benefit of, if you bring one of the regular companions like Kaidan, Garrus, Tali etc., that companion gets all of the dialog prompts.

Misc - It also adds several more bonuses at Glyph's terminal, adds the Citadel DLC music to the Normandy, adds many more emails.... okay and several other small things. I don't want to give it all away.

There’s been more added for 2017, but I’ve already gone on enough. It's huge, and it's still in development. I just really enjoyed the variety of this mod, and how it made the Normandy, the Galaxy Map and the War Table feel so much more alive and dynamic.

My biggest complaint about it is I felt like a lot of it wasn't documented well, but that did cause me to explore more. And tbh, it was nice to not just know everything already sometimes, though it was a bit frustrating at times also.

But in the end, I highly recommended trying this mod. Can't wait to see what else they have in store.

ThaneMod and Backoff

I think it's hard to talk about one of these without the other, since they were developed by the same person / team and meant to work together (though each also can work without the other.) You should be warned that both of these mods both add and subtract content from the game to accomplish their goals. So if you can't stand having bits and pieces of conversations or any content at all removed from your playthrough of the game, these mods aren't for you, really, any of the rest of them I'm talking about from here on out. But they also add a lot, and change things in really interesting ways.

ThaneMod is made to enhance the experience of Thane in ME3, and frankly, to save his life. Installing ThaneMod means Thane does not die in ME3. Kirrahe saves the Salarian councilor and gets off the Citadel, Kolyat in tow, and a cure for Kepral's is possible. Whether you romanced him or not, he survives. Most of this, except obviously Kirrahe's death stuff, is done in emails. I think the added content is very well done. As much as I love Kirrahe, it just makes SO much more sense for Kirrahe to protect the Salarian Councillor. It also cuts some of Thane's conversation in Huerta, in order to not make his disease appear as bad as it is in vanilla. Obviously, since Thane survives and is off the Citadel, you'll miss his death scene in Huerta and funeral in Citadel DLC as well. I'm so glad this mod exists, even as someone who's never romanced Thane. But if you like how Thane's arc plays out in the vanilla game just fine, well, don't install this mod. I see myself using it sometimes in the future, and other times not.

Backoff is really, just a breath of fresh air for the most part. What it seeks to do is emphasize your LI's importance in the game, make dialog options easier to understand so you're not accidentally romancing someone you didn't mean to, or make sure your'e not missing flirts you shouldn't. It adds and/or changes emails from your LI. It restores bits of cut dialog.

I've only played through with it this one time while romancing Kaidan, completely Kaidan-faithful through the series, so I can't speak to what the other changes for other LI's are totally, but I noticed so many changes, and loved almost all of them. (One thing you will notice if you romanced Kaidan in ME1 and someone else in ME2 though, is that the "cheated" dialog is completely gone. I didn’t see this in my game, but I watched a youtube video of it. Yay!)

It also DE-emphasizes other companions who you're not romancing. So it does cut content in some ways. But it does things like makes Aethyea not automatically accuse you of sleeping with Liara. It makes the entire game stop making you feel like "shouldn't you ACTUALLY be romancing Liara"? You can actually be her friend without feeling forced to be her BFF / secret LI like a lot of people feel the game tends to do. (It also does add content for Liara lovers!) It gives you more control over James flirting with you or not early on in the game. It keeps you from having to witness Sam's underwear-on shower scene without being a jerk to her. (If you're romancing Sam and want to see it, it's still there! But I'm not, so I don't, but I adore Sam and don't want to a jerk to her, you know?)

Even for more of the "minor" ME3 romances, like Jack, Miranda, Kelly (who ALWAYS APPEARS now -assuming she’s alive-, by the way, whether or not you had her to dinner in ME2!) Backoff makes into an actual romance that other companions will always respect.

Again, there is cut content you WILL notice, like if you're not romancing Liara, you only get one Citadel "date" with her. You should read the full notes on what the mod does to your favorite LIs and companions, before deciding if you want to use Backoff, but I loved about 90% of the changes the mod made.

I may even pull my Jacob romance Shepard out of mothballs sometime soon, since you can keep your relationship with Jacob going with BackOff. It's not a full romance, there's no new scenes, but between completely cutting out the romance with Brynn if you're Jacob-faithful and emails etc... you still have hope. And that is huge for those of us who had their hearts broken by what Bioware did to Jacob in ME3.

TBH, I can't see myself ever playing ME3 without BackOff again, no matter who I romance.

Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod

Most of you know what MEHEM does, but I'll run through it. (spoilers abound here). Basically, once you get done talking to Anderson on the Citadel at the end of the game... there is no more choice. The last dialog choice you get happens when talking to TIM. Once Anderson is gone, Shep collapses. New FMV was made to show the Normandy rescuing Shepard on the Citadel and then getting the hell out of dodge. The music is changed from "An End, Once and For All" to "Suicide Mission" from ME2. The Defeat ending happens. You never talk to the starkid. You never make a red/blue/green choice. The Crucible and Catalyst work together and destroy the reapers. Joker still has to run from the beam, but then, you make it.

The ending is still bittersweet, because Anderson is dead, but instead of your LI placing Shepard's name on the wall, YOU place Anderson's name there, and your LI hugs you instead of EDI hugging your LI. Hackett gives you the Destroy ending speech and slides. Then the game ends. And I'm not 100% sure if MEHEM does this or CEM, which I'm talking about next, but the "My Sweet" Grandpa scene is gone, too, as far as I can tell.

There are some quibbles people have with MEHEM - mainly that the author, MrFob, self-inserts himself into the mod. Personally, I don't care. He's the person that gave us this option, it's not super obvious that it's a self-insert and it's just one line of dialog, so again, I personally don’t care, it didn’t break immersion for me. The new bits of FMV aren't entirely smooth, there's a slightly different look and feel to these bits, but I mean, it's ten thousand times better than most any of the rest of us could do, and these bits are the bits that didn't exist in the canon game, at all. They're still very good.

There's other ending mods you can choose from if this one isn't your jam. Some of them still let you talk to the starkid, even, if you miss that, I guess. But MEHEM IS my main Shepard's chosen ending. It finally gave me a sense of triumph instead of defeat at the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Maybe for some Shepards in the future I'll still do a vanilla ending without mods, But this is my canon Shepard, and I wanted her to live, and I wanted a happily ever after with her and Kaidan. MEHEM gives me everything I wanted in the ME ending.

Citadel Epilogue Mod

The Citadel Epilogue Mod does exactly what's in the name -- it makes the Citadel DLC the epilogue of the game. It works smoothly with MEHEM with a small patch, and after the credits of ME3 roll, a new dialog screen comes up and says that at some point after the war, Shepard's crew gets back together. I feel like instead of "years" it's more like 6 - 12 months, but whatever, it's one word.

The CEM completely removes any reference to the war still happening, or the endgame still coming. Poof. It's gone. You use one Texmod to change the signs on the Citadel that advertise for war recruitment out, and now... it's 100% believable that it's after the war. The Citadel is at least somewhat rebuilt, the Normandy has been undergoing refit / drydock because of the war, Shepard is just about done recovering from her/his injuries and you're near to getting the team back together to resume duty. It does cut out most, but not all, of the Anderson video from the very beginning of the DLC but it's 100% believable that Anderson bequeathed this apartment to you. It makes all his recordings even more bittersweet and meaningful since you're now listening to them post-mortem.

I'm not 100% done with the Citadel DLC. I've done the mission, and now I'm doing all of the Silversun Strip and apartment meetups before the party. I know the end of the game is coming... but for the first time, I'm okay with it. Totally okay because the way the game ends will be Shepard and her crew heading out to explore and for new adventures, and not in death for her, and agony for her LI. It's the way I always wanted the story to end, and now, it DOES.

Again, CEM isn't for everyone, it's only if you truly want a happy ending, in conjunction with an ending-changing mod. But if this is what you want, it does the job perfectly.

ALOT

ALOT (A Lot of Textures) is a complete overhaul to the textures of Mass Effect 3. Nearly every texture in the game has been upgraded to beautiful quality from a wide number of modders over the last few years, and the ALOT team worked with these modders to get much of their work gathered together in one place with an easy and (relatively) installation method. With the 2017 version of the mod, if your ME3 is installed on an SSD, it takes about an hour to install, with an included customized Mass Effect Modder. A huge improvement over the previous ME3 Explorer version that took around 10 hours to install, and using texmods which would cause your game to take 10+ minutes to launch every time and often make it more unstable.

You need to have all of your ME3 DLC mods like hairstyles, MEHEM, EGM, and CEM already installed before starting your ALOT install. I had to undo and re-do all the work I’d done the first time because I did this wrong. It’s really, super important here that you read all the instructions, but it’s also really worth it to see how beautiful the game looks. You won’t be able to go back and play without this mod after you start using the textures.

There are many, many other mods out there, like controller support, Coalesced editors, mods that make the game tougher, etc. to take a look at as well. This is a pretty good base start to start making ME3 a new game to play all over again, though. And don’t forget to browse the ME1 and ME2 nexus mods as well. They’re not nearly as extensive as ME3 modding, but there’s stuff out there!

I hope all of this is helpful to at least a few people. I would very much like to thank the developers of all the mods above, and similar ones which I haven’t tried yet, for all their hard work and their dedication to these projects, even five years after ME3 was released. Y’all are amazing. Thank you so much for taking ME3 and making a game which I loved into a thing so much closer to perfection.

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