A Mass Effect Legendary Edition ray tracing feature would undoubtedly bring it into the new era. This relatively new tech took more of a hold when Mass Effect was dormant so a remaster integrating it would make sense. Here’s whether or not Mass Effect Legendary Edition supports ray tracing.
Does Mass Effect Legendary Edition have ray tracing?
Mass Effect Legendary Edition does not support ray tracing on any of the platforms it is on. This might be an obvious scenario for the PS4 and Xbox One, but this is true for the PC version as well. And the game is not natively on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S either so don’t expect exclusive features like ray tracing for the more powerful consoles. They’re just running the game in backwards compatibility mode. BioWare has not spoken about adding ray tracing support either.
People who want to have ray tracing in Mass Effect will have to turn to mods or other sources. It’s worth noting that these mods are for the original releases, not the Legendary Edition. While not completely the same thing, some users have gotten ray tracing in screen space to run in Mass Effect 2, as shown in this Reddit thread by user XenthorX. The included video shows the mod in action. It is subtle, but a step up from the lighting in the base release.
Pascal Gilcher, also known as McFly or Marty McFly, has had their reshade tool used for ray tracing-esque purposes, too. However, it seems that players who want to use it have to donate to their Patreon to get it. The tool is a form of ray tracing, according to Reshade.me.
“Marty McFly’s shader is hooked to informations provided by ReShade (depth buffer). The end result is a Screen Space Ray Tracing calculation, just like Unigine SSRTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination), which indeed is a form of Ray Tracing.”
