BioWare has explained why the Pinnacle Station DLC from the original Mass Effect will not be included in the forthcoming Legendary Edition.
Pinnacle Station was the second DLC pack for Mass Effect, and rather than being developed by BioWare, it was developed by an outsourced studio called Demiurge Studios.
Pinnacle Station released on August 25th 2009 for 400 MS Points (remember those?) or 400 BioWare Points on PC.
The DLC added a unique training facility on the Galaxy Map and would test the player in 13 combat scenarios including Survival, Time Attack, Hunt and Capture. Your best scores will then be added to a leaderboard.
The Pinnacle Station DLC was also buggy and was able to corrupt some files. So it’s perhaps for the best that it’s not going to be included in the Legendary Edition. However, bugs and glitches are not the reason for its exclusion from the remaster.
The reason why Pinnacle Station is not included in the Legendary Edition is due to lost source code. For it to be included would mean it being developed from the ground-up.
When speaking to Game Informer, game director Mac Walters described the ordeal of trying to find the missing source code as “an emotional rollercoaster.”
BioWare even contacted Demiurge Studios to find out if it had made backups for the code and while it had some code at hand, when BioWare tried to use the code, almost all of the data was corrupted and assets were also missing.
Sure BioWare could perhaps build Pinnacle Station from the ground-up, but that would require added time and resources, something that BioWare does not have in abundance.
“It would basically take us another full six months just to do this with most of the team we’ve got,” said Walters. “I wish we could do it. Honestly, just because this is meant to be everything that the team ever created, brought together again – all the single-player content. And so, leaving it all on the cutting-room floor, it was heartbreaking.“
The exclusion of Pinnacle Station is unfortunate, but Mass Effect Legendary Edition is still shaping up to be a fantastic remaster. It still includes a total of over 40 pieces of DLC across the trilogy.
Are you disappointed that Pinnacle Station is not included in the Legendary Edition? Let us know across our social media channels.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition will be released for PC, PS4 and Xbox One on May 14th.
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Featured Image Credit: EA/BioWare