Mass Effect 5 Should Bring Back This Abandoned Combat Mechanic From Mass Effect 1

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The three original games combined firearm combat with RPG elements to great success, and the legendary re-release worked out many of the kinks that made the fighting feel dated and janky. Still, there's one noticeable difference between the guns in and its sequels, and that change lies in how ammunition functions.

While the second and third games utilize a much more traditional and familiar method of guns using limited bullets to shoot with, picking up more as they go, the first game did something entirely different that madeammo essentially infinite, so long as players measured out the timing of their shots. It wasn't perfect, but it gave the game a unique style of gun combat that was backed up by the lore, and the next game in the series may do well by taking some inspiration from this mechanic.

In the first game, the player's weapons did not use ammo but could instead fire for a certain amount of time before they built up too much heat. Letting a gun get too hot made it unusable for a certain length of time, meaning that players needed to pace their fire in order to stay effective mid-combat. Better guns had higher heat thresholds, and martial classes had access to types of firearms with better heat management.

In Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, players select any weapons for their loadout, regardless of Shepard's class. The best options are up to preference.

Within the game's codex, this was explained as relying on the titular mass effect to function. A block of metal was inserted into a weapon in place of a magazine, and the gun's inner workings shaved off tiny bits of that block and fired them at supersonic speeds by altering their mass. This allowed for a gun to be fired thousands of times before reloading, making it near unnecessary mid-operation. It's a cool idea that fits the high-tech setting of the world, but it changed in later games with the implementation of «thermal clips.»

Basically, thermal clips were now what kept the gun from overheating, and