Mass Effect Legendary Edition might have launched with some entirely new bugs, but it also corrected several very old, very controversial bugs that fans have been debating for years. And topping the list is Elanos Haliat from Mass Effect 1.
Slight spoilers ahead, so if you want to remain spoiler-free for this sidequest, skip this next bit.
Elanos Haliat is a pirate you can meet in the first Mass Effect. He used to be the biggest pirate in the Terminus system, but after a failed assault on Elysium, he lost his position and found a deep, unabiding hatred for humanity. The only weird part about that was that in the first Mass Effect, Elanos was a human himself.
Sure, there are plenty of self-hating humans out there, but this wasn’t the only clue that led fans to believe Elanos shouldn’t have been human. His name–Elanos Haliat–was actually the name of two Turian weapon manufacturers (Elanus Risk Control and Haliat Armory). His dialog had the same sort of sound processing that Turians did, and in conversations with Shepard he’d refer to humanity as “Shepard’s kind.”
Fans debated whether he was simply referring to law-abiding citizens of the galaxy and not humanity as a whole, but then there’s the last big clue that Elanos was wearing some very Turian-style armor.
ME Legendary Edition writer and producer Mac Walters basically confirmed back in February that Elanos was the wrong race all along and that he’d be getting fixed in the upcoming remaster. A few months later, and lo-and-behold, Elanos is now a Turian. And probably feeling a lot better about himself, too.
Legendary Edition is full of little improvements like Elanos getting his model swapped. Tali’s photo in Mass Effect 3 used to just be a stock image of model Hammasa Kohistani that had been photoshopped to make her look like an alien, but in Legendary Edition, she’s finally been given original art that looks like an actual Quarian.
