Yesterday rumors emerged that Amazon, hot of the success of their new Wheel of Time series, is aiming to get into sci-fi with a Mass Effect series and reaction from fans has been mixed. Some are some excited, some are skeptical, and surprisingly, a former BioWare lead writer is in the latter camp. David Gaider mostly worked on the Dragon Age series while at BioWare, but his recent Twitter comments apply to all BioWare franchises and really cut to the core of why video game adaptations so rarely work…
I’m relieved to see that the Mass Effect/Amazon deal is for a potential TV series and not a movie. Even so, the possibility (and likewise for Dragon Age) makes me cringe just a little, unlike many fans who appear… excited?
Let me explain. (Thread)
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
For starters, ME and DA have a custom protagonist. Meaning said TV show will need to pick whether said protagonist will be male or female. Boom, right off the bat you’ve just alienated a whole bunch of the built-in fan base who had their hopes up.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
Secondly, those protagonists are designed to be a bit of a blank slate, one that the player fills out with their decisions. That’s not going to work for a passive medium. So, suddenly, the protagonist will have their own personality… and their own *story*. That will be weird.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
You think I’m wrong? Consider just how MUCH of the story is off-loaded onto the companions. They are the cyphers through which the player gets most of their emotional engagement from. On their own, the DA and ME protagonists are… well, pretty boring. That’s not going to fly.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
And think of those companions. Think of how MUCH the fanbase is attached to them. Now consider the fact that there is no way in hell any single story could encompass them all equally. Think of the howls of rage when companion X is relegated to a cameo… or not there at all.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
Having a TV show instead of a movie allows for more companion options, sure, but consider your own playthrough: only a handful of them had any meaningful presence in a single game. That will need to be the case for this story, to maintain coherence. A few companions, one romance.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
And that’s IF the TV show makers consider the companions to be all that important. They might toss most of them aside in favor of the PLOT. In my mind, that would be a mistake. Both ME’s and DA’s plots were, at best, serviceable.
And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
Those plots had to take into account the player’s agency. They were kind of the shell upon which that player’s emotional engagement was delivered — usually through the companions and the choices themselves. Choice heightened engagement. Interactivity was the star, not the plot.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
Take all that out, lose most of the companions, and you potentially end up with… a pretty run-of-the-mill fantasy or science-fiction show, one where a lot of the built-in audience has possibly been turned into outraged, howling malcontents before it’s even released.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
All that is, of course, if the DA or ME series is mishandled. I can think of any number of ways it could be done better… but that involves doing more than a strict adaptation, and that comes with its own complications.
Anyhow, good luck to the showrunners. They’ll need it!
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) November 25, 2021
Well, I can’t really argue with any of that! Again, what Gaider says pretty much applies to any video game adaptation – with few exceptions, their worlds just fall apart without direct engagement from the player. Is there a way to do a compelling Mass Effect TV show? Sure, but it’s going have to get past the “I’d rather just be playing Mass Effect” roadblock like every video game adaptation.
What do you think? Would you tune in (or, uh, hit the play button) for a Mass Effect show?
