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Mass Effect Cringe
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We recently learned that Amazon is close to signing a deal to develop a Mass Effect TV series.

Excitement abounds. The Mass Effect games are widely loved and a huge feather in developer Bioware's cap.

There is, however, a dissenting voice. David Gaider. He was lead writer and created the setting for another widely loved Bioware series, Dragon Age.

Via Twitter he has shared concerns. After reading them we're still excited for this show but his tweets are thought provoking.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

And a followup.

I'm seeing responses along the lines of "they could do some story within the DA/ME universe and not just the story of the games" -- that IS what I meant by an adaptation in my last tweet above. In many ways, not simply adapting the story of the games would be wiser.

BUT consider this from the perspective of those making the TV show. They are not making it solely for the fans, those who already know the entire story and would be fine with moving onto something else.

The far larger audience are those who know nothing about ME or DA at all.

At some level, this TV series needs to answer the question "what IS Mass Effect?" ...and that means making something that is *recognizeably* Mass Effect. It means retreading ground in a way that fans don't need, and will likely react poorly to.

Maybe. I guess we'll see.

Where We Disagree

On his first two points we disagree.

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.

Audiences - game and television - know that not everyone is the same gender as them.

Television has never allowed viewers to choose the gender of its protagonist. Some games also don't give players that choice.

People still watch and play those titles.

Also, there's no rule that any form of entertainment is limited to a single protagonist.

The story of the Mass Effect games could be retold from the perspective of not just Shephard but also others, creating expanded stories for those characters and weaving them into Shepard's.

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.

This could be something which requires an adjustment in the heads of Mass Effect players, in terms of distinguishing between them-as-Shepard and TV-Shepard but people are capable of that.

It's just fiction. Fantasy. Not real.

Mass Effect players already know that other players could have made different choices to them.

Given the choice between no Mass Effect TV series or one told from the perspective of a player who made different choices, and maybe also as a different gender, we would guess that most would choose the latter.

At some level, this TV series needs to answer the question "what IS Mass Effect?" ...and that means making something that is *recognizeably* Mass Effect. It means retreading ground in a way that fans don't need, and will likely react poorly to.

Netflix's The Witcher is a brilliant TV series, based on an existing sizable body of work - 6 novels, 15 comics and 3 hugely popular roleplaying games.

Writing the story to be comprehensible and enjoyable for both newcomers to the franchise and those with varying levels of prior engagement probably took some thought but they absolutely nailed it.

This can be done.

Where We Agree

David's concerns speak to a very longstanding but slowly narrowing divide between traditional entertaiment media which is an almost entirely passive medium and games which typically give players a more active role and are told from a singular perspective.

For all the reasons he outlined and possibly also others, a story which works in one form can't necessarily just be copied as is into others.

While we think a good Mass Effect TV series is certainly possible, it will be a fundamentally different experience - passive and remote.

It could still be good and enjoyable to both those who have and haven't played the games but players might feel some degree of disappointment in the TV experience for being less engaged in its story compared to the games.

We are a long way from fully engaged Star Trek holodeck type gaming, but there are steps being taken in that direction, eg. William Shatner's Tek War series / game.

[ Main Image: Mass Effect 3. Credit: Bioware via IMDb.com. ]

References

Gaider, David (November 25, 2021). I'm relieved to see that the Mass Effect/Amazon deal is for a potential TV series and not a movie. Twitter.

Wikipedia. The Witcher. (viewed November 26, 2021)