Part One: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
The proposition sounds simple enough. Adapt the Mass Effect video games into a TV show.
You're already starting out with an advantage over cinema. Time. You've got a lot more time to explain backstory, go over plot points, introduce side characters and flesh out the world. The history of the video game industry is littered with the graves of adaptions that have tried to squeeze everything into a 90 minute blockbuster, but after a few high profile successes, it is now commonly accepted knowledge that, for a successful video game adaption, TV is the way.
Mass Effect even seems to fit the mould of a TV show, its story unfolding over several, somewhat linier, episodic arcs. If you squint you can almost see how the first game could slot perfectly into an 8 to 10 episode season. A couple of episodes covering the tutorial and setup. A couple of episodes for Feros, Noveria and the subsequent planets, all with a grand finale based around the battle for the Citadel.
When you think about it like that it practically writes itself!
However, once you drill down into the details, dilemmas start to appear. Contradictions begin to escalate. The inability to please everyone rears its ugly head. You thought you had a The Last of Us on your hands and it is fast turning into a Halo.
What the heck is it I am talking about, you ask? Alright, I'll break it down. The many problems you're going to run into adapting Mass Effect to the small screen, the first of which originates from the very beginning, as soon as you hit New Game.
Part Two: Your Face, is Not My Face.
Here's a question. Who is the protagonist of the first Mass Effect game?
We all know that the answer is Commander Shepard, but who is Commander Shepard? A ruthless pragmatist? A noble altruist? Do they respect or buck the chain of command? What is their breaking point?
When it comes to adapting video games, one of the most common stumbling blocks comes from the handling of the protagonist. Video game protagonists commonly tend to have looser personalities and backstories than those from other mediums. This is often to give the player some wiggle room to see themselves in the character. To feel as though it is themselves out in the game world, living the adventure.
Video game protagonists can run the gamut in this regard, some have a loose personality like Link or Master Chief, where others have a more concrete and set personality like Max Payne or Kratos, while others still are completely customisable, even down to their backstories and personal morals, like in Baldur's Gate or The Elder Scrolls. This can often make it difficult for adaptions, because one person's experience with a game might be quite different to another's. This is likely why the Fallout TV show opted to tell its own story rather than adapt that of the games.
Mass Effect occupies a weird space, however, where it simultaneously has both a set protagonist and a customisable one. Commander Shepard is a set character like Markus Fenix, and a complete blank slate like The Baalspawn. They're a Schrodinger's protagonist, if you will.
This is due to the fact that, while players are free to completely customise their own Commander Shepard, down to appearance and gender, a set, solid version of Commander Shepard has been used by Bioware from the start to advertise the game.
Based around the appearance of Dutch model Mark Vanderloo, the default appearance for Commander Shepard appeared slap bang in the middle of the Mass Effect box art. It would continue to be used all through the remainder of the trilogy. He was the first character you saw when you started a new game, presenting you with a pre-made John Shepard for those not curious enough to explore the character customisation options. A default appearance for the female option was given no such consideration until the third release in the trilogy.
From what we know from long studied gamer habits, John Shepard is likely the only version of the character a vast majority of players recognise. When they think about Mass Effect, that is who they think of as the protagonist, no different than Lara Croft or Duke Nukem.
For millions of other players, however, there are a million other permutations. To some Commander Shepard is undeniably a raven-haired Asian woman. To others they are a square jawed Latin-American man. For those who chose to take it, Mass Effect presented the option to let players make Commander Shepard entirely their own. When they think of Mass Effect, it's their own Shepard that they walked with every step of the way.
So, right from the get go we have a premise that can't please everybody. Shepard could be played by any actor, but for a great many fans they're going to be expecting a guy that looks like a Dutch model with a buzz-cut. For those who chose to customise Shepard, any casting at all is likely going to feel out of sync with their own experience.
While I think a lot of people will go in with an open mind, there's also going to be a lot of fans that'll find it difficult to get over that hurdle.
Part Three: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on Till Morning.
The first Mass Effect is, no doubt, very suited to fit the streaming TV formula. The story is broken down into a series of episodic arcs that unfolds over a small group of planets. You can see how you'd piece it all together into a solid set of episodes with each having their own little self-contained adventure that can hook casual viewers that might have missed the first few episodes.
When we get to Mass Effect 2, though, things get a little trickier. Despite being arguably more episodic than the first game, 2 has a looser grasp on its main plot that would run the risk of looking meandering to casual audiences. Most of the main plot only unfolds over a handful of levels, with much of the game's runtime being made up of side-quests concerning the game's companions. This is great for an in-the-moment experience, but it does render the second entry in the trilogy as little more than a delivery system for unrelated, self contained adventures.
Now if it were the 90s or early 2000s this wouldn't be a problem. Back when broadcast TV shows in the US used to get 15 to 20 episodes, you'd have more than enough time to delve into all those side plots. Audiences were used to filler. They'd be more than happy for the main story to take a break for an episode to delve into Jack's backstory.
However, in the modern streaming era, shows tend to have only 8 to 10 episodes, and audiences expect each to be more like the chapter of a book than a story of the week. Audiences are going to be much less tolerant of a series putting the search for The Collectors on hold to focus on an episode where Jacob has to track down his dad.
On top of all that, the story ends with a much hyped and looming 'suicide mission.' In the game, it is possible for players to get everyone through alive as long as they have done their due diligence, though a couple of easy slip ups can lead to some tragic fatalities. For a TV show, though, having everyone get out alive would feel like a cop-out, and it would risk cheapening the stakes for the rest of the series.
On the other hand, killing some of the cast would be certain to bristle players who love those characters. Killing off Jack or Samara at the end of season 2 would no doubt anger some audiences who would want to see more of them, even if their roles in Mass Effect 3 are mostly insubstantial.
To top it all off, I'd like to direct you to the late Shamus Young's point that the shift from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 was a jarring break that damaged the narrative flow. At the end of Mass Effect 1 we are all set to investigate the Reapers on behalf of the Council, only for Mass Effect 2 to immediately kill off Shepard, resurrect them, and have them work on behalf of a clandestine organisation investigating a mystery that, to begin with, seems completely unrelated to the Reapers.
For video game players, this type of weird narrative jump is common amongst series where changing dev teams and evolving gameplay mechanics can cause projects to end in very different places from where they began, but to audiences of a TV show this would all feel a little more jarring. Imagine if season 2 of the Sopranos featured an assassination attempt on Tony in the first five minutes and the rest of the season was about him going into hiding in Vancouver. It's not that you couldn't tell a good story about that, but after what was set up in season 1, audiences would feel like the show was going nowhere.
All of the issues above are not without their solutions, but alterations and re-writes also come with the risk alienating the game's original fanbase. It makes perfect sense to write out Cerberus to keep the flow of the story more natural, but fans of the game are going to bristle at such an iconic part of the franchise being absent.
Part Four: Have it Your Way
Mass Effect has a big LGBTQ+ following. This is undeniable. Spend five minutes on any social media platform of choice looking up Mass Effect and you will be presented with reams of fan-art and fan fiction concerning the characters in same-sex relationships. Gay players really resonated with Mass Effect and found a place for themselves within it. You can't have a conversation about Mass Effect without mentioning the strides it made.
However, unlike Mass Effect's sister series, Dragon Age, which started off with a very specific queer intent, Mass Effect's status as an iconic part of gay gaming happened almost entirely by accident. Mass Effect 1 launched in 2007, in an era where the gaming industry was almost entirely geared towards an audience of teenage boys. Booth babes were still a staple of video game conventions. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 had just came out the previous year.
The LGBT representation in the first game is very slight. In it's totality it is made up of a brief general discussion on Asari sexuality, and an optional same-sex romance and sexual encounter exclusively available to those that created a female Commander Shepard. I don't think it is a controversial statement to say that this inclusion was driven more by titillation than representation. The depiction of the Asari as bisexual blue skinned alien space babes was almost certainly more motivated by the appeal to teenage boys than an honest exploration of sexuality in a sci-fi setting. For players who chose to play a male Shepard, and we know this was the majority, it was entirely possible to play through the game without encountering any gay representation or queer themes at all.
Many people only heard about the same-sex content thanks to a sensationalist report by Fox News that criticised the game as pornographic. This had the consequence of giving the game a Streisand Effect. Many gay players found out about the game through this controversy, and Bioware found itself with an outpouring of support, bolstered by the good will generated from gay representation in the Dragon Age series.
However, the Mass Effect team were more spooked by the Fox News reaction than they were buoyed by the outpouring of support. Multiple same-sex romances were planned for Mass Effect 2 and later cut because of this, leading to much confusion over why an explicitly bisexual character in Jack would refuse the advances of a female Shepard. On top of all this, Bioware would even put out a statement that any permutation of a male Shepard would always be explicitly straight.
It wasn't until Mass Effect 3 that Bioware took the steps to embrace their LGBTQ+ following, introducing multiple gay characters whose sexuality would be commented upon outside of the player character, and a male Shepard finally having the option to initiate a same-sex relationship himself.
So, what does all this have to do with a TV show? Well, the problem is that Mass Effect doesn't really start from a queer foundation, and it isn't until the 11th hour that a lot of the queer characters show up. A TV show is obviously going to want to keep the loyalty of the gay community that it has picked up over the years, but it is going to have to make sweeping changes if it wants to bring that representation forward.
If the show-runners choose to depict Shepard with a male actor there is the very real risk that the story could skip over what little representation there was in the opening arc. Going with a female Shepard instead could alleviate this, as her romance with Liara is going to be the most likely relationship in the show, given its popularity and centrality to the narrative.
Other than that though, you'd again have to make sweeping changes. Kaidan could come out of the closet sooner, and characters like Kelly, Steve and Sam could be introduced earlier, but this in turn comes with its own risks, like that of antagonising the vocal minority of regressive fanboys who like to claim that Mass Effect never had strong LGTBQ+ representation to begin with, and any inclusion in the TV show mocked as pandering to a different audience. Sadly, a lot of these criticisms can colour the opinion of casual audiences, as the concerted negative campaigns against Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age The Veilguard have proven.
Part Five: My Favourite Store on the Citadel.
On top of all the previously listed issues, Mass Effect is going to have one more major hurdle. Budget.
Network and streaming shows have done some impressive things in recent years. The sets and props on Game of Thrones have risen to cinematic standards. The prosthetics and makeup used on Fallout are thoroughly convincing depictions of that which we see in the games.
Mass Effect, though, is going to require a pretty hefty budget. This isn't a show you can just film on existing locations with a couple of really convincing aliens. The entire conceit of the story involves mankind as a small and almost insignificant part of a confederation of alien races. At any given time the cast will need to be made up of multiple actors in prosthetics and makeup.
Granted, there's a lot of tricks you can pull to get around it. Your groups of Turians and Krogan can all be standing around with helmets on most of the time. Large groups can be rendered with CGI. Minor races like the Elcor and the Batarians could have their roles reduced or written out entirely. A concept like Mass Effect is not immune to cost cutting.
Despite all this, the show is still going to require a lot of expensive props, sets and makeup. Characters like Garrus and Wrex require a lot of screen time. Conversations with groups made up entirely of alien characters, like the Council, make up a big chunk of the narrative. Mordin, Legion, Saren, these characters make up a lot of the emotional appeal of the story, and are going to be need to be done right.
If a decent budget can't be secured from the start, then the show may very well be dead on arrival. We only have to look at Halo, which had to start its season 1 with a human versus human conflict and have its alien faction's point of view character be a human adoptee. While the show had a plethora of problems, its lack of iconic franchise aliens was certainly something that steered fans away. Mass Effect itself comes with a similar risk.
Part Six: Something Ends, Something Begins.
Lets say you manage to pull it off though. You get the budget required. You streamline the script. You dedicate enough time to the relevant themes and ideas needed to please the existing fanbase. You thread the needle with the transition to the plot of Mass Effect 2. The audiences resonate with your Shepard.
One final question remains. What do you do about that ending?
Mass Effect 3 finishes on a famously loathed conclusion. While it has its defenders, the general consensus of the finale tends to range from 'a good idea poorly executed,' to 'an absolute betrayal of the game's world-building, backstory and themes.'
Whatever your own personal thoughts, I think we can all probably agree that, given the benefit of hindsight, the ending of Shepard's story is in need of some serious tweaking. Unfortunately, like Shepard themself, what players wanted from an ending was disparate and personal, and this is before you account for the fact that the game already has five possible endings to begin with.
Do you spend more time on setting up The Catalyst? Do you change the Reaper's motivations? Do you re-tool the ending entirely to be based on one of Bioware's unused ideas? Do you go for a more conventional outcome, having Shepard save the galaxy and live to see it?
Whichever one you go for, it is going to have its critics, and if you don't change the ending and present it as it was, it is also going to be pretty unpopular. TV shows have started getting a reputation for unsatisfying endings, and Mass Effect is starting off on the back foot for being notorious for its own.
Like the rest of my previous points, this is going to be a difficult hurdle to handle. Stray too far and you risk alienating the core audience again. Stay too close and you risk pissing off everybody. It's another lose-lose. A difficult needle that will have to be threaded.
Part Seven: This is Not My Beautiful House.
After the success of Fallout, a common suggestion for a Mass Effect TV show would be to do a self-contained story instead. A new cast of characters going on an adventure set in the world of Mass Effect, unrelated to the events of the game.
I understand this impulse, but it unfortunately misses that the Mass Effect trilogy involves Shepard living through one of the most historically important events in galactic history. So much of what unfolds over the course of the games is tied up in foundational parts of the universe. This is deliberate, as it is easy for the writers to bring the players up to speed on the backstory if the core parts of their own adventure is influenced by them.
If you set the game after the events of Mass Effect, the audience will need to have all the core elements introduced to them. The events of the games will need to be addressed, which runs the risk of audiences wondering why they're not watching a TV show about the more interesting, epic story.
If you set the series before the events of the game you've got a bit more leeway, but are going to be restricted in what kinds of stories you can tell. Wherever you take the characters, the status quo of the galaxy needs to remain as it is. Additionally, because a lot of revelations with regards to the galactic cosmology aren't discovered in-universe until the events of the games, you're going to be introducing a lot of iconic elements where the audience will never be clued in to their significance. Stuff like the Mass Relays and the Prothean Ruins will be set up but given no payoff.
There's going to be a big temptation to go the self-contained story route. It resolves a lot of the problems listed previously, but it also comes with problems of its own, the biggest of which is coming away not really feeling like Mass Effect.
Conclusion
That Mass Effect TV show is probably never going to happen.
Okay. I'll be a little fairer than that. It is more likely to happen than the Warhammer 40'000 TV show is. Even so, what form it'll arrive in is unclear, and it is more likely than not we're probably going to end up with another Halo situation on our hands.
A report from Eurogamer went up a couple weeks ago claiming that Amazon had asked for a re-write that would make the proposed show "more appealing to non-gamers." While this statement led to much catastrophising from fans, I personally found it a bit of a nothing statement. The term 'gamer,' can apply to so many disparate interests in this day and age that I have no idea what 'appealing to non-gamers,' suggests. It could mean that they're dialling back the action and putting more into world-buidling, it could mean the exact opposite. You can see the argument working either way.
What concerned me more was the statement that the show was to "take inspiration from the games without following them directly." Some folks took this to mean that the show was going the Fallout route and telling a side story, but it is clear from the casting call that the TV show is to some extent going to be about Commander Shepard and the Reapers.
The casting call asked for "a young Colin Farrell-type male (30-39) with open ethnicity;" Obviously Shepard, "a female co-lead alien character requiring prosthetics (34-39);" Obviously Liara, "a female human providing a parallel narrative from Earth;" Likely a re-worked version of Ashley, "a Doug Jones-type male villain (40-60);" Saren, "and a male wrestler-type soldier (30-49)." Kaiden, maybe, or possibly a version of James?
Either way, it sounds like the show is going to have some significant departures from the story of the games, which is a massive risk and could doom the show to failure unless it manages to be really good in its own right, or otherwise feel authentic to the game's story, even if it isn't accurate to it.
All things considered, the show is facing an uphill battle. Those who fail to learn the lessons of the Halo TV show are doomed to repeat them. Were I a betting man, I'd be putting money on it being cancelled before getting a third season, but who knows, maybe they'll thread that needle and win everyone over.
Maybe, like Commander Shepard's hopeless battle against the Reapers, they'll manage to defy the odds.
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Jack Harvey 2026. Images Used Under Fair Use. Mass Effect is (c) Bioware/EA
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