One of the former lead writers at BioWare has revealed that he greatly dislikes the idea of a new TV series based on the Mass Effect franchise. Within the past week, a new report emerged stating that Amazon is currently in the process of developing a television show that will be set within the world of Mass Effect. And while this idea at face value is one that excited many fans, this former BioWare writer thinks that this project would somewhat betray the source material.
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In an extensive thread on Twitter this week, David Gaider, who was a former lead writer at BioWare, primarily on the Dragon Age franchise, revealed his full thoughts on this proposed Mass Effect TV show. In simplest terms, Gaider said that he dislikes the idea quite a bit to the point that it makes him “cringe just a little”. When explaining more of why he feels this way, Gaider said that much of the story in both Dragon Age and Mass Effect is meant to center around a character that is informed by the decisions that players make over the course of the game. “For starters, Mass Effect and Dragon Age 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,” Gaider explained.
Gaider went on to also talk about how the Mass Effect video game franchise also relied heavily on its secondary characters for storytelling purposes. If those side characters were then brushed to the side in the TV series, it could lead to the main protagonist of the show being far more integral to the plot than they would have been in the video games.
At the end of his thread, Gaider acknowledged that he thinks the best way forward for a Mass Effect TV series would be to not adapt the story of the video games. “n many ways, not simply adapting the story of the games would be wiser,” he said. If this were the case, then the writers would be able to have much more flexibility and wouldn’t run into some of the problems that Gaider fears would come about.
What do you think about Gaider’s own thoughts on this Mass Effect TV show? Do you agree or disagree with him that such a project could be very hard to do properly? Let me know either down in the comments or hit me up on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
[H/T VGC]
