My friends and I were discussing Mass Effect earlier today, someone mentioned the potential film. But I started thinking about it and I think Mass Effect would make the transition to television easily.

It has a interesting setting, unique races and characters. The ship the Normandy is almost built for a TV show, with post-mission debriefings in the meeting room at the end of each episode.

Many of the missions would make the transition to 42min episodes quite well. The pilot could be two episodes, the Eden Prime mission (with a prologue of the Skylian blitz that gained Shepard his fame) and the assorted missions in the citadel to get the full crew and implicate Saren as the second.

Noveria, Feros and the Liara mission could all be episodes, along with Virmire, Ilos and the citadel assault. To pad out the season side missions such Dr Heart, the rogue mercenaries or the moon base deactivation could be expanded to full episodes. For a less serious episode they could have the monkey one. They could make some up more episodes, like one on the Normandy where something goes wrong etc.

They would however have to make a tv show canon Shepard, probably a paragon male (not sure what class, doesn't matter much) and decide the outcome of a certain mission, probably picking Ashley to make it a sad moment.

I wasn't even aware that the idea of a Mass Effect movie had even been talked about. This intrigues me.

The TV show idea could work, but I am much more interested in who the heck they would get to play which characters. I honestly can't think of any actors to play any of the characters, at least off the top of my head.

DraconianKing:
In this thread; Let's have a new Firefly, but call it Mass Effect.

I would so watch this show though.
Firefly ruled.

Man after my own heart.

DraconianKing:
In this thread; Let's have a new Firefly

Unfortunately thats only going to happen in the 51st century with clones of the entire cast (with reawakened genetic memories)and Joss Whedon's brain in a transforming robot.

Serenity wont be a prop either, it'll be a working space ship.

Fightgarr:
I would rather not have it be a television show. Frankly I'd prefer it if video games stuck with being video games and we stopped trying to mix media.

This man makes sense make him King of the Internet! /Thread

I don't know if a TV show could work. There is a kind of urgency with the threat that Seren is bringing. It would lose its teeth if you spread it out too far. That's not to say that it couldn't be done, or that the urgency is really in a game that you could put the main story on hold a explore random planets, but I think that it would work better as a movie.

bioVOLTAGE:
I don't know if a TV show could work. There is a kind of urgency with the threat that Seren is bringing. It would lose its teeth if you spread it out too far. That's not to say that it couldn't be done, or that the urgency is really in a game that you could put the main story on hold a explore random planets, but I think that it would work better as a movie.

Maybe a short season 12 episodes then or so. The side mission would be stuff he can't ignore or favours for leads.

Fightgarr:
I humbly accept. As king of the internet I will not be an arrogant git and will pretend that I am not the king despite my title. I will now proceed to do that.

Like Aragorn at the start of the LOTR.

Fightgarr:

BrynThomas:
Like Aragorn at the start of the LOTR.

If you'd like to make that comparison then sure, I'm like Strider. Except I'm not portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in a movie which missed the fact that LOTR is an epic not an action movie.

Whup! He just made a declarative statement based on personal taste not logic. That means you lose your internet crown.

We've gone through 11,984,457 kings that way.

As for the actual thread subject... I think the themes of Mass Effect would work, but you should start at the beginning with contact- don't follow Shepard, follow someone during the contact war and the following peace and establishment of humanity in the Citadel. THEN, you can skip ahead to mass effect era stuff. Like Star Wars, then skip ahead a few decades to "The Next Generation".

Maybe a movie, but not a whole show. You have to cut out the side missions, thereby much of the material. And I don't know that it would feel much like the game when you take the player and the personal choice out of it. But if you take the game plot and the books, you could probably make a decent movie series.

It should be done by HBO and thusly have good special effects, swearing, better violence, more sex, be 55 minutes per episode, and totally, 100%, not suck.

It would fit well with the 'villain of the week' style of TV, but only if they actually gave Shepard some reason for going to the 9,000 other planets of the galaxy and not straight through to Saren. I can't really think of how it would be done, but then again, I'm not a writer.

I am not so sure i would like to see a Mass Effect movie or TV show. I wasn't overly impressed with the game and struggled through most of it only to get distracted by something shiney and take it back to my nest for many hours like the magpie i am. I do think that we will start to get some live Game to TV crossovers as opposed to the cartoon ones. After all, how could we forget the abysmal Super Mario Borthers, Sonic the Hedgehog (two different series in fact), and the even more abysmal Zelda cartoon series.

The more popular and mainstream that gaming becomes the more television series and movies inspired by the original concept will be released. Soon it will be like books are to television and the film industry, a source for milking new and original ideas and making shoddy imitations of other peoples intellectual property.

no because one if the main selling points of the game is to make you own choices. you cant do that with a tv show

Slim Reaper10:
no because one if the main selling points of the game is to make you own choices. you cant do that with a tv show

...But you can with Make-your-own-adventure books!
Do I sense a few choice-tastic novels in the works?

There'd be something really wrong about a story where a person is on an urgent quest to save the galaxy yet takes a trip to every planet, to help everything ranging from killing monkeys to get a key to fighting an army of Geth with a pistol to loot an empty chamber, yet still be surprised to get there slightly slower than Saren who was getting ready to do that and ONLY that...

Hmm... Would Shepard be a guy or girl? Paragon or Renegade? Colonist, Spacer, or Earthborn?

Isn't Mass Effect fairly non-linear in it's storytelling? Doesn't that kind of answer your question right there?

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:
Isn't Mass Effect fairly non-linear in it's storytelling? Doesn't that kind of answer your question right there?

This, and the fact that the plot of Mass Effect is fairly generic sci-fi stuff anywhow.

Perhaps a mini-series, but not a full on tv show. At least with a mini-series, you know it's going to end, but with a TV show, it can go on and on until it's story is so ruined that people have lost all interest in it.

It might work as a television show, but I'd think it would be more successful as a movie.

Erana:

Slim Reaper10:
no because one if the main selling points of the game is to make you own choices. you cant do that with a tv show

...But you can with Make-your-own-adventure books!
Do I sense a few choice-tastic novels in the works?

1. what does a make-you-own-adventure book have to do with this topic?

2. the are already novels.

Have you seen Star Trek?

Yea, but we can all agree Star Trek was too good (in the moral sense of the thing). Andromeda was a bit more liberal minded but still weak in that aspect. A middleground or even evil rolling of mass effect would be awesome tho. Well... with a decent plot and more than go to the planet x and do y.

A film would suit the fast pace of the thing better, but I mean, come on, Mass Effect is basically the ultimate distillate of science-fiction cliches and shout-outs. It'd make the most awesome TV series ever.

I'd watch it.

I could not see it being a tv show because as it was pointed out before, it would be like Firefly which was excellent. But if it was made into one, I would not watch it for fear of it being really, really bad.

Seriously, just watch some Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and you'll be good. I'd prefer to keep my vision of Shepard, blasting my way through, well, everything. We've already got plenty of what you've proposed, and done well, so that it'd just be re-skinning it with something familiar. It'd be a fanboy wank, and likely a disappointment to all.

They'd find a way.

I'd definetely prefer it as a TV show. You can't fit all of Mass Effect's depth into a movie. I guess it would be kindof like Star Trek: Next Generation, but less boring, and the aliens would look like aliens, not humans with some nose putty on.

It would fit perfactly,
I would defintely watch it, great IP, great story, out of the game you could get at least 20-30 episodes I think. From the First game, if you count the ceberus crap and such.

Would be very hard for a movie, even a jackson-esque one.