Amazon is working on a Mass Effect show while what remains of BioWare works on the upcoming fifth game in the sci-fi RPG series. We still know almost nothing about whatever Amazon is doing with the show, but now we have some idea of the characters it will feature. That’s thanks to Hollywood insider Daniel Richtman, who published five character descriptions that were included in the show’s casting calls. Those descriptions are vague enough that they don’t give us much sense of what the series will entail, but some of them sound similar enough to existing characters from the games that fans think the show might be a direct adaptation of the original 2007 release. I sure hope that’s not the case, because it would be a huge mistake on a few fronts.
The listings call for a male lead from ages 30 to 39, described as a “young Colin Farrell;” a female alien character that will require prosthetics; a 40 to 60-year-old male actor that can pull off a “creature or character actor like Doug Jones;” a male lead with a “wrestler-type physicality;” and a female aged 30 to 49 for a parallel story set on Earth while everyone else is up to intergalactic hijinx. Most of those sound like they could easily map onto characters from the first game. The “Colin Farrell” type could easily be a male Commander Shepard; the female alien with prosthetics sounds like an asari, the blue-skinned, monogendered alien race that includes the series’ pseudo-mascot Liara T’Soni; and an older male actor capable of playing the types of creatures Doug Jones is known for could be for Saren Arterius, the rogue Turian Spectre. The Earthbound woman, however, doesn’t neatly fit onto anyone, as the Mass Effect games didn’t go to Earth until Mass Effect 3.
All that said, these descriptions are just generic enough that they don’t necessarily point to a live-action adaptation of Shepard’s story at all. But as people try to pick apart what little information we have, anything that even vaguely hints at a “Mass Effect trilogy retelling” is a red flag for a lot of longtime fans, both because adapting a choice-based RPG and inevitably writing specific choices and relationships into the story needlessly complicates the series’ legacy, and also because this is one of the video game universes that’s big enough that there’s no need to do something so creatively bankrupt.
Video game adaptations are all the rage right now, and some of the most successful ones have not been direct recreations of a previous story. The Mario and Sonic movies remix old stories and arcs, but they also put an original spin on established characters, rather than sticking their fingers in players’ pies. Amazon retreading Shepard’s story would not only be a boring waste of time and money, but would place the writers in a field of rakes just waiting to be stepped on. How do the Kaidan stans react when live-action Shepard leaves him behind on Virmire? What are Tali fans to think when she is sidelined as a love interest in favor of Liara? Do Renegade players have to just grin and bear it when Shepard is made into a Paragon Boy Scout? All of these are questions and discourse we could suffer through when Amazon puts out this show, but considering how much more of the Mass Effect universe there is to explore, it would be an unforced error.
The original trilogy and even the fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, are so focused on humanity’s experience that it often feels like the rest of the galaxy is neglected in that limited, human-centric view of the universe. In the games, players are meant to approach this mysterious new world with fresh eyes and fumble their way through galactic politics and culture from a human’s perspective. A focus on the human experience is just as core to those games as space flight and synthetic cephalopods, but this live-action series doesn’t have to stick to that rule. Amazon has a unique opportunity to abandon that tunnel vision and tell stories far more specific to the world BioWare has made. Tell me stories of the Quarian nomads flying around the galaxy on their Migrant Fleet, or the early days of the Krogan genophage sterility plague. I don’t need to see some Shepard imposter making the opposite decisions as me when all that effort could go into something fresh and original, drawing new players to the games as we head into Mass Effect 5, whenever the hell that is.