BioWare’s Mac Walters has revealed that the idea of a Mass Effect movie was ultimately scrapped because it would have been difficult to tell a robust story within a span of 90 to 120 minutes. In an interview with Business Insider, Walters said that a television series would make more sense because TV episodes are akin to how a game tells its story between different levels and missions.
“When we build out a Mass Effect game, we have a backbone, or an overall story that we want to tell, but each level or mission is like its own TV episode,” Walters told Business Insider. “It doesn’t get written ahead of time. It gets written at the time that we get to it. So it gets added to the main story and sometimes the main story gets adjusted because we did something really cool in that ‘episode.’ So long-form storytelling is a great place for game franchises.”
Back in 2020, Legendary Pictures struck a deal with Electronic Arts to produce a Mass Effect movie, which would have been published by Warner Bros. However, the project didn’t come to fruition.
“It felt like we were always fighting the IP,” Walters recalled. “What story are we going to tell in 90 to 120 minutes? Are we going to do it justice? But then it never picked up again after that, not for lack of trying.”
Walters said that the movie project was a “cool” experiment but it wouldn’t have done the series justice. However, he is in favor of a future TV adaptation.
[Source: Business Insider]
