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Alasdair Stuart analyses the recent news about a Mass Effect TV show…

The Mass Effect games have shaped western video gaming for over a decade. The original trilogy put you in the boots of Commander Shepard, a human special forces operator (N7, the best of the best) and the first one to qualify as a Spectre, part of a trans-species peacekeeping organisation.

Over the course of the first three games she (or he) fought terrorists, corrupt politicians and the crimes of the past as a galaxy wide ancient threat returned. The ending of the third game is one of the most controversial of all time, giving you a choice between destroying some species to save others or changing the course of humanity forever. The fourth game, Andromeda, cleverly shifted the focus to a multi-species group evacuating to another galaxy. It wasn’t well received but there was, and still is, a lot to enjoy there.

But Mass Effect has remained an impossibly difficult series to maintain and when Prime Video announced their intention to do a TV show, the only thing that was greeted with more scepticism was the confirmation of a fifth game. That remains in development, but is clearly set long after the first three and appears to follow one or more of Shepard’s long-lived companions trying to track them down. Where it gets interesting is in the news released last week. November 7th is N7 Day, traditionally the day that we get some Mass Effect news and this year we got news about how the two upcoming projects will connect.

In a blog post, executive producer Mike Gamble said:

‘The writers room is going strong, and we’ve got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game. The show will explore a brand-new story within the universe’s timeline, and will be set after the original trilogy. It won’t be a retread of Commander Shepard’s story – because after all … that’s YOUR story, isn’t it?’

There are two big pieces of information here. The fact this isn’t a Commander Shepard story is a huge relief and makes so much sense. There are hundreds of choices in the original games, all of which change the story and there’s no way to honour all those choices. By not bothering with them at all, the show maintains the validity of each player’s experience and, in theory, maintains good will. As important is ‘…will be set after the original trilogy’. Without going into spoilers, the galaxy is an enormously different place at the end of Mass Effect 3 and there’s a vast well of story to dive into there. I’m really excited to see the show do just that.

Elsewhere, Gamble also hints strongly that the show and Mass Effect 5 are in conversation with one another. I’m curious as to how that will work, especially given how something similar with movies and a TV show has been attempted before. But most of all I’m optimistic. This is a smart choice, and one that I suspect will be built on with another. Mass Effect, and its sister franchise Dragon Age have a longstanding record of choosing a  ‘canon’ endstate to build the next game on. I suspect we’ll see that for the first time in the TV show and I’m hopeful that its simple existence tells us the most hopeful ending will be the one that gets locked in. Either way it’s going to be fun to see in a couple of years when game, and show, should both arrive.