Summary
A tweet from film critic Darren Lucas, asking what people would like to see adapted afterthe enormous success of Fallout, has been making the rounds, and formerDragon Agelead writer David Gaider himself responded.
“I imagine everyone would expect me to say Dragon Age, but that’d be a terrible idea […] I’d be happy to write a Dragon Age TV show, but I can tell you right now that a party-based fantasy trope-filled romp a laHonour Among Thieveswould not be my first choice. Or second. Or even third.
“You take away the interactive element and you’re left with a pretty stock standard fantasy story. It would take a pretty deep dive to distil the elements of each that make them unique,” Gaider continued, referencing Dragon Age,Elder Scrolls, andBaldur’s Gatein particular. “Not impossible, but it would take more than a rote adaptation.”
What About Mass Effect?
Todd Howard shot down pitches to adapt The Elder Scrollsfor similar reasons, choosing to adapt its sci-fi sister series Fallout due to its more unique aesthetic. BioWare likewise has an adjacent sci-fi series, but David Gaider doesn’t thinkMass Effectwould stand out much in a TV landscape either.
“Much like Dragon Age or Baldur’s Gate 3, I have a hard time picturing a Mass Effect show that does anything we haven’t already seen a dozen times,” Gaider said. “TheHaloTV show, for instance, could just as easily have been Mass Effect.”
The Halo TV show, for instance, could just as easily have been Mass Effect.
Three years ago,Deadlinereported that Amazon was nearing a deal to make a Mass Effect series as it continued to “invest in fantasy genre of all kinds”, but no news has surfaced since. Perhaps they came to the same conclusion as Gaider.
Of course, Dragon Age did get a series in 2022 with the animated Netflix show Absolution. Like Fallout, itreviewed well, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92 percent. But unlike Fallout, there has been no word on a second season.
A live-action adaptation would be competing with The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, putting it into an entirely different ballpark, so it’s easy to see why Gaider and Howard are cautious. For now, we’ll just have to wait for Dreadwolf to get our Thedas fix.
