Mass Effect enjoyed a period of popularity in the early 2010s, but seems to have fallen off the radar a little as an IP in more recent years. Though the popular trilogy has seen some resurgence after being remastered and released as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, there is little news on future Mass Effect games.
Despite this, there are reasons to expect a Mass Effect TV show at some point in the future, which opens up the question whether or not the story would translate well into the television medium. A Mass Effect TV show could definitely work, and there are several reasons why.
Amazon Are Pushing To Compete With Disney And Netflix
The Mass Effect TV show in development with Amazon reflects a string of their recent business decisions, such as buying the rights to The Lord of the Rings for a TV show amidst other franchises. Amazon is one of the richest corporations on the planet, and with Amazon Prime, seems determined to compete with Disney and Netflix's subscription services amongst others.
It is early days to tell what stage Amazon is in with the Mass Effect show's development, or indeed how it will handle The Lord of the Rings TV show and whether fan reception to that will be possible. But the chances are that Amazon will be able to throw enough money at its projects to give them a fighting chance of succeeding.
There Is Precedence Of Video Games Jumping To Live-Action
While there have long been instances of video games based on live-action movies or TV shows, there have been far fewer examples of games that jumped to movies or TV — at least, ones that were well received. However, in recent years, we have seen this change. Assassin's Creed and Uncharted have had movies based on them, and Halo has had a TV show based on it as well. It's clear that audiences want to see these franchises explored in a different medium.
Sci-fi and fantasy are fully in the mainstream now compared to how they were a decade or two ago; Star Wars remains one of the biggest current franchises. It's highly unlikely that audiences would find Mass Effect too complicated or "geeky." The narrative has the scale of Star Wars with a much more human experience at the core of it. Its characters are a lot more fleshed out on average than those in the Halo franchise, which has taken the route of honing in on the idea of the Master Chief being more robot than human. A character such as Mass Effect's John Shepherd would arguably allow audiences to relate to him more than they could Master Chief or Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Mass Effect's Expansive Lore
The Mass Effect universe is huge, with the story-based games having been focused on building the lore right from the beginning. As Mass Effect grew in popularity, it extended to novels, art books, comics, and soon television. It has arguably already proven it can sustain itself across multiple mediums, and it is the right time for the franchise to make the move to TV.
Mass Effect has a universe where many planets filled with various alien species are part of a council, and work together to stop a common enemy in between their own in-fighting and political maneuvering on the galactic scale. There is scope and scale for many stories to be told in a way that is very similar to Star Wars, but a little more grounded.
Nowadays more than ever, executives commission a series based on whether there seems to be any longevity to it. There's no point in investing into a series that can't extend itself past the first couple seasons. Mass Effect has enough content and opportunities for stories to sustain itself throughout multiple seasons of its own series as well as spin-offs.
A Mass Effect Series Could Work
All the evidence points to a Mass Effect series working, and even becoming a hit amongst viewers so long as they do it right. Learning from the mistakes of the Assassin's Creed live action movie being dull and the Halo TV series being a separate canon, the cast and crew behind Mass Effect could do exactly what the fans want. So long as they bring the right elements from the story-heavy games and do it in a way that doesn't infringe on any of the past work in the franchise, fans will eat it up.
It's to Amazon Prime Video's benefit that they're following other franchises' moves to television. They can take their time and observe how the audiences react to other video game-gone-television projects. Mass Effect is a franchise with a very loyal fanbase, so getting it right is paramount to the show's success.