Videogames: Spooktober Season

[Darryk]

Wow, I'm excited for a Mass Effect series. I've always thought they'd make a good movies / series. 

There's gonna be a war over whether Shepard should be male or female though. 

[Rhom]

2 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Wow, I'm excited for a Mass Effect series. I've always thought they'd make a good movies / series. 

There's gonna be a war over whether Shepard should be male or female though. 

Best move might be to go the Andromeda route and make a brother/sister Shep team.

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Darryk said:

Wow, I'm excited for a Mass Effect series. I've always thought they'd make a good movies / series. 

There's gonna be a war over whether Shepard should be male or female though. 

Nah, film with both and give audiences the choice.

[Corvinus85]

I always thought that Andromeda lend itself well to being made into a TV show. It has adventure and discovery, a mystery about long dead aliens, and an enemy for the main characters to fight. 

Another thing they could is to focus mainly on the Ciradel pre-Reaper War, and Anderson could be a main character. No Shep. But it might feel too much like Babylon 5.

[briantw]

34 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I always thought that Andromeda lend itself well to being made into a TV show. It has adventure and discovery, a mystery about long dead aliens, and an enemy for the main characters to fight. 

Another thing they could is to focus mainly on the Ciradel pre-Reaper War, and Anderson could be a main character. No Shep. But it might feel too much like Babylon 5.

They could start with the first contact war with the Turians.  That would allow the audience to follow along as humans first encounter aliens and are subsequently entered into the galactic government.

[Kalbear]

The dumbest thing they could do is anything with the main characters from mass effect. Far better to have some side characters and tell other stories. Why would people want an adaptation of a game they've already played?

[IlyaP]

On 11/24/2021 at 5:33 AM, dog-days said:

More OT, I played Tyranny a few months ago. It was alright, but I found the crapsack world fairly tiresome and joyless, and was frustrated that some important material for one of the main characters was apparently in the expansion pack, and not the game itself. Glad I played it, but won't be going back to it. 

Part of its winning appeal (at least to me) was its setting. Yes, it's all sad and depressing and dark and awful, but it's also not something that I've seen very often in an isometric cRPG, so that's kind of part of its appeal. Also, the ability to modify spells and make them do different things over time is a pretty rad feature. As is that you can play the game 3 times and get 3 different outcomes. 

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I always thought that Andromeda lend itself well to being made into a TV show. It has adventure and discovery, a mystery about long dead aliens, and an enemy for the main characters to fight. 

This goes a way towards explaining why it's also my favourite game in the series. It just spoke to me the most due to featuring the above aspects. 

[IlyaP]

Still plodding through Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition. 

Have been lucky to find a few mods that improved the FOV, got rid of the boring mini-games, and eliminated all the endless fucking pop-ups that appeared in-game. 

I'm now also reading, in tandem with my playthrough, Seamus Young's book Mess Effect, which offers some interesting insights into Bioware, EA, and Mass Effect. 

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

The dumbest thing they could do is anything with the main characters from mass effect. Far better to have some side characters and tell other stories. Why would people want an adaptation of a game they've already played?

If they just did that it would be a terrible show. They could still tell the same overarching story, but go into a lot more detail with a lot more characters and character development, and not need to have Shepard in every scene. And less aimless driving around in the Mako scanning mineral deposits.

[polishgenius]

7 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

The dumbest thing they could do is anything with the main characters from mass effect. Far better to have some side characters and tell other stories. Why would people want an adaptation of a game they've already played?

Why do people want adaptations of anything?

Anyway the worst thing about this is if and when Revelation Space gets its own adaptations even more people will think it's a Mass Effect ripoff

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Anyway the worst thing about this is if and when Revelation Space gets its own adaptations even more people will think it's a Mass Effect ripoff

I won't! 

'cause....it annoyed me that ME didn't have a single Reynolds easter egg about the reapers.

[Spockydog]

11 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

The dumbest thing they could do is anything with the main characters from mass effect. Far better to have some side characters and tell other stories. Why would people want an adaptation of a game they've already played?

This would be a valid point if more people had actually played the game than those who hadn't. I imagine the differential is on some orders of magnitude.

Also, if this was the attitude of the movie industry, nothing would EVER get adapted. I mean, why bother adapting a book that a bunch of people* have already read?

*but absolutely nowhere near the number of people that make up a potential global movie audience.

 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

This would be a valid point if more people had actually played the game than those who hadn't. I imagine the differential is on some orders of magnitude.

Also, if this was the attitude of the movie industry, nothing would EVER get adapted. I mean, why bother adapting a book that a bunch of people* have already read?

*but absolutely nowhere near the number of people that make up a potential global movie audience.

 

Mass Effect is also popular but not super-popular. Like Skyrim has shifted more than twice as many copies as all four Mass Effect games combined. The supposedly-somewhat-maligned Fallout 4 has sold way more copies by itself than the four games combined. God of War has equalled them by itself.

It's a big series but it's not so huge that everyone knows every beat of the story and universe.

[Spockydog]

24 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Mass Effect is also popular but not super-popular. Like Skyrim has shifted more than twice as many copies as all four Mass Effect games combined. The supposedly-somewhat-maligned Fallout 4 has sold way more copies by itself than the four games combined. God of War has equalled them by itself.

It's a big series but it's not so huge that everyone knows every beat of the story and universe.

Exactly. I've never played it, but my brother insists it's got one of the finest stories in gaming history. I'm looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about. 

[briantw]

30 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Exactly. I've never played it, but my brother insists it's got one of the finest stories in gaming history. I'm looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about. 

Well, up until the end at least.

Honestly, a series would be a great chance for them to undo that shit ending and put something proper in place.  Kind of like Martin with Game of Thrones, although we all know there's no chance he's finishing the series.

[Werthead]

Red Dead Redeption 2 is down to half price in the Steam sale as well as Cyberpunk 2077, which is the best price it's ever been. Well-recommended at that price.

Moderate sale so far, only picked up The Feud: Wild West Tactics and 80 Days, which have both been on my wishlist for a while and they're down to a fiver apiece.

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Why do people want adaptations of anything?

Adapting book to film or comic book to film is bringing in visuals and acting and a specific view. Thats not the case with adapting a cinematic looking video game into a TV show. 

 

4 hours ago, Spockydog said:

This would be a valid point if more people had actually played the game than those who hadn't. I imagine the differential is on some orders of magnitude.

Also, if this was the attitude of the movie industry, nothing would EVER get adapted. I mean, why bother adapting a book that a bunch of people* have already read?

*but absolutely nowhere near the number of people that make up a potential global movie audience.

 

Again, adapting books is different than adapting cinematic video games. Furthermore adapting books or comics is partially done because you have a built in fan base that will want to come out and watch how it was interpreted or see their imagination come to life - but that really isn't the case with something like mass effect. 

(For the record I think adapting last of us is also kinda stupid)

[Werthead]

There are huge numbers of people out there who don't play video games, especially story-focused roleplaying games taking ~70 hours to get through, and don't want to watch streams, but would enjoy that story. I think adapting those kind of things into a TV series is a reasonable idea. I also like the idea, which the Fallout show might be going down, of having the same world as the video game but doing a whole new story in it.

Last of Us will be an interesting litmus test to see how this kind of live-action adaptation works.

[Gorn]

2 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

Adapting book to film or comic book to film is bringing in visuals and acting and a specific view. Thats not the case with adapting a cinematic looking video game into a TV show. 

 

Again, adapting books is different than adapting cinematic video games. Furthermore adapting books or comics is partially done because you have a built in fan base that will want to come out and watch how it was interpreted or see their imagination come to life - but that really isn't the case with something like mass effect. 

(For the record I think adapting last of us is also kinda stupid)

How many people played Mass Effect series? Maybe 10 million, if you include the pirated copies. Amazon Prime has 200 million members. If the show focuses on the existing fanbase, it will be a failure.