Like a Dragon: Yakuza has me curious

 

The great conversion of video game properties to TV video has left many an interesting project in it's wake, arguably none more so than those that try to take something entirely stringent on it's interactive elements and create essentially new media with it. Borderlands is a first person shooter that briefly deluded itself into thinking it was a comedy franchise- but with more entries being tiresome exercises in humourlessness- that label is becoming harder to ratify with each passing day. Thus the movie really had hardly anything to work off at all- does that justify how boring the final product was? No. But I guess I can understand why Eli Roth got the project and went- yeah, I've got nothing to work with might as well half ass literally everything. People already don't respect the gaming space- giving out licences to Borderlands wasn't going to change that.

But what about 'Like a Dragon'? Well, that is honestly a franchise that has been very cinematic in it's long years, covering many of the tropes of romanticised crime fiction and imbuing a high octane bipolar attitude that can have you contemplating the erasure of the forgotten class by a supposedly confrontationally justice-centred society to a straight slug-match with a shark. Sometime ago this franchise might have made a decent movie, but by now it's transcended that medium entirely and has become as much about the video game exclusive diatribes into distracting minigames as it has been about the serious drama that rocks the narrative. To say that the new Like a Dragon series has me slightly on edge about what they propose to do to my favourite property is a bit of an understatement.

Of course there was a movie based on Like a Dragon years ago by a studio who seemed wholly invested in capturing the insanity of being a video game movie. With nonsensical shifts in pace, taking healing item breaks and presenting Majima as a megalomaniacal mass murderer- which was a very easy conceptual mistake to make before Yakuza 0 reframed him so masterfully. What we have today doesn't really feel all that interested in celebrating the medium as the franchise itself, which is fine on paper- but I wonder how much of the Like a Dragon property is infused with it's identity as a game- and consequentially- how much we can really get out of an adaptation that wantonly shirks those ties.

Now, we have ourselves a full trailer giving us what to expect with the full launch later this month and I'm not going to pretend that I'm fully impressed with everything I saw. On a production level the show appears to be decently budgeted- and solid enough with the gun-toting violence that I think we won't suffer 'violence withdrawals' as some feared. But does it feel like Yakuza? Not yet. There's a drab blue/green-wash tint over the footage that seems to share more in common with a melodramatic crime story than the colourful, seedy world of the franchise- wherein every square inch of land is secretly hiding some kind of lush underground wonderland of illegal activity. Kamaroucho alone should be home to a prostitution/fighting metropolis underneath the homeless-run park- do you get that impression from glimpsing this world?

And maybe that's the point they're going for right now. Like a Dragon is renowned for their intentionally bizarre balance between the ridiculous and the series that springs back and forth so suddenly the whiplash alone keeps your blood pumping. Maybe what this show wants to do is capture the essence of the realistic drama so acutely that when Majima goes careening into a soaphouse with a truck it blares out as even more insane and over the top- but I guess we'll not know until it's in front of us because that is not the experience they're selling right now. At the very least the show has explosions, so there's that.

What I'm most worried about at this moment is obviously the changes that are inevitable in any project like this. We know this is more than just an adaptation it's a reimagining- which means we won't be getting a one-to-one with all the characters and stories that we know- I don't even know if we'll be getting Kazama or Sunflower Orphanage. It kind of looks like Kiryu grew up watching street fighters and decided to become a Dragon based on that alone- and unless the trailer is hiding her completely it seems we're not getting Haruka- which is insane to me consideringly she is literally the single most important person in Kiryu's life- throughout nearly the entire franchise! Everything he chooses to do in his entire life is framed around Haruka- if she really is excluded this time around... whew- god knows what that means for our boy.

Then again I do love this world, love it's style, love it's characters, so many giving us an alternative look at the story of the ten billion yen would be exactly what we need to breath a new life into this done and dusted story. Whilst Kiryu is busy handing off his legacy to Ichiban, real-life Kiryu is stalking an entirely different path leading in a different direction. Heck, who even knows if this Kiryu is going to be a virtue-touting hero or a down-dirty Yakuza rocking his way through the underworld with something to prove? He certainly does seem a lot younger than we would expect Kiryu to be at this point in his career. It's just very unclear right now.

All of this is to say that I'm not exactly burning with anticipation for what I'm seeing right now, despite having been pretty open to the idea of an adaptation for this franchise dating back a while now. But I don't rightly know what a perfect adaptation of this series would look like, so I'm keeping an open mind that I can be proven wrong. This is what I like to call 'healthy skepticism' so that I don't build up hopes too high just in case this turns out to be another mid dud like Netflix's Avatar. At the very least- I think this will be a good show. Will it be a good 'Yakuza' show? Wait and see.

The Dragon of Amazon

 Under the roiling cauldron of the pacific churns a ecliptic ziggurat. A ancient temple of prehistoric build buried beneath the destructive power of earth's primordial waves. That black temple stone sleeps, untouched by erosion, unbowed by Mother Nature's fury, impossible and non-Euclidian- it houses the unspeakable. The unwoken, the ever dreaming, the tyrant, the priest, the mountain, the fish man, the dawn and the twilight. His dreams are our nightmares, and his wake will be our sleep. Cosmic and alien, the God of Dreams waits, harrowing against the thin veil, clawing at the membrane of our psyche, leaking through the cracks, manifesting in our mania. And it is to him, Great Cthulhu, that I credit the recent announcement that Yakuza is getting a life action adaptation.

Because come on- what else am I supposed to believe? I've been bringing up how good of an idea this would be in blog after blog for years now, knowing well just how much brilliant stories and characters the world was missing out on thanks to the barrier to entry of the gaming world. This dreams, this longing, existed solely in my warped and peeling mind- until it didn't anymore! What am I supposed to believe, that Amazon reads this blog? Don't be foolish- 'twas the god king, obviously! In his neverending war to break beyond the waves and reclaim his foot on the head of all mankind, Cthulhu plucked that little gem from my mindscape and went "Oh, that's actually a pretty good idea! I'm going to just insert that in an Amazon exec's noggin' so when I rise there'll be a couple of seasons of the show to binge on!" He's a savvy one, that Cthulhu! Always planning ahead!

With this conflux of realities breaking down comes the apparent rapidly approaching adaptation of Yakuza 1's entire story within later this very year, under Amazon studios! Which would, of course, make this the second attempt to retell the beginning of Kazuma Kiryu's story- the first being a hilariously bizarre movie in which Majima walks around with a shotgun he uses to gun people down- (I suppose that was made back when Majima still flittered between being a good or bad guy) and wore an eyepatch on the wrong eye. But it did spawn that unforgettable image of Majima slyly peaking around the corner of a hallway using his blinded eye to spy on Kiryu and Haruka. (Classic.) Although I have to be honest, I'm not sure if this was the best start for a Yakuza series.

Back when Yakuza 0 was developed it did rest on the back of five Yakuza games before it in order to inform characters and direction, making it a prequel in the truest since balancing the weight of all that came after. But it was also a hail mary to try and score a western audience- which succeeded with gusto. Many people, including myself, were introduced to Yakuza through 0 and thus closely relate the majesty of that franchise with the quality of that original power house of a game and let me be clear- that is because 0 is an incredible introduction. None of that game is dependent on knowing who these characters are or what they will become. Foreshadowing is subtle character work delicately laying out the complexities of the iconic personalities these to-be heroes would adopt, and the overall narrative itself tells the origin of the series' most iconic landmark it returns to so often it even starred in the finale of Infinite Wealth earlier this year- Millennium Tower.

And that isn't even to mention the fact that Yakuza 0's story is, to be honest, actually a lot better than Yakuza 1's. That original was created back in a time when Yakuza was still finding it's identity and thus basing itself around the various rigors of romantic crime drama- in an almost cliché sense. You have the virtuous sacrifice, the 'protect the small girl' subplot, the betrayal, the surprise romance so cold I'll bet people were literally flashbanged by "I love you" in the final moments of the game. Yakuza 1 is a classic, no doubt- but 0 was a legend. Yakuza 0 broke all these characters down to their base most form and dragged them across a complex conspiracy that spanned across Asia and across generations, peppered with genuine slow burn romance, one emotionally shattering confrontation and enough cliffhanger plot-twists to break a gordian knot and worlds collided in a scrabble to seize what would eventually become the most important piece of real-estate in this entire franchise. That would be the way to start this new media journey, if Amazon were taking this serious.

We've already got ourselves a glimpse of our Kiryu's back, bearing a tattoo reminiscent of the classic dragon though slightly different, bringing to mind the most pressing question we should be asking about this adaptation- are we still going to do the one arm strip move? Afterall, how else are we going to demonstrate that tattoo? We can't have Kiryu rip his precious outfit, he needs to take that off in important and impactful moments- and will he perform the physics defining hand rip to pull it off? For that matter- what exact tone are the team looking to strike with this adaptation? Are we going to get ourselves a fun and light-hearted farce, or a serious and intense drama? Or will the showrunners be clever enough to know that in order to match the game franchise, they need to actually strike a balance of both?

An important point of note is the stipulation that 'Like a Dragon: Yakuza' is said to follow a 'loose' adaptation of the events of the first game, which may be their licence to trim the fat in a few areas- or to use the Yakuza franchise as a flesh-suit for the showrunners own failed storytelling ambitions as we've seen happen to 'The Rings of Power', 'The Witcher' and, regrettably, 'Avatar'. Ryoma Takeuchi is playing Kiryu, which means we'll have an actor of the right height at least, and he bares the name 'Ryoma'- so I guess they have to do an Ishin series if this thing makes it off the ground- I just can't shake the feeling he looks a little young for the role. (Which would have made him perfect to play 'Yakuza 0' Kiryu! Ah, I'm never going to shake this, am I?)

But enough misgivings. This is what I want. It's what I've always wanted. For Kiryu to finally shine on the screen in a medium he can genuinely be added to. None of these nowhere adaptations that have no possible ability to improve, or even match, the original- such as with cartoons like Avatar to live action versions of the same scenes, only slower and clunkier. Like a Dragon bases itself over an exaggerated reality which, if given a totally straight face, could elevate the source material in those special moments. Does that mean I want to see blue glowing auras and videogame stuff like that represented? I honestly don't know yet- and the fact that this series could literally go one of a hundred directions and still potentially prove faithful, as proven by the murder happy farce-fest of the movie- is just proof why this is the one video game adaptation that was meant to be.

The Fallout show is kinda good, actually.

 

With the coming of a series based on Fallout, I'll admit to being somewhat sceptical. Okay, I was a straight up hater- but can you really blame me? The custodians of the franchise have exhibited all the tale-tail signs of dementia, steadily regressing in their craft from a masterpiece factory to a bit of a limp joke, the show runner was going to be the same guy who launched the intriguing Westworld, that was then dragged into the ground with an stretched-out plot that dragged on for years- there wasn't actually a lot of good reasons to be an optimist. Not to mention the source material of Fallout can be extremely hit or miss on a narrative front. Sure, sometimes you get Fallout New Vegas blowing you away with its layers of converging convictions clashing in seismic political tension, but then you also get the Institute from Fallout 4 with their, lets be frank, largely limp wider plans for the world. This was no 'The Last of Us'. 

But now that the series is out it won't be any great surprise to hear me say that I was wrong, the show is actually pretty good and the Avatar effect was largely avoided. Which in hindsight is starting to make me believe that the Avatar franchise is just legitimately haunted- no one can seem to get a good adaptation or addendum to that original series for the life of them. (I really hope this new movie is going to be good but... well... with their policy about voice actors sharing the fictional nationalities of their characters- there's a good chance they recast Azula which is... frankly unacceptable.) Where was I? Oh yeah! So Fallout could very well have fallen into the same traps of it's fellows if it followed those footsteps, but instead the series did the one thing it could have done without ruining the past- it went forward.

Using the established world of Fallout as a spine from which to grow a new narrative is of course the optimal way to handle a video game adaptation, relieving you from the ridiculous responsibility of carrying the entire hundreds of hours of game on your back trying to squeeze that into a coherent show. And though there are very clear parallels to Fallout game narratives tucked not so neatly into this show, not least of all the lamentable revival of Bethesda's most annoying Fallout story trope- the missing family member- there's scatterings of new story too which has proven... intriguing thus far. And that is perhaps the strongest praise I can leverage upon the show at this point. (I'm watching it slowly, I'll admit. I don't want to rush through the thing.)

Needless to belabour, the visuals of the show are obviously incredible. The team looked towards the sensible redesigns of Fallout 4 and copied that style perfectly in their live action recreation of the game assets- bringing the game to startling life. It's quite insane to see assets replicated to such popping perfection, and I'm certain there were onset prop craftsmen scratching their heads at some of the weirder design choices, but whether it was Nolan's exacting eye, or Bethesda's insistence- no expense was seemingly spared. Hell, they even brought the Fallout 4 version of Power Armour to life with insane precision! And executed Stimpacks flawlessly! With the exact same sound byte from the games! Love letter indeed!

However, this isn't to say that I think the show is a 'masterpiece' by any stretch of the imagination. In actuality, looking past the copious heapings of fan service- I have found the early season to be a little bit messy. The second episode in particular seemed to take some interesting directions with it's action choreography that felt a little... cheap, shall we say? Watching someone get punched by a man in power armour, and then seeing them pulled weightlessly by obvious wires, is kind of CW level stunt work. Of course, those cheaper shortcomings are supposed to be drowned underneath the violence which is effective and fittingly gory- and yet... both action scenes I've seen so far seem to linger on for a couple of minutes past their prime effectiveness. The first episode wanted to play around with Lucy's perspective of sudden violence in a place that has always represented safety, so I understand the directing choice even if I don't agree with it. The standoff in the second episode, however? The longer it went on the cheaper everything looked, there really needed to be someone on set yelling 'cut' more. Seriously.

Another aspect of the show I absolutely did not expect to be critiquing was the tone but- yeah, we're there. It's not egregiously off, I must insist- but there are times when the black humour slips into farcical in a way that undermines the weight of the scene. I get that the sudden suicide in Episode 2 isn't supposed to be some emotional send-off to someone we just met- but Fallout doesn't usually make light of the finality of a death, unless we're talking about an exceptionally hilarious or ironic end. Death is supposed to gnaw at it's emptiness, hence why it lingers on the corpses of the world you travel and the locations you visit. It's a spectre hanging over anyone who wanders the wasteland, that is rarely shrugged off. But again, I'm still on the first half of the season- maybe I'm just over analysing the blinking hours of the show. Even as I wonder if this tone doesn't perhaps better fit a Borderlands adaptation over a Fallout one. (Maybe that's going a little far on my part.)

As for pacing- it varies. I would not call this show impeccably paced, but I wouldn't call it a rush job either. Time actually is a commodity spent and it's often spent well- effectively, even. Letting us settle into these worlds they've built is exactly what you want out of a TV show all about this iconic world, and I really hope we keep up this sort of environmental focus as Lucy delves into the urban destruction of the Wasteland. My problem is fleeting. Literally. The odd scene flies by a little too quickly. A man and his dog slip out from a shooting turret in the blink of an eye, before any tension or threat can be built. Is that more of a tone issue? I'd conflate the two. There's intention behind these decisions, I just don't know if I agree with these intentions a lot of the time.

And for the good? I think the cast is solid. Great actors given fine material. Nothing too complicated I've noticed, which I know this showrunner doesn't shy away from, and so I suspect was another intentional choice in order not to distract from the copious amounts of subtle world building this first season needs to establish. I like all three leads and want to know about all their individual stories, and I like the fact this show seems to remember that Fallout isn't a world of heroes and villians, just the jaded and the naïve. Even among our leads there's apparent flaws and humanity with them all, which makes me sadly reflect on the absolute lack of that in the Avatar show. (God, Netflix really screwed that show up. It makes me so sad!)

Now already the show has been deemed enough of a hit for a Season 2 to be announced, which does actually get me excited for whatever is planned next. Not knowing where this season ends I could not possibly speculate, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume our three leads end up on something of the same team- given how chummy they look on the poster. What I would personally hope for would be a smattering of anthology stories told from season to season- with new casts crossing over with previous season casts as the grand story of the true main character of this show, The Wasteland, is unravelled. But something tells me that is a fat chance in hell because shows like this need marketable faces. At least I hope the fight scenes get better funding now that this show is considered profitable!

So this Fallout TV show is definitely happening, huh?

 It's all over- but the crying.

Those TV executive leeches won't leave well enough alone, will they? And at this point, I think it's fair to say that we can no longer write off every new video game adaptation as hot-air nonsense, doomed to blow about in perpetual pre-production until it withers and dies. No, if the Uncharted movie made it to publish, then any movie can. Or TV show, for that matter. But this sudden reliability does no come with a provable stamp of quality, not even close. Still we have to deal with the hare brained ideas for game adaptations that make no sense, "Oh, let's adapt Uncharted into a film; you know, that game which is popular becomes it apes popular film-making techniques and translates them neatly into gaming language so people feel like they're playing the cool set pieces? Yeah, we're gonna do that but without the intractability." 'No', 'stop it' and 'why would you even think that was a good idea?'. And then there's the Bioshock movie. Yes, a gorgeous world that will definitely translate to the silver screen, but the knock-out punch of Bioshock was the story twist which effortlessly deconstructed the typical 'call to adventure' set-up that games had been taking advantage of forever, that twist will be pitiful in comparison when executed on any other medium! But at least we have the Fallout show.

Announced what feels like a couple of years ago, The Fallout show is absolutely still on the docket to be made by... Amazon? Oh crud. (No matter what we can't escape 'Netflix-adaptation Lex Luthor', can we?) My point is that this idea works, Fallout can absolutely make the jump to TV flawlessly without becoming lost in translation and if it does; audiences who have even never heard of these games before are in for an absolute visual treat. There's no other post-apocalyptic series out there that treats the after-earth with such recognisable style, and which skilfully teeters between absurdity, relatability and abject tragedy all across the breadth of personal and sweeping narratives. Fallout isn't about the end, it's about the after; and that is what makes it stand out so brilliantly even amidst the bevy of post apocalyptic games within gaming, let alone outside of it. Which is all to say that I approve of this project, and hope it scores a big one.

And it might have already done that, what with the casting of Walter Goggins- are you serious? An honest to goodness character-actor with the sort of face you expect to see, and often do see, from a western. This is the kind of actor you can just feel sliding into the Fallout world so well it's almost too good. Why was this singular casting choice made public? Is it to distract from something godawful in the works behind the scenes? They're not going to do the unthinkable and set this Fallout show in Canada, are they? Actually I would totally love to see somewhere outside of America in the Fallout series, I know the 'American Dream' is a big part of the set-up, but after 5 entries (Including 76) you've got to start wondering if the series has the legs to expand it's horizons. Besides, Bethesda have dibs on the East coast stories, Obsidian (Formerly Black Isles) has the West Coast; what's left for the TV show? The Middle states? Yeah, 'cause we'd love a Fallout series which consists of 8 episodes of wondering around irradiated corn fields, wouldn't we?

If there is one thing I want, nay need to be true when it comes to this Fallout series, and I know it's a long shot, but I want it to be an original story so bad. I know the temptation to adapt the Fallout 3 narrative is there, because of how its very set-up, child leaves the safety of the Vault to brave the wastes in order to track down their Liam Neeson Father, seems so gift-wrapped and tempting for the lazy writer out there. Don't steal it! That story, and New Vegas', belongs to the players. Weighing in on it with any sort of adaption will drop that poisonous mist of 'canonicity' into a world that so-far exists exclusively within every player's copy of Fallout 3,4 and New Vegas. For the same reason why a direct Mass Effect adaptation would be a terrible idea, we have to put our foot down and establish an adaptation etiquette, so Hollywood can realise that this isn't the same as just book adaptations. There are gaming industry unique variables to really consider and respects that should be paid.

Whatsomore, don't we deserve a new story? Something I've been thinking about for a while when it comes to Fallout is how much we've been denied the truly expansive universe that these games could have been, simply because we have to wait for an entire massive RPG to be made each time the universe is touched. Why not authorise some cool games of different genres from talented studios out there such as, and I can't believe I'm advocating for this, an RTS? There could be a smashing RTS Fallout game based on the 'Ceaser's Legion v NCR' war alone, or maybe new factions entirely! Bring us a new world with new vaults and new places to be excited about in this new show, make us fans who already love this series to bits, anticipate and speculate about the prospect of having our expectations exceeded. 

What I'm looking for is several-fold; I need a story that is going to introduce the key tenets of the Wasteland in a satisfying, timely way for the new fans. That means we're going to have to see the 50's soul in the design of the ruins and old world advertising, the relation to the tragedy of the lost America will need to be shown off in some way other than old terminals and holotapes and I want to see Super Mutants. I know mutants are a little overplayed in the series right now despite their specific role in the first Fallout, but now they've become a deeply ingrained part of the core identity and thus shouldn't be shunned. There needs to be a Deathclaw. The Brotherhood are too easy to misconstrue as defacto heroes, and so should be kept back until a Season 2 plot point. Oh, and the Vault Tec Vault experiment that features in this season should be really twisted, so as to convey the absolute twisted moral depravity of the series-iconic Vault Tec company.

I would like a Fallout story set sometime between the events of Fallout 76 and the rest of the Fallout canon (there's a good hundred years or so) with which we can tell the story of some event that is  sweeping, an event with consequence and lasting ramifications that shape this corner of the wasteland, wherever that corner ends up being. I'd love a totally new, imaginative, major faction to be introduced: and to that effect I think the one of the biggest post-apocalyptic tropes that Fallout hasn't adequately explored yet is sci-fi feudalism, so that's still open. Although a colonialism-themed post-war faction would be just as cool. Maybe there could even be shades of the Enclave littered throughout the narrative, just enough that we know they exist without becoming some overarching enemy, and I'd love a story that confronts the trauma related to living in this world and/or growing up as a Vault Tec lab experiment, as that's an angle we've never really had the chance to explore in any of the games, what with them being choice-heavy action RPGs.

With enough care and effort put into the script and casting, I genuinely believe that Amazon's Fallout could be a powerhouse series, totally shattering the curse of video game adaptations that we've taken for the norm for so long. It's just a ripe franchise with so much potential on the silver screen which you just know, with the right budget, would quickly grab attention and become a 'butts-to-seats' winner for the Prime service. I just hope that everyone is aware of what needs to be put in, financially and effort-wise, in order to achieve here, because if we seen a Supermutant waddle up in some rubber green mask, or T-45 Power Armour awkwardly jutting in weird carboard-looking angles (Like Master Chief's kind of does in the Halo show) it's going kill the dream before its started. After hearing definitively that Paramount is going to disrespect the series of Halo and drink deep from their own hubris in order to unmask Master Chief, (what makes you think you even have that right? Self righteous asshats.) the pressure falls now to this long awaited Fallout show to further legitimise gaming in the mainstream as a source of art. So no pressure, Amazon.

Mass Effect TV show; Why god no

 Speaking of gaming on the small screen

The first I heard of this show was not the announcement of it's legitimacy by the sucker of a studio who just bought it's rights. My first shout was a pure reaction from a former writer for the Mass Effect games who felt it his moral duty to art and the world to claim how the very concept of this show made him 'cringe'. Now that's a lot more of a provocative title then what his actual comments read as, because that's what the journalism world lives off, slightly and intentionally misconstructions for the sake of sensationalism, because his views are actually voicing the same things that people like me always mention whenever talk of these grand garish game series adaptations come alive. But beyond the things that he and we know to be true, lies the pernicious hunger of the corporate world that cares not for where things belong and will take and take without recourse or punishment. Everyone else suffers for their greed, and at the end of the day there's nothing left to do but sit around in the refuse and say 'what the hell even happened'?

So 'Massively Effecting' the video game franchise is getting it's own TV show, that's a nice bit of security at the very least given that the game series itself is currently behind a video game studio so beleaguered that it recently lost it's second creative director for the same game in two years. (Dragon Age 4 is going to suck more than usual, isn't it?) To be clear, Amazon doesn't have their hands on the show yet, but they're in the "nearing a deal phase", which typically means leaking the deal negotiations to the public to gauge interest. Of course, at this early stage that also means we have next to no idea what this series would even contain were the forces that be lapse in their watch over the soul of humanity enough to let this through, so we don't even know if it will be an adaptation and why this is a story that needs to be told. However, we can make some educated guesses given the other properties that Amazon has gobbled up in it's desperate attempt to make it's streaming service worth a singular damn. (Wasn't The Boys enough? Why can't you be happy this that?)

Mr 'former writer' had the same impression that most had going into this news, that this would be a straight adaptation of the Mass Effect games. Now this does have a precedent with Amazon given that their Wheel of Time adaptation and Lord of the Rings remake is treading the same waters, although you could point out how both of those were keenly weaved narrative books whereas Mass Effect is a more loosey goosy video game storyline. I mean sure, we all pretend that it's some super intricate web of delicate interweaved narrative prowess, but anyone with passing familiarity with the games themselves know that the product is a lot less proud then that. (They let entire plotlines drop like flies in order to justify the finale) What I'm saying is that there's a decent chance this series idea is going to just take place within the Mass Effect world and tell connected stories, which I think would actually be super cool. of course, if it is the adaptation that everyone thinks it might be, well we can go ahead and call that the worst ending...

But why would that be so bad, why is everyone from your humble degenerate twitter commenter to your whiny atypical games journalist all throwing a fit to the same pitch? Well, it's because some (if not most) games just don't belong on the small screen. (or the big screen for that matter) Yesterday I touched on this with my analysis on the core fundamental reasons why an interactive medium creates stories that appeal on a completely different level to what a passive visual medium hopes for, and crossing the two over with an adaptation will often mean a complete rewrite of everything that made the original recognisable in the first place. (Or you end up with confused and unfocused mess like the Assassin's Creed movie.) Although to try and make see both sides of the argument here, I suppose that an RPG like Mass Effect might have some place being adapted into a TV show...

Remember that Mass Effect and other Bioware RPGs are story-heavy affairs, wherein the passive entertainment of watching narrative events unfold are sometimes just as entertaining as playing the game itself. (If not more so.) Whilst ideally for a video game you'd want a greater balance of the value proposition to consist in the gameplay, I suppose for sheer adaptation prospects these proportions bodes a bit better. I can see a politically charged drama with the fresh face of humanity trying to scour it's mark onto the well established alien councils of the discovered galaxy, as a solid concept for a TV show. And having a super solider proving the worth of humanity in a tense chase against a rogue secret alien agent that has plots to unravel the universe; this premise works without the game backing it up, is what I'm saying. And yet fundamentally something still feels off about all of this. What could that be? Well our former Bioware writer seems to have honed in on it.

With Bioware games, and most RPGs in general, you have that all-important moment where you make your character, and that is the key here. The protagonist of Mass Effect, the secret agent searching those stars and pushing this narrative, is your character. He or she is your Commander Shepard. That isn't just how this character was shaped, it was what they were designed for. Commander Shepard has little personality beyond 'military training' in their basic writing. (I guess he/she tends to be a bit patriotic no matter which way you lean, too) This is a character designed to be, as our writer puts it, "a blank slate", perfect for the player to impose their own personality upon. That is why Mass Effect is a video game, because it's very soul rests on the interactive act of the player putting themselves into the product. They decide Commander Shepard's gender, look, combat training, past, drives, personality, love life, everything about he/she. Therefore if this Mass Effect TV show is indeed a straight adaptation, they'll have lost one of the core appeals of Mass Effect the second they do casting.

Who wants to be told definitively what their title character should look like? Heck, that was one of the key problems with the Mass Effect marketing material, showing too much of the default male's face so that it influenced player's perceptions on what the idiot should look like. It was so annoying that they had to offer different box art for Mass Effect 3 showcasing the female lead, and for Andromeda they opted for a totally masked box art character altogether. Imagine that 'identity crisis' problem on steroids, and you have the potential disaster that Amazon would be in for whilst trying to choose a starring cast for some sort of adaptation. But then again, they've opened themselves up to the whole 'challenging established iron-clad imagery' thing with the very idea of remaking Lord of the Rings, so perhaps they enjoy hitting up against seemingly impassable walls and then... proving themselves? (I wait with bated breath to see how LOTR works out for them.)

So we come around to the same message I have for any and all potential adaptations of video game properties that are bumping around Hollywood; don't. The video game industry already takes too many of it's cues from the traditional passive entertainment industry for movies and TV shows to bring anything different to the table. Take the confused Tomb Raider movie from a few years back that smashed together different game plotlines and felt undeservedly rushed from start to end. The upcoming Uncharted movie that looks woefully miscast and steals imagery from key scenes in the game series only to do them worse because a computer generated figure can do more daring stunts than a real actor on a CGI background can. History screams at these people that 'video games' and 'small/big screen adaptations' do not go well together. It's like Anime and live-action Netflix adaptation, it's just a bad idea from start to finish. So if you really are gauging interest before taking this deal, Amazon, then allow me to say very clearly that I, for one, am very not interested. Unless it's not an adaptation; in that case it's cool.