With Universal Pictures announcing recently that they're working on an unannounced project for 2016, the internet has been abuzz with speculation that this might finally be the moment when the Mass Effect movie finally travels through a mass relay and hits a Citadel near you. It's a scary time to be a Mass Effect fan. On one hand, it may well be awesome to see Commander Shepard and friends in movie form, but on the other, we've all been burned by gaming movies before. That is aside for Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, which have epic cheesiness and - in the case of the latter - a great theme tune that's perfectly acceptable for playing whenever epic tasks are accomplished. Whoever takes on the Mass Effect film has a lot to prove; it's an extremely popular franchise (one of the most successful of the last gaming generation) and the expectations from gamers are high. There's also already an extremely large universe within Mass Effect, as everything from planets to alien races with full backstories already exist. Since there's so much to plunder already, it's concerning to think how the take on this extremely expansive series can be condensed into a few hours of movie magic. Fortunately there are some things that the director can take note of in order to not make the Mass Effect movie a complete failure. Let's just hope they read this, eh?
Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.
