Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider says a Dragon Age TV series is 'a terrible idea,' and he's not very keen on Mass Effect either

The recent success of TV shows inspired by games—Fallout, Cyberpunk, Halo, Castlevania—has prompted plenty of conversation about what other games might make for good television translations. Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider is one of the many people with thoughts on the matter, but even more interesting than which games he thinks would make for good television are the ones he believes would not.

«I imagine everyone would expect me to say Dragon Age, but that'd be a terrible idea,» Gaider said on Twitter. «I want to see a David Lynch-style (on acid) Disco Elysium. Or maybe Banishers.»

Gaider knows a thing or two about storytelling. He served as the lead writer on the Dragon Age games from Origin through Inquisition, has multiple Dragon Age-based novels to his name, and has design credits on Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, and Anthem. More recently he served as creative director on Stray Gods, a «genuinely thrilling, occasionally heartbreaking tale that shines a new light on well-known Greek gods.» 

Before anyone suggests that this might be a case of sour grapes, Gaider explained his position more clearly in a reply tweet. «You take away the interactive element and you're left with a pretty stock standard fantasy story,» he said. «It would take a pretty deep dive to distill the elements of each that make them unique and interesting. Not impossible, but it would take more than a rote adaptation.»

For the same reason, he thinks a series based on Baldur's Gate would also be a bad idea, saying he has a hard time imagining it as «something we haven't already seen, multiple times.» That also holds true for Mass Effect (and Halo, apparently): «Much like Dragon Age or BG3, I have a hard time picturing a Mass Effect show that does anything we haven't already seen a dozen times. The Halo TV show, for instance, could just as easily have been Mass Effect.»

I haven't seen the Halo TV show so I can't comment on that particular point, but generally speaking I