How much is Mass Effect 1 going to have to be changed to be adapted to the big screen?

No worries.  Sounds good to me.

I could maybe have been a bit clearer.

I understand that some (many?) people do feel this way, and I know I'm not going to change any minds.  Just that it's something I don't feel, even remotely, so I find it quite interesting that others feel strongly about it.

As far as I'm concerned it would simply be a story about one of the possible Shepards we could have played.  An alternative universe to the one I played, if you like.  Sex and sexuality changes included.  I could even argue that because it was an option, and that others probably did play Shepard that way, it might even seem less of a problem than when films mess with an established character.  ie. They'd pick one of the possible characters and go with it, instead of changing the character.  In my mind anyway.

As for the canon argument, I wouldn't care about that either.  I already know most people played Broshep while I preferred Femshep.  He was on all the boxes and in the trailers, after all.  I'm sure everyone thinks as their own Shepard as the "real" Shepard, and I'm in the minority anyway.  If anyone wanted to think of the film version as canon, it would make no difference to me.  It might matter more if there was going to be a continuation of his/her story, but since Shepard is alive/dead/cyborg/AI god, I don't see how that is going to happen without picking a canon anyway (which would probably mean alive and still human). 

I say that is an unknown.  If it's a great, well written movie, it would override any ill feelings about the game.  Note - I'm not talking about redoing the ME:A story in film, I'm talking about a new story that picks up after ME:A's current story left off.  It's wide open as to what it would be about.  It could introduce new species, new characters and even lead the whole thing back to the Milky Way to connect with the Old Trilogy without disturbing it.  If people are "offended" by a new story in a different media even if it's well written and produced (and even before it comes out), then THEY have the problem.  A lot of movie goers don't even play video games. They are two different media.

Whereas, a badly adapted ME1 movie will hurt the franchise just as easily as an ME:A one would.  Just add it to the growing junk pile of mediocre video-gamish movies.  As I said above though, I really don't care if they do any side story they want to do.  Just leave Shepard out of it and they shouldn't offend anyone regardless of how they played the games.  It's only those still lobbying for a remake of the same old game (ironically, not because they loved it all, but because they hated the endings) that are blocking any new ideas from hitting the franchise.  THEY have the problem.  I'm also really not looking forward to seeing a bunch of threads and videos pop up ranting in detail about how this or that little thing in the movie breaks away from the ME1 game lore.

Furthermore, I resent your classing ME:A fans as something less that MET "hardcore" fans.  I'm willing to bet I'm every bit as much an MET hardcore fan as you.  I've played the entire Trilogy well over 25 times now, not including partial replays.  I've also played ME:A at least 8 times now.  I'm just not insisting the Bioware put a canon stamp on a particular type of Shepard (white male renegade per the majority) or put a canon stamp on the Destroy ending.  I don't need them to do that in order to still enjoy the Trilogy right through to the end.  At this stage, what I want Bioware to create is something completely new... not a rehash of the old game story.  I wish Hollywood would get off this current remake everything trend and actually come up with some fresh new ideas as well.

Yep. 

bsn.boards.net/post/70420/thread

OTOH, far fewer people would be upset if "their" Ryder wasn't represented.  We wouldn't have one of the major issues (animations, which were fixed anyway) and get a tighter story that doesn't leave us with major unresolved plots.  That would take care of most of the problems people had.  With Shepard, it's an issue.  I've detailed it in other posts and not going to rehash it here.

I dunno. Liara's the LI for sure, but I think FShep would work just fine.

I think people are overestimating how many people would be turned off by this, and making it more complicated than it is. You would think during the movie, the action will pause, then red and white flags will pop up in the corners of the screen, and Shepard will make a choice.

You're basically talking about Shepard vs Saren in a back and forth, action on the story planets, Sovereign appearing, a huge space fight, and Shepard beating Saren and saving the day. In between all of this you would have Liara mind melding with Shepard giving clues into the reapers and their motivations. Maybe even add some flashbacks if it's a TV series and you have time.

As for some choices. 82% of people played male Shepard, and Kaiden was only alive in 17% of ME3 playthroughs. Add to that some people in both categories probably did both, the number of people who solely played Femshep or only rescued Kaiden is probably small. Then out of that or any of the other things that may be decided, how many people will actually care? And by care, I mean will not go see the movie because of it.

Saren dies and causes Sovereign to die in everybody's playthrough.

I doubt they would make an ME movie at this point, but ME1 would not be that hard to put on film. You could not even address most of the choices from the game because they don't impact the first game aside from Virmire, and players clearly have a preference there.

I actually think ME1 could be compressed into a reasonably entertaining and complete 2-hour movie. Obviously the side missions have to go, but you could preserve the basic core of the game. First off, shorten up the action sequences to 5-10 minutes at a time rather than the longer stretches of running around and shooting in the game. Then break it down as follows:

• The Normandy launches and goes to Eden Prime to fill in the backstory, introduce Saren, and have Shepard receive the vision. Bring Liara in here, under the premise of the Council and Alliance recruiting her for her prothean expertise, and Shepard's squad finds her in the course of saving the colony.
• The Citadel investigation is mostly the same, with Tali, Garrus, and Wrex all coming on board and Shepard getting appointed a Spectre.
• The next mission is set somewhere along the lines of Noveria, with allusions to Cerberus and illegal experiments popping up, but instead of the genophage subplot, they find Saren attempting to breed an army of rachni drones at the Binary Helix facility. The STG show up and the same improvised nuke plan is hatched to wipe out the drones. Shepard obtains the cipher from the rachni queen instead of from Shiala, and the confrontations with Sovereign and Saren take place before the lab is destroyed.
• From here you can mostly continue with the game's timeline: Shepard's crew "goes rogue" to get to Ilos, they talk to Vigil, and they use the Conduit in order to return for the Battle of the Citadel.

ME2, if they did want to adapt it, would probably benefit from doing away with the whole "Shepard dies and comes back" thing - it seemed mostly an excuse to put Shepard with Cerberus, which was itself an excuse for being "darker and edgier." Instead, just send Shepard's crew off to investigate the colony disappearances with an assignment to bring in some additional off-the-books operatives so as to avoid drawing too much attention via reassignments of Alliance or other Council species soldiers. This could still account for pretty much all the ME2 crew except Miranda.

For ME3, I think the main changes to make (in addition to compressing the story, of course) would be to have the Reapers starting to cause trouble around the outskirts rather than have a full-blown invasion in progress, with the attack on Earth not beginning until closer to the end of the movie. For the missions, I'd focus on Sur'Kesh/Tuchanka, Leviathan, and maybe a combination of Horizon and Cronos. Instead of the geth and quarians going to war and the Reaper code upload decision, just have the geth remain non-heretic after the events of ME2 and show up to save somebody's bacon unexpectedly at some point.

It's a massive risk. Sci-fi is expensive to make, so I don't think Hollywood will risk it. Especially considering Mass Effect has taken a hit to its reputation in recent years.

There's plenty of popular novels and comics out there for Hollywood to mine so I don't think we'll ever be seeing ME on the big screen even if there's a sudden sci fi fad in Hollywood.

Exactly my feelings.  Whatever problems caused them to back away from doing a ME movie in the past is still there (cost, decent script, etc.) and they are now compounded by the hits the franchise has taken to it's reputation.  Those hits don't just limit the idea of making an ME:A movie, they affect any ME1, ME2, or ME3 movie as well.  My opinion (and it is just an opinion), the "taint" affects them all equally; it's only some people in the fan base that want to differentiate.  The general movie-going public won't make that sort of distinction.  If they do manage to pitch any sort of ME idea to Hollywood, where the rubber will hit the road will solely be based on the quality of that movie or TV series.  If it's good (i.e. much better than the average video-game movie), it will have a good impact on the prospect of future games.  If not good, it will be just another hit to the franchise's reputation.

For games that feel personalized, I have to say that I have little to no interest in any adaptation of it. It'd really have to be considered so amazing you might nerdgasm all over yourself when watching it, and even then I'd be pretty skeptical. It's that personalized feel that helps Mass Effect maintain that allure, like Dragon Age, and other games that follow a similar model. And to make it worse, the movie would lose so much of what made the world interesting, because it could never take its time to focus on the various histories of the setting.

As for how many people would go see it, the people who know or care about Mass Effect are likely a pretty small percentage of the population, so however many of them even refuse to go see it probably won't matter. Regular people by and large would just go see it because it's a big-budget action scifi movie.

Thinking more about this, part of me would probably enjoy seeing how people rip into the internal logic of the film adaptation, assuming it follows the same basic plot as the game. At the same time, I'd feel a bit sad to watch Mass Effect be affected by the same curse that dooms all video game movies to be turrible.