I don’t think they’re making one just yet, but given how successful the series is, I often fear that they will someday. And when that day comes, I will cry softly.

First thing, allow me to make it absolutely clear how much I love and adore the Mass Effect series. The third game isn’t even out yet and I already know that it’s one of the best video game series of all time, bar none. By the way, this is coming from someone who usually gravitates towards fantasy over sci-fi and is way too obsessed with a series of ancient computer games based on Dungeons & Dragons. Space operas are not usually my bread and butter. But Mass Effect is just that good. It resonates with me in emotional places I didn’t even know I had, it has utterly masterful plotting and characters, it’s visually stunning, and it’s even making its creators bushels and bushels of money.

That said, here are three reasons why nobody should ever, ever make movie versions.

1. They Won’t Be Any Good

It’s no secret that video game movies are bad. They just are. We all know it. Somewhere between the fun of watching a hero have adventures, and the fun of guiding an avatar through adventures, is an unfun wasteland of lame where all movies based on video games dwell in misery.

Many of the problems here are obvious. A person playing a game finds it fun to do certain repetitive tasks, but that same person watching a movie would get bored and frustrated if the film’s hero did the same. I wouldn’t watch an action movie where the hero just hides behind cover and spends their time alternately shooting at people and throwing glowing things at them, but I’ll spend hours doing that myself in Mass Effect. Which is as it should be, because the fun of the game is that you’re doing it.

Time is another stumbling block. A movie is designed to take up about two hours, while a game is designed to take up weeks of real time. No movie could cover the same ground a game does. Bioware games have excellent stories and rich characters, which might seem to make them suited to cinematic adaptation. However, the problem is that they have too much of both for a single movie to handle. Sure, if Hollywood made it they’d probably make it a trilogy, but the game’s already a trilogy, so you’re still stuck trying to stuff dozens of hours’ worth of content into a tiny two-hour thimble. You can, of course, cut out a lot of the game’s filler (Mako, anyone?), but the fact remains that the plot and characters were designed with the intention that they would have plenty of time and space to grow. Movies don’t have that luxury, and trying to shoehorn in a story originally created for a longer-running medium almost always results in a mess.

I just don’t have faith in Hollywood to make a video game adaptation that doesn’t fundamentally misunderstand what people liked about the original franchise. They just don’t get video games, they don’t want to, and as long as the people who make games and the people who make movies exist in two entirely different camps, there won’t be much of a marriage of the mediums.

2. Canon Shepard is a Dumpster-Faced Lunkhead

This reason could technically be part of the first one, but I’ve singled it out as it’s likely the most important. I know Bioware constantly insists that there’s no “canon” Shepard, but that’s bull. We all know that if they make a movie we’re going to end up with this guy, probably played by Christian Bale:

See what I mean? The bald head, the five o’clock shadow, the dead eyes, the neck like a ham haunch? He’s a Space Marine. Invented specifically so that 14-year-old white boys can pour themselves into him and vicariously shoot aliens and touch boobies, he has no personality. He is not my Shepard. He isn’t a lot of people’s Shepards.

It’s not just that I’m upset that there’s no way they’d make a Shepard who resembled my female space warrior of justice, the Shepard who means so much to me. Well, that does really get to me. But it would also bother everyone else who has played the game. Because the beauty of the original game, something lost in film, is the fact that each of us gets the opportunity to make Shepard our own. Every person who has played Mass Effect has played a Shepard who was the true reflection of their inner hero, whether male or female, white or black, subtle or forceful, kind or ruthless. Make Shepard “officially” someone else and you take that away from us. It taints our experience of this story to paint some meathead in the place of the person we chose to represent us.

While I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant about how much I hate Space Marine protagonists, it does apply here, as movie Shepard would indeed be a dumpster-faced lunkhead. You know they’d do it. They’ve been doing it to everybody lately. But applied to a video game hero who was initially customizable, it would be egregious.

3. It’s Just Not the Right Choice

I don’t count myself among the naysayers who proclaim that no good video game movie will ever exist under any circumstances (although I find myself inching closer to them on a regular basis). I think that there are some video games that could lend themselves well to film interpretation.

Mass Effect, however, was already created to have a cinematic feel to it. The cut scenes, the dialogue, the way the camera moves during character conversations-–all of it was supposed to invoke a feeling of a seamless story like that of a film. It makes the games great, immersive to play and incredibly fun. It’s also the same thing that makes a movie adaptation pointless. What could a film version hope to bring to a story that was already told with all the style a movie would have, plus the player choice and interactivity a game needs? It could only possibly take away excellence from the story as it was told before.

People are excited about the Bioshock movie, and you know what? That could actually work. From the original game, you have a story that’s simple enough to fit a movie’s running time, but unique enough to hold interest. You have a fantastic world chock-full of iconic imagery and great opportunities for characterization. There are places where a movie could tell you more, where the game left some blank space that a film interpretation could expand on. It’s a good choice.

Not that I’m convinced it will be good. The history of video game movies is a history of failed ideas, whether or not those ideas could have worked in theory. But enough about the Max Payne movie. I really need to get lunch.