Amazon Prime Video’s long-in-development Mass Effect series has reportedly been ordered to rewrite scripts in order to appeal to a non-gaming crowd, but I’m just hoping it does so in a Fallout way and not a Halo way.
As reported on by The Ankler, Amazon’s new head of global television Peter Friedlander is apparently waiting until script rewrites to properly give the Mass Effect series the crucial green light it needs to enter proper production. The report claims that the sci-fi show is on “the verge” of being green lit, but the Amazon TV boss wants rewrites to make it “more appealing to non-gamers” first.
There’s no word on exactly which parts of the script Friedlander thinks could use some work, leaving the show’s production and fans still eagerly awaiting Mass Effect 5 in an uncertain space.
Mass Effect inherently seems like the sort of universe that’s rife for a small screen adaptation. There’s juicy political drama, multiple steamy romances and possible love triangles, lots of action, some devastating tragedy, and a sprinkling of comedy. It’s almost Game of Thrones but with aliens, and there’s nothing much in BioWare’s RPG that I imagine is inaccessible to your regular Prime Video audience – unless they turn Mordin’s song into an episode-long musical, which I wouldn’t have a problem with.
Regardless, if Amazon is dead set on smoothing out Mass Effect’s gamey edges, I hope the show writers follow Fallout’s lead by remixing what made the series special in a visual format rather than Halo’s lead in just, urm, slapping game iconography on top of an otherwise unrelated sci-fi story.