'Mass Effect' TV Series Is In the Works At Amazon (variety.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: A "Mass Effect" TV series is officially in development at Amazon MGM Studios, Variety has learned exclusively. Daniel Casey is set to write and executive produce the adaptation. Karim Zreik will executive produce under his Cedar Tree Productions banner, with Ari Arad and EA's Michael Gamble also executive producing. Cedar Tree is currently under an overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios. Exact plot details are being kept under wraps. [...]
The first "Mass Effect" game launched to rave reviews in 2007. Since then, there have been three more games in the main series, with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" debuting in 2017. There have also been multiple mobile games in the franchise, as well as an animated film, novels, comic books, and other media. The story of the first three "Mass Effect" games revolves around Commander Shepard, a human soldier in the 22nd century trying to save humanity from a race of aliens known as the Reapers. "Andromeda" moved the games much further into the future with a new protagonist, with a fifth game also in the works. The franchise is developed by BioWare and are now published by EA. In 2010, EA announced plans to turn Mass Effect into a movie, but the project was later canceled. However, Ari Arad (known for co-founding Marvel Studios) led the initial effort and is now working to bring the film to life in this latest attempt.
The first "Mass Effect" game launched to rave reviews in 2007. Since then, there have been three more games in the main series, with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" debuting in 2017. There have also been multiple mobile games in the franchise, as well as an animated film, novels, comic books, and other media. The story of the first three "Mass Effect" games revolves around Commander Shepard, a human soldier in the 22nd century trying to save humanity from a race of aliens known as the Reapers. "Andromeda" moved the games much further into the future with a new protagonist, with a fifth game also in the works. The franchise is developed by BioWare and are now published by EA. In 2010, EA announced plans to turn Mass Effect into a movie, but the project was later canceled. However, Ari Arad (known for co-founding Marvel Studios) led the initial effort and is now working to bring the film to life in this latest attempt.
A better medium for it (Score:4, Insightful)
The rails in the games are obvious on the first playthrough - if they want to tell a linear story, television is a better medium for it than a videogame.
Re: A better medium for it (Score:2)
The linearity of the game is what keeps it interesting. Open world games just drag in and on while you stop to smell the procedurally generated roses.
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Hm, it was more like a beginning that's interesting, and ending that's interesting, and a middle that is a lot of boring side quests with no direction (that you have to do just to get the skills and gear to do the end game). Also elevator music.
Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I do remember the middle being a slog, then laughing when the anti-Starfield trolls would grumble about the boring planets looking all the same while praising Mass Effect :-)
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Having rails provides a direction so you don't end up with decision paralysis because there are just too many options to pick between.
Re: A better medium for it (Score:2)
You can't expect a girl to keep a figure like that for more than a few hundred years, be reasonable.
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It's not about the figure though. They made that specific character generally ugly AF overall.
Also in game it was even the onion thing on their heads which apparently got Turians all hot and bothered. As in literally everything about them was about making themselves sexually attractive to aliens. It led to an interesting discussion on if they're just fucking with our minds somehow to make us all be attracted to them.
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Maybe I played a remaster or something, none of the females were designed to be ugly in the game I played, unless you mean "video game ugly", as in any character that isn't a sex bomb must be a wokism? Skip forward to Mass Effect 2 with a new character that essentially is naked with a uniform spray painted on, the sex bomb, announcing clearly in the first two minutes that the game is male fantasy. Mass Effect 1 was a lot more balanced. The romance though didn't work, it was a military ship with military
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Uglification happened in Andromeda. And then remaster intentionally removed some of the most iconic sexually charged scenes from mainline games, cementing the reputation for "re-imagining for modern audience". Actual people behind both games talking to their friends at kotaku et al straight up telling that their main goal was things like fighting against the evil of male gaze and such just confirmed that infiltration and takeover of relevant studios was successful.
Good lord, I still can't stop shaking my ha
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Sometimes I feel like I don't play the same game others get. I just ran around shooting things with guns and talking to big robot machines. Who wants to fuck anything in a video game?
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On fucking in video games, porn games are a massive industry alone. Then's before the massive success of games like Baldur's Gate 3, where "romance" is all modern hookups. And yes, you can fuck a bear. Technically a druid in a bear form, but memes were hilarious. Then there's actual romance in video games, from likes of Mass Effect to Stardew Valley. In fact, one of the biggest mods for Stardew Valley is literally making everyone in the village fuck each other. You don't even get to participate as a charact
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I didn't even try to romance in BG3. I have a fucking worm in my head, I want it out, so no lady now is not the time to get down.
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Being on the verge of death is naturally very arousing for normally functioning males of most species. Fairly basic evolutionary psychology explains why.
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I guess i'm not normal. I've been on the verge of death for years now.
From the studio that brought you- (Score:2)
Re:From the studio that brought you- (Score:4, Insightful)
>The Rings of Power
I tried. I am not one of those "that doesn't match the book canon" types, I can handle a different interpretation.
The story just didn't earn my attention, and I got half-way through the penultimate episode and found I couldn't must the enthusiasm to continue.
When you're writing a prequel with mandatory major story beats, you have to be pretty damn clever to make it engaging, and whoever wrote this series was not up to the task.
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I'm in same boat. I didn't mind the compressed timeline (in book canon, the forging of the rings and fall of NÃmenor happen generations apart etc). However, since the plot is more or less given ("Bad Guy Wins"), then there should still be an engaging story.
However, what happens is that a bunch of wooden characters namedrop a few names known from books occasionally and otherwise...you just don't care. Battles happen, some romances happen, some supposed character development happens. And as a watcher, yo
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The Rings of Power
I tried. I am not one of those "that doesn't match the book canon" types, I can handle a different interpretation.
It's great that you're open to different interpretations -- flexibility is important, especially with adaptations as complex as The Rings of Power. In this case, Amazon actually *couldn't* tap into the full Tolkien lore. They only had access to the appendices from The Lord of the Rings books, which are more of a sketch than the deeply woven tales of, e.g., The Silmarillion. This lack of source material forced the writers to create new plots and characters to fill gaps, which may have impacted the depth and
Well Amazon has to do something (Score:2, Offtopic)
to replace all the revenue from stuff they import and sell
Since that will all go away when Trumps Tariffs take effect.
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I wonder what really happened between Bezos and Trump before the WP endorsement cancellation. Threats, most likely.
After all, Bezos might like a US in which he can treat his workers like disposable items and have no fear of legislation or court interference in that, but most of Trump's platform is more likely to hurt his bottom line than to help it and Bezos still fell in line like a good boy.
I really wonder what those threats were.
Re:Well Amazon has to do something (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats Marxism got to do with anything? There where literally no marxists running for the last election. I sure as hell didn't hear any talk of forcing companies to divest their ownership to their employees or devolving power to workers councils.
Can people stop throwing words like "Marxism" or "Communism" as if those words dont actually have real meanings?
And for reference, no Billionares don't become billionares through merit. They become rich, because they started off rich. For the most part. Working class folks dont get to be billionares, merit or otherwise.
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Marxism? What is it about MAGAism? Either you kiss Trump's ass, or you're a Marxist? We have no Marxists in American politics that people know the name of, because they're all so minor and insignificant that they never get out of their tiny fringe circle. No one that's an elected member of national legislative office, or state legislative office is a Marxist, period. Get a new dictionary already because yours is broken!
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You're projecting. "MAGAism" isn't an ideology. It's a political movement. It has everyone from sociial liberals, to religious conservatives, and everyone from tech bros to blue collar union workers.
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Yes, genocidal ideology is in fact genocidal, whereas movement without common ideology behind it is not.
Rather self evident from definitions.
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Green is an ideology. It champions mass genocide which they refer to as degrowth.
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Degrowth is a very specific thing that is a mandatory part of the ideology. Planting trees has nothing to do with it, just like Nazis pushing healthy lifestyles had nothing to do with Holocaust.
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I wouldn't worry too much. There might be a few cosmetic measures to save face, but if Trump actually tried to put tariffs in place on the scale he promised, he'd wind up just like his buddy Jeffrey Epstein.
Re:Well Amazon has to do something (Score:5, Informative)
What he's going to do is use tariffs to reward or punish those who kiss the ring or don't, respectively.
He'll have his DOJ kill off antitrust investigations against his donors and supporters, and initiate proceedings against his detractors.
To him, it will be targeted. For the rest of us, it will be effectively arbitrary, and it will affect left and right more or less the same, because we are mostly poor. The middle class has been eroded ever since its creation in this country and now it is nearly nonexistent. (Which is why it was a shit plan to campaign primarily to them, but that's another discussion.)
Something Else For Amazon To Fuck Up Entirely (Score:2)
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I don't think he expects to find them, even though he did in flashbacks. His current character is the world weary anti-hero type who's given up on just about everything except surviving, possibly to be redeemed through the love of a beautiful canine female. :-)
Easy pickings if they're not stupid (Score:2)
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I'm sure that "new audiences" will show up. Any day now.
They've been advertised for over a decade, but we just need to wait a little bit longer for them to get off twitter where they lionize the exact same thing you are, using exact same phraseology you are.
Which I'm sure is completely accidental.
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The story started strong but part 2 was weak and part 3 turned kind of cliche.
My guess as to what happened is they had a really killer vision in part 1. The subtle and quiet Lovecraftian themes were present mostly as foreshadowing and I have a gut feeling the original intent was for Shepherd to die at the end of the first episode. The lack of creative control led the primary minds behind what was an amazingly conceived story in the first one left, small themes remained in part 2 like Shepherd being killed
Sir Isaac Newton (Score:3)
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That had to be one of my favorite background dialogs ever.
Series based on Video Game (Score:2)
I'm commander shepard and I approve (Score:2)
50/50 chances here. (Score:3)
Based on their treatment of Fallout? Yes. Awesome. Bring it.
Based on their treatment of Rings and Wheel of Time? No. Stay away. Don't ruin another property's future prospects by being so shitty you turn off an entire generation of fans of the given genre from the genre itself.
Hmm. Maybe the video game thing will work in its favor?
Could be fun (Score:2)
It would be interesting if they went with FemShep instead of ShepLoo (I always played as FemShep... if I have to look at a tush in form-fitting armor it may as well be a nice one).
Either way, it would be a travesty if they don't cast Jennifer Hale as Shepard's mother, or Keith David as Anderson.
Duncan Jones (Score:2)
Would be a nice director for it.
I know, I looked up his bio and he directed Warcraft, but...
Before that he directed "Moon" (2009). It's an awesome movie and I think it has the EXACT mood of what I'd like to see in a Mass Effect show.
Just make the man to play the games before, please.