The numbers are in, and The Wheel of Time is officially one of Amazon’s most successful shows to date. While streaming companies are notoriously cagey about disclosing viewing numbers, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke recently told Deadline that “[The] Wheel of Time was the most watched series premiere of the year and one of the Top 5 series launches of all time for Prime Video.”
It should come as no surprise then that Amazon is looking to keep expanding its roster of science fiction and fantasy shows, since they’re obviously serving the studio well. They’ve currently got The Lords of the Rings and more seasons of The Wheel of Time and The Boys in the pipeline, as well as the final season of The Expanse, a space opera that Jeff Bezos personally fought to bring to the studio after it was cancelled on SyFy.
Now, The A.V. Club reports that Amazon Studios is nearing a deal with EA Games to adapt yet another beloved space opera: Mass Effect.
What is Mass Effect?
Mass Effect is currently comprised of four mainline games: the original trilogy, which was released from 2007-2012; and the somewhat maligned Mass Effect: Andromeda, which came out in 2017. It seems a safe bet that if Amazon is adapting the show they’ll be primarily looking at the first three games, which are still widely regarded as some of the best storytelling that’s been done in the video game medium — so much so that developer Bioware released a total remaster of them in May 2021: Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.
Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 were some of the first video games to truly tap into the idea of allowing players to carry their choices (and the consequences) between games, providing an immersive experience that was somewhere between a choose-your-own-adventure story and a top tier AAA RPG.
The games follow the adventures of Commander Shepherd, the first human Spectre (think military secret agent with carte blanche to get the job done) in a galaxy filled with alien races and ancient mysteries. After discovering that a race of powerful robots called Reapers are returning to the Milky Way to purge it of all intelligent life, Shepherd and his/her crew of alien comrades must fight to unite disparate factions in time to face the threat. The games excelled in their worldbuilding, complex politics, deeply developed characters, and morally difficult situations.
Why Mass Effect is a good fit for Amazon
Really, it’s no surprise that a studio like Amazon is looking to adapt Mass Effect. (In fact, we called it over a year ago.) The story told in those games is as good or better than the average TV show or movie franchise by quite a significant margin. There’s a reason the games have had such staying power that we’re still talking about them a decade and a half after the original released. The fact that it’s such a recognizable brand with such a massive fan base can only be good for the studio; just look at the fan response to The Wheel of Time, another established story.
Only time will tell how this one goes. Personally, I hope that Amazon opts to make an animated series in the vein of Netflix’s Arcane. The sheer amount of unique aliens would just be so easy to mess up in live action, and I don’t think my heart could bear to see Garrus Vakarian and the other Turians looking like something out of a B horror movie.
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