Amazon TV head allegedly orders Mass Effect show rewrite to make it 'more appealing to non-gamers'

Ah, the good old exec interference. Did they not observe how Fallout was a success for reasons of not INTERFERING?!

That worked out so well for Halo.

Ah, because forcing a videogame-based series to have "broader appeal to non-gamers" worked out so well for Halo...

Newsflash, the core audience for a videogame show is SciFi nerds and gamers that like the franchise!

Trying to please everyone will please nobody, and just alienate your core audience.

Oh god. They're gonna fuck this up, aren't they?

Because clearly, making a show less appealing to gamers and more appealing to non-gamers is going to improve the income generated by a show based on a game. Everyone knows that sci-fi viewers hate video games. /s

It was never gonna be about your Shepard/Ryder or your crew, it was gonna be about what they can sell to the board and an audience who are doom scrolling TikTok. Just play the trilogy again or Dragon Age or something. They’re not going to make us happy and they’re definitely not going to bring us more joy than the games have.

Hey, maybe the writers did do too much game experience, maybe:

• The first episode is just the protagonist trying all sorts of hairstyles, some multiple times before heading out.

• In a fight, the protagonist gets the upper hand when they make some weird movements near a wall and clip through it

• The protagonist strings every possible love interest along equally until the sex scene episode, where he keeps doing one thing for each one, having the sex, and then time restarts for the protagonist to do each one.

• A lot af airtime is taken up by the protagonist talking to every single charactery they see until the character says the same thing over and over to let the protagonist know they are done with everything they know.

• They have a tournament arc where a lot of the people sound like 12 year olds as they insult each other's moms and teabag a fallen opponent

I have no problem with them rewriting things; I think the press tends to give it too much importance. The problem is THAT reason.

In what universe would adapting a video game that's less appealing to gamers ever be a good idea? Who hires these people?

If only they knew it's already a series that appeals to non-gamers.

Aannndd with that, I'm not going to get my hopes up. I'm just going to assume it's trash and just play the games if I want to reexperience Mass Effect. Good luck to your rewrite, Jeff

TV execs ruining a show cause they don't respect the IP. Name a more iconic duo.

And chuds will blame wokeness for its badness...

You. Big. Stupid. Network Exec!

At first this was I thought this was a case of Amazon executives being a bit more "let eat cake" than Bethesda. But I was curious and the Amazon executive in question seems to be Peter Friedlander who recently joined Amazon.

In addition to being responsible for scripted series at Netflix for ~5 years, Friedlander was also a junior producer for Road to Perdition (2002), Mission to Mars (2000) and Reindeer Games (2000) back in the day.

Bloody hell, there goes that.

You'd have more success asking for a Star Trek episode or movie that "is more appealing to non-trekkies"

ME has a galaxy of potential stories without following Shepard, unironically just copy the best Star Wars did that wasn't an episode movie.

Yeah, sounds pretty bad for the show.
I like this article though, it goes above the grade and offers which games Bioware devs have been working on

You might find more cause for hope in the realm of off-brand Mass Effectlings: CRPG sicko studio Owlcat has a very Mass Effect-y Expanse game coming next year, Exodus is also set to launch in 2027 and has a lot of former BioWare talent, while even Star Wars Zero Company has a strong BioWare inflection to its pacing and squad interactions.