Mass Effect attraction coming to California's Great America in 2016

California’s Great America and Electronic Arts (EA) are teaming up to create a first-of-its-kind guestexperience at Great America. The dynamic new attraction will feature settings and characters from EA’scritically acclaimed Mass Effect™ videogame series developed by BioWare™ and will open next season in a newly renovated Action Theater.

This exciting guest experience involves cutting edge technology customized for Great America and delivers 4D effects combined with a live performer and incredible special effects.

Great America guests will be taken on a thrilling adventure across the galaxy where they will travel through awe-inspiring landscapes, face off against bigger than life adversaries and ultimately help save the day.

“Teaming with a world-wide gaming leader like EA will enable us to build an incredible user experiencefor Great America guests,” said California’s Great America Vice President and General Manager Raul Rehnborg. “This combination of technology and creative video game content is sure to usher in a new wave of entertainment innovation at amusement parks.”

“EA and BioWare are thrilled to partner with Great America and see one of our most iconic games turned into an exciting high-tech attraction,” said Patrick O’Brien, Vice President of Entertainment and Licensing, EA. “Having a partner who shares our commitment to thrilling our fans is extremely important to us and we look forward to building an attraction that will appeal to the Mass Effect fan-base and introduce it to many more.”



Read the original story at CAGreatAmerica

Knott's News: Anyone who knows me knows that Mass Effect is one of my favorite video game series of all time. To many, Mass Effect is the video game equivalent of Star Wars. To others, it's deep lore and rich characters go beyond what Lucas himself calls "kids films" and the Star Wars comparison offends them. I fall into the second category.

So when I read the headline that a Mass Effect attraction was coming, I was beyond excited. Then I found out that it was in Cedar Fair's hands, of all people, and I immediately felt suffocating disappointment.

Hear me out, I love what Cedar Fair has been doing with Knott's since Matt's arrival but what I want - and what many fans assume they're getting when they read the headline - is a Wizarding World / Star Wars Land-esque immersive experience. What they're gonna get instead is a mass (wink wink) produced 3D film that'll go in the ever rotating Action Theater to replace Happy Feet. When the Cedar Fair license is up, we'll most likely see this in every Six Flags, mall and Casino you can think of. What this means is that we won't see much theming outside the entrance sign.

Hell, I probably have more Mass Effect theming in my room with my 1/4th scale Garrus statue (for interested fans, you can pick one up HERE) and the accompanying blue LED lights I affixed him with to give it a deep space atmosphere.

So, what can we expect exactly? Well they say the theater is receiving a renovation  which usually means additional 4D effects. They also say there will be a live performer in the room, which means it'll be like T2 3-D at Universal Studios, only with a single performer instead of a group (probably just someone in N7 armor, a...commander of sorts). Other then that, we can expect the Action Theater to look and behave the same.

Thus far, no other details have been released, leaving one to speculate. Is SimEx-Iwerks handling the distribution? Will the awesome people at Blur Studios be handling the content, since they have experience with both theme park attractions and Mass Effect? 

For reference, here is an example of Blur Studio's promotional work on Mass Effect:



And here's a trailer for the latest installment in the series coming out holiday next year, Mass Effect Andromeda, running on EA's Frostbite graphics engine:

I know this isn't Knott's related but you're gonna get updates regardless.