How Amazon’s Secret Level Distills Your Favorite Games Into Short TV Show Episodes
New World: Aeternum, Amazon Games’ MMO, is set during the Age of Exploration, on an island where no one can die–but immortality isn’t always a gift. For some, living forever leads to madness, while others lose their souls. Some corpses are long since hollowed out but live on, unable to find peace.
That idea gets pretty dark pretty fast, but in the episode of animated anthology series Secret Level that’s based on New World, the focus is on a slightly different take on the material.
“[New World: Aeternum is] not quite as light as [the episode] presents it,” said New World: Aeternum narrative director Rob Chestney, during a question-and-answer session with press following a recent screening of Secret Level’s first episode. “We talk about it as grimdark. We talk about it as supernatural, rather than fantasy.”