Mass Effect is 15 years old and you’d be forgiven for thinking that every nook and cranny of that game had been examined with ten magnifying glasses because the Mass Effect fanbase seems to miss nothing or at least they used to not miss anything. The original trilogy was recently remastered in 2021 which saw a sleuth of new players experience the game for the first time along with veterans of the trilogy diving in once again to the galaxy that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition had to offer.
One Easter Egg that wasn’t noticed until recently, or at least acknowledged publicly, was the similarity between Mass Effect‘s intro and Top Gun. Twitter user Snizabelle recently posted a screenshot of both openings to note the comparison. To their surprise, this was likely the first time someone had ever posted the comparison because the project director of the original Mass Effect trilogy, Casey Hudson took to Twitter to say “finally someone noticed this! I’ve been waiting so long.”
Both the intros to Top Gun and Mass Effect are extremely similar in their wording and format. Top Gun‘s intro reads “Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: Top Gun” while Mass Effects reads “They called it the greatest discovery in human history. The civilizations of the galaxy call it… Mass Effect.”
When you read them side by side it seems blatantly obvious but that just makes it all the more extraordinary that it was never really discussed before. This may not be the case either as many people took to Hudson’s replies saying how they had always noticed that but never felt the need to share their discovery online. The release of Top Gun: Maverick only last year probably resurfaced the comparison for a lot of players as with the legendary edition as well it only meant more people were destined to notice at some point.
The references to popular cinema don’t stop there in Mass Effect however and it’s well worth diving into the trilogy to experience them yourself. Also, the story and world are fantastic. This is also the perfect time to get into the trilogy as the series is set to receive a new entry at some point in the (hopefully) near future. The Mass Effect Legendary Edition is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.
