The Internet realizes that the introduction of Mass Effect is Top Gun 16 years later

2 weeks ago

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On the left, a standard male Commander Shepard is shown cautiously looking at something off screen, while Pete "Independent thinking person" Mitchell is seen giving a thumbs up to the camera while in a plane on the right. — *Mass effect* and *Top gun* have had the same text intro all along.

The original Mass effect comes on its 16th anniversary this year, but even now new secrets are being revealed about BioWare’s sci-fi RPG. That’s because series director Casey Hudson has confirmed that the first game’s iconic lyric intro is actually an homage to the 1986 movie Top gun.

Hudson revealed this on his personal Twitter after a fan pointed out the connection. Both Top gun and Mass effect have a lyric intro that sets the stage for what’s to come. In the game of BioWare, the opening explains the discovery of alien technology that enabled humanity to travel through space. In Top gun, the text describes the establishment of the air combat school in which the film is mainly set. Both texts end with a similar line leading to the title card:

“The civilizations of the galaxy call it… Mass effect‘ and ‘These days the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: Top gun”

Yesterday a Twitter user with the username @MissSnizabelle posted about the obvious parallels between the two intros, but Hudson this morning responded with a quote tweet confirming that this was an intentional reference to Top gun all the while, saying, “Finally someone noticed this! I’ve been waiting so long…”

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Hudson is no longer with BioWare, having left the studio for the second time following a stint with the studio’s general manager in 2020. He then founded Humanoid Studios, which is working on a new sci-fi IP.

The Mass effect series has started a bit of a revival lately, with the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters bringing the original trilogy to modern hardware and a fifth entry in the works at BioWare. The studio has not yet said anything substantive about the game, but has offered teases every N7 day short. What remains to be seen is how it will handle a return to the Milky Way galaxy after the divergent endings of Mass effect 3and the thought that BioWare might choose an ending as canon after making an entire series about player choice and agency keeps me up at night.