7. Fallout 4 hints that it shares a universe with Skyrim
via Sabreshark
Though they publish other titles under their banner, Bethesda Game Studios proper is known for two things: the Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Lately they've been alternating between the two, and it's worked out pretty well for them (and for us). Even though the setup for each franchise is somewhat the same when it comes to size and scope and even some of the mechanics, the real differentiator here is the setting. Fictional worlds don't get much more different than Skyrim's dragon-infested fantasy countryside and Fallout 4's mutant-ridden nuclear wasteland.
These storied universes have their own history and lore, so we absorb them as separate entities. But if this new easter egg in Fallout 4 is any indication, the Wasteland and Tamriel might be one and the same. The big hint comes on the Prydwen, the Brotherhood of Steel's big-ass JRPG-esque airship. Down in the science lab, you can see the product of an experiment on a series of plants.
The botanist who worked on this particular set of flora is no longer around (more on that in a sec), but the plants seem awful familiar. In fact, they look strikingly similar to an herb called Nirnroot in Skyrim.
Maybe you could switch it around and say that Nirnroot looks a lot like the "Experimental Plant," albeit with a much more natural color. But hey, maybe Bethesda was just kind of lazy and reused some leaf models for this thing and recolored them to cover their tracks? That might be the case, if it weren't for the log entries on a nearby computer in the Prywden lab.
One of the logs notes that the Exprimental Plants only grow by the river, which is suspiciously similar to the Nirnroot, which "grows only by the water." It's also worth noting that both plants glow -- while that's not necessarily crazy in either universe because of magic and/or radiation, it's noted in the Fallout 4 logs that the experimenter is "100% sure it's not radiation, but bioluminescence" causing the aura of the Experimental Plant. The logger also wrote about the restorative properties of what they called the "Glowleaf," a healing trait it shares with the Nirnroot. To cap it off, each of the entries is labed with "NRT." You know, like NirnRooT.
So is Skyrim a prequel to Fallout 4? Not exactly. Remember, the Brotherhood created this plant in its experiments, so it couldn't have been around during Skryim's era... which implies that the two are actually switched around. The Elder Scrolls games are sequels to the Fallout games. Everything we might consider "magic" in the game is probably a result of thousands upon thousands of years of radiation. Hell, for all we know that dragons are basically flying Deathclaws. Following that logic, this would make Skyrim the scariest game ever made.
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops III takes creepy statues to a whole new level
This isn't the first time a video game has referenced Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, but it's probably the most terrifying. We already covered how The Witcher III has a short sequence in which statues follow you around, but only look away. It was a reference to the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who; if you're not familiar because your friends won't fucking shut up about the show and you refuse to watch it out of spite, the Weeping Angels are demons who take the form of classy stone statues. They won't attack you unless you're not looking at them, and when they do they'll send you back in time and feed on the life you would have lived. It's a disturbing reference wherever it pops up, but Call of Duty: Black Ops IIIfound a way to make it even worse.
See, the futuristic shooter has a map called Nuketown, a remade map of a remade map that has historically taken place in a fake city used for nuclear testing. Previous versions of Nuketown were complete with mannequins that were supposed to represent the civilian casualites of a triggered nuke. In Black Ops III, these mannequins are now creepy-looking androids straight out of I, Robot. You'd be forgiven if your first instinct is, say, going around to each of the stationary mannequins and shooting their arms off.
But doing that might be a mistake. Because upon dismembering the last mannequin, something changes. Don't worry, it's not you -- it's them.
Yes, that mannequin magically has arms once more, but the more important thing is that it lashed out at the player who brutalized all those display models. Every second you spend looking in the other direction is one second these mannequins are desperately trying to reach you in an effort to fuck you the fuck up. Whenever you turn around, you're bound to see a handful of the raging robots mid-stride, a snapshot of their seething hatred for you and presumably all humanity.
Keep your back turned too long and your pursuers can and will succeed in murdering you for the no-good, dirty synth-hating scum that you are. Don't worry, the mannequins won't attack you unless you attack them first. The good news is, you almost definitely probably don't have to worry about this happening in real life. It's not like there's a killer mannequin behind you right now. You don't have to look.
But it probably wouldn't hurt.
5. Star Wars: Battlefront pays homage to a classic movie mistake
Whatever your feelings on EA's new Star Wars: Battlefront relaunch, it's tough to argue with the insane attention put into the audio/visual details. The graphics are spectacular, and the sound design is second to none; when Darth Vader chucks a piece of Rebel scum into a TIE Fighter, it looks and sounds exactly like Darth Vader chucking a piece of Rebel scum into a TIE Fighter. In a way, video games have already peaked.
That love and respect for Star Wars can even be found in cutscene backgrounds. GamesRadar whipped up a handy video demonstrating this fact.
See what happened? Under the AT-ST, where that huge, unmissable orange arrow is pointing? It might be a bit hard to see, so let's take a closer look.
Yes, that Stormtrooper bumped his head on the stairs. This act of slapstick was almost certainly not a glitch, given the Stormtroopers' well-known history of bumping their heads in the background. As many fans will have figured out by now, Battlefront managed to sneak in a hidden reference to this moment in A New Hope, when some poor extra conked his noggin on the set door.
It's nice to know that some things never change.
4. Developers won't stop teasing Half-Life 3 in other games
I'm not sure if we can even call it a running joke anymore. The long (possibly eternal) wait for the next episode of Valve's epic first-person shooter has been going on so long that we're beyond funny and into some sad delusion. When we make fun of Half-Life 3, it's like insulting a ghost or criticising a good episode of Roseanne after they win the lottery -- there's no point in ribbing something that doesn't exist.
Even though Half-Life 3 jokes are so old that most of the originals are written in Latin, some developers haven't stopped hiding these winks to Gordon Freeman's vaporware adventure. We can only imagine that these are post-modern/ironic Half-Life 3 jabs. Like the one in 2015's Mad Max game, for instance.
It can't be that simple, can it? The dismembered arm holding a crowbar right next to the number "3" is so obvious that there has to be some sort of context that we're missing here. Could it be that Mad Max is on a mission that takes him to a part of the wasteland where old jokes go to die? Maybe if we looked around the corner we'd see the dessicated corpses of Pizza Rat and Left Shark?
Sometimes the reference is so blunt it turns a corner from being hackneyed to funny again.
The screen above, from the epidemic simulator Plague Inc, is so jam-packed full of blatant HL3 references that it's kind of impressive. Though gibberish on its own, it's less than trivial to single out the phrase "half-life of 3 years," not to mention the two mentions of "valves." Fun fact: If you read this out loud, your voice will always sound like the annoying guy from The Big Bang Theory. No, the other one.
At least the excellent SteamWorld Dig put some artistry into their version of the gag.
Though set on a dusty planet rich with minerals, it doesn't become super clear that the planet in SteamWorld Dig is actually our own until you run across the "GameGo" graveyard. A line of skeletons are camped out in front of the used video game emporium, which is clearly advertising HL3. What works about this one is that it's unclear whether the world ended just before the game in question came out, or that these poor souls had just formed a group naturally over time, together in their unfulfilled wish of another Valve game with real single player content.
There's subtlety, there's nuance, and then there's three crowbars on the ground under a valve in Battlefield: Hardline.
And with that, I think we can safely say that Half-Life 3 jokes are over, and no one ever needs to put a crowbar in their game ever again.
Half-Life 4 jokes, on the other hand...
3. Play Duck Hunt in Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm
via Elvinelol
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games (aka MOBAs to the non-crotchety) are essentially a new type of game, a genre that didn't and couldn't exist 30 years ago. It's easy to dismiss games like League of Legends as something for "those weird kids who like to watch other people play video games on the internet," but it's important to remember that the people who make these games grew up playing the same stuff as you.
No clearer is this than in the easter egg for Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm. Sometimes known as "the accessible MOBA," HotS allows players to pit heroes and villains from games like Diablo and Starcraft against each other like mismatched action figures, presumably in an effort to some day make them kiss. New characters are added all the time, and with them, sometimes new secrets. Such was the case withKharazim's update, which saw a hidden Duck Hunt-like game added to the title screen.
Clicking on some of the trees in the background will activate the quick minigame, which tasks you with shooting flying birds with just five bullets. Fail, and Diablo III's Treasure Goblin will rise from behind the foilage to cackle at your ineptitude. The resulting blind rage should feel familiar to anyone who has tried in vain to kill that god damned laughing dog.
2. Just Cause 3 is packed to the brim with silly secrets
When people think of the Just Cause series, well, it probably involves several GIFs of a psychopathstrapping rockets to innocent civilians. To be fair, that's a pretty decent representation of the series. But apart from the zany "GTA in a Foreign Country With a Jetpack and a Wingsuit" antics that now dominate the franchise, each game has also had its fair share of neat easter eggs. In Just Cause 2, for instance, players could find a mysterious hatch in the ground that was suspiciously like the one from the TV show Lost.
Just Cause 3 really took its easter egg game to the next level, both in quantity and quality. Above you can see what is almost definitely Thor's hammer Mjolnir, found in a crater much like the one seen in the Marvel films. That's not even the only piece of iconic weaponry just hanging out in the Medici countryside.
Yep, that's the impossibly huge Buster Sword belonging to none other than Cloud, the angsty hero from Final Fantasy VII. JC3 and FF7 both happen to be Square-Enix joints, but we'll chalk that up to coincidence. Especially when developer Avalanche proved that they wouldn't shy away from paying homage to other franchises, like Stargate. Remember Stargate? Someone at Avalanche did, so much thatthey put a real working Stargate into Just Cause 3.
No joke, this thing actually lets you follow in the footsteps of James Spader, teleporting you across the map after via a Windows 95 screensaver.
The references aren't even entirely for sci-fi nerds, either. Avalanche made sure to cover fans of "Seinfeld but with way worse people" with a cameo from Green Man of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It's a wonder that the dev team were able to add in all of these cool extras, but unfortunately, some of it probably comes down to cold hard economics. Putting in these kinds of easter eggs means getting coverage from websites like Dorkly. While it's clear that these clever references were made from a place of reverence for the source material, no doubt there's a sales spreadsheet somewhere that justifies the time and money spent on these shenanigans with a memo note that includes the phrase "viral marketing."
At least they've proven that they know the internet. That's why one of the dress textures in the game is this abomination:
You might have spent the last year of your life trying to repair the personal relationships that were destroyed by "The Dress" in 2015. If you've just gotten out of prison, The Dress incident centered around a badly-lit picture of a piece of clothing that had a strange optical illusion. Smart and attractive people the dress as white and gold, whereas the world's population of god damned liars saw the dress as blue and black. I guess we know which side the developer landed on.
If that wasn't enough internet for you there's always Doge Mode.
You're seeing that right. By leading a special puppy to his home in-game, you unlock a special mode, which adds colorful text like "MUCH COOL" and "VERY BOOM" to your chaotic rampages -- which is, of course, the dialect of the infamous doge. As the internet might say: It's an older meme sir, but it checks out.
1. Battlefield 4's biggest secret is almost unbelievable
When it comes to ridiculously convoluted easter eggs, Battlefield 4 is operating on another plane of reality. The maniacs at DICE might be the most diabolical devs in gaming -- and this is an industry with a secret that won't unlock for 100 years in real life. Maybe even more impressive are the die-hard, dedicated and somewhat screwloose fans that cracked this seemingly impossible code. The whole ordeal is a full-fledged gauntlet of scavenging for clues, breaking codes and solving riddles, and it probably should never have been completed.
As YouTuber jackfrags notes in his comprehensive guide, everything starts on a newer map, Dragon Valley. A remake of an older map, DV focuses on a group of Chinese buildings nestled in the mountains. The smattering of changes to the map are expected, with the exception of an odd skull on one of the posts.
This is, of course, a sign. Hang out long enough and you'll start to see a nearby lantern start blinking.
Because you've been briefed about the codebreaking nature of this easter egg, you'd be right in assuming that this is Morse Code. After translation (it's also in Belarusian, by the way), the message reads: "Did you miss me? Good Luck. JJJU." It's a special message from one of the developers, a particularly devious chap that has been responsible for past easter eggs in the series. This message is merely the beginning, like the weigh-in before a boxing match -- though in this case, the developer is Muhammad Ali and you're a toddler holding half-inflated water wings.
As it turns out, JJJU has tucked away several switches throughout the map. Most of them are in tricky but not unreasonable places, like under the lip of this treebox.
Each of these buttons makes a different number of lights turn on and off around the temple. You know this puzzle. You've played it before in multiple games that span generations; Tiger Electronics even put it out as a standalone toy. All you have to do is pay attention to which lights the corresponding switch affects, and then plot out your moves in such a way that all the lights are on.
Well, first you have to find the switches. In total, there are seven switches, each tougher to find than the last. One will be hidden in a furnace, and another on a pagoda. But the most ridiculous switch has to be the one that is INSIDE one of the many many trees on the map. To access it, you have to fly a helicopter up and land on the side of a mountain, then blow up the tree.
This is just mind-boggling. Not only was the developer brutal enough to squirrel away the switch in a tree in a normally-inaccessible area, but at least one fan out there was dedicated enough to spend untold amounts of time to find that switch. But hey, at least these diehards did all the work for you, right? All you have to do is hit the switches in the predesignated order that these suckers toiled for hours to find out? Well, no. What lights the switches affect actually changes in every server, which means that the solutions you find online are probably not going to work for you. If you want to really solve this puzzle, you're going to have to do it yourself.
The reward for this sadistic scavenger hunt? More riddles, of course. After all the temple lights are turned on, a keypad appears on a post next to that skull. Hitting the keypad makes the lantern start blinking once again. Yep, more Morse Code.
Thankfully, the message that the Morse Code spells out is the same for everyone, so you won't have to wait the full four minutes for the letters to spell it out. Here, jackfrags has done the work for you.
So you have to find something at nighttime near an old factory. Easy enough -- the only map that satisfies those requirements is Zavod, which has a night version along with a abandoned factory.Going up to the tip of the map near the "North woods," and you find this big rock.
The trick here is to lean into the rock, because of course that's the first instinct of all humans when trying to solve an elaborate puzzle. When you do so, you hear a strange voice mumbling garbage through what sounds like the slow-mo function on a TalkBoy. The internet heroes that banged their head against this puzzle managed to manipulate the sound so that it was somewhat legible, revealing what sounded like a simpleton singing "I've got little birdy legs." This is a reference to a classic Battlefield Friends video, in which a simpleton does indeed sing "I've got little birdy legs."
So uh, what are we supposed to do with this? Well, looking back at the message, we have to "multiply the letters of the longest word and the one after it." Meaning we have to multiply "little" and "birdy" together. Since the message specifically says "multiply the letters" and not "multiply the words," it means that we have to change each letter into the numerical equivalent -- so A is 1, B is 2, etc. That spells out to: 12 9 20 20 12 5 x 2 9 18 4 25, which equals 83980800000. Inputting the answer into that keypad next to the skull, and you get... sigh... more dagblasted Morse Code from that infernal lantern.
This time the Morse Code comes much faster, and is a good deal harder to nail down. This is the gist of the message:
This is it. This is the last step on your journey before you claim what could only be a cash prize in at least six figures. All you have to do is follow the instructions: Wait two minutes at the water tower, click one of those stupid switches, and then punch in that code into the nearby keypad. And then you get your reward in your inventory:
It's... a camoflauge skin. A white, textureless set of camo that will make you more visible on most terrain. But hey, you're in good company at least -- up until the reveal of this easter egg, only developers at DICE had access to this skin. It's a badge of honor, something that tells everyone "I solved a ridiculous riddle so that I could look cool while being mowed down by everyone in a 500 yard radius." When you see that camo in the field, you know that someone worked hard to get it, and you know that they know, and they know that you know that they know.
The camo is rarer than you might think -- read that message carefully and you'll note that it asks you to use your individual code. As in, no two codes are the same. As in, if you want that camo, you've got to learn Morse Code yourself to translate your own specific set of digits to unlock your reward. It might be a little bit easier to commend the dirty bastards at DICE for setting up such a crazy easter egg, and to praise guys like jackfrags and other internet heroes for figuring it out so we don't have to.
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