As it’s the national day of chocolate eggs (And something to do with a bearded guy coming back to life), and as such we thought we’d run through our favourite easter eggs and hidden secrets in gaming!
Mikey
Warden Quincy Sharp’s secret room in Batman: Arkham Asylum is definitely my favourite easter egg when talking video games. This secret room was hidden so well that even if you had completed the game to 100% and got the platinum trophy you still wouldn’t have come across this room. In fact I believe it was only discovered after one of the developers dropped a hint about it on a podcast! Once you finally break your way into the room, you quickly realise that’s it’s a cool little office that has big blueprints for Arkham City, perfectly foreshadowing the sequel. Top quality easter egg work there Rocksteady!
William
I love easter eggs – Both the chocolate and reference types. As for references though I’ve got nothing but love for the cheeky jokes in the Injustice games, particularly those aimed at Netherealm’s main series Mortal Kombat. Best example I can think of now is on the Gotham stage of Injustice 2 – During your battles you can hit a button prompt to round house your opponent into a cinema; there’s no limit to how many times you can do this but for the first three hits more and more letters fall from the sign until finally the ruins spell out “FINISH HIM”. A nice touch from a developer clearly proud of their work and a cheeky reward for spamming a mechanic!
Javier
One of my favourite easter eggs is actually in a very recent game, Red Dead Redemption 2 – I had helped some guy out and he asked me to take him home, instead of doing this I rode far into the distance, hog tied him and left him by a tree. On the way back I happened to come across a cabin which was full of dead bodies and odd texts… And at that almost exact moment a strange light (Assumedly a UFO) engulfed the cabin and genuinely scared the shit out of me; I later found out you had to go there at a certain time of day and I just so happened to arrive at exactly the right time. It was awesome as it was pure luck, and made the game slightly creepier.
Chris
My favourite Easter Eggs are actually when a dev leaves their unfinished stuff in a game! Sometimes, that leads to really mods by the community, using disabled official assets – In Fallout 2, for example, there’s a mod out there that re-enables various cut locations, like the Abbey, the Environmental Protection Agency HQ, and a few other places, including quests and items. Likewise with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, perhaps especially so – It is a renowned RPG, but a large chunk of it was unfinished, and unplayable, and it’s only thanks to efforts of people in the community (Like Wesp5) that the game is what it’s considered to be today (And why there’s a sequel coming out, in all honesty). There’s also dumb stuff, like the floating head in the hallway of the original Resident Evil 2, or being able to get outside the bounds in various titles. I think those unintentional treasures are especially neat, because they have the potential to not just enrich the game for a single player, but for everyone!
Colin
While FINAL FANTASY XIV is a fantastic MMORPG in it’s own right, creating its own world and lore, it is also a celebration of things from previous games which makes it a fantastic game to a FINAL FANTASY fan such as myself.
There are a slew of easter eggs and cameos which stand out and adds to the experience. Did you know that the first expansion, HEAVENSWARD, was inspired by Game of Thrones? It might be why narratively it’s fantastic and really stands out compared to the rest of the game, there are even some major deaths and dismemberments too!
In STORMBLOOD, Omega, who is a recurring sub-boss itself, has been creating life from stories in Eorzea and planned to pit them against the Warrior of Light – One of these beings included Kefka from FINAL FANTASY VI where the mechanics attempt to trick the player by using what they know against them!
If I had to think of a game that wasn’t FINAL FANTASY, though, I would be drawn to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Early on in the game, you find someones corpse wearing the Assassin’s Garb from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. They had jumped into a wagon full of hay as Geralt reacts with one line, “Hmm. Guess they’ll never learn”.
Ben
You can’t really think Easter Egg without thinking of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Zombies. Possibly one of the most confusing storylines ever created and pretty much entirely told through easter eggs in each map. For some people, this is an easy task running from location to location, ticking off the boxes untill an audio recording or a song plays. For me… Not so much.
Joe
Similar to Ben, I’ve been absolutely enamoured by the story provided by Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Zombies’ storyline – From the smaller easter eggs present in Der Riese to the dramatic finale of maps like Moon and Revelations, Zombies has had a long and successful life telling it’s narrative throughout various hidden means; to avoid duplicating Ben’s entry, however, I tend to lean towards the more humerous side of gaming easter eggs – From Gears of War 3’s various chicken weapons and Lambent chickens to Borderlands 2’s infamous Double Rainbow easter egg, one specific easter egg always stuck with me simply due to it’s effectiveness and simplicity:
