The first episode of Halo is filled with nods to the legendary Microsoft shooter franchise’s online game roots and its wider lore from generations of tie-in novels and comics. But it additionally managed to sneak in a stunning little nod to a fellow sci-fi gaming icon—one which itself has been aching for an adaptation for nearly so long as Halo has.

Relatively deep into Halo’s first episode, “Contact”—because the UNSC resolve to go much more masks off about being the Bad Guys whereas interrogating the younger survivor of the episode’s Covenant assault, Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha)—there’s a really transient second of background chatter as ONI head Admiral Parangosky (Shabana Azmi) mulls over what to do with {the teenager}. As she glowers, over the intercom a UNSC officer makes a request… asking a Commander Shepard to go to a spot known as the Skillian Response Center:

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It’s very transient, and also you’re extra more likely to choose it up for those who’re watching Halo with captions on—however it’s in fact a really deliberate nod to Bioware’s beloved sci-fi motion RPG collection, Mass Effect. That ought to be partly apparent: Commander Shepard, customizable to be either male or female, is the principle character of the collection. But the second half of the Easter egg is an excellent deeper callout to the franchise for true Mass Effect diehards.

The Skyllian Blitz is an occasion in Mass Effect’s customizable backstory for Commander Shepard when a participant first creates their model of them within the authentic sport within the collection. An expansionary battle between Human navy and a conglomerate of alien pirates over a colony named Elysium, Commander Shepard’s navy historical past contains combating on the bottom in the course of the battle. If gamers choose the “War Hero” background for Shepard, then they singlehandedly held off a breach of defences on the colony by the pirates, rallying the colonists to repel the assault in flip, incomes a navy honor. If they select the “Ruthless” background in the meantime, it’s established that Shepard participated in a retaliatory strike on pirate bases after the assault on Elysium as a substitute.

But why is there a seemingly random reference to Mass Effect in an adaptation of Halo? Well, there was a quick time through which each sport collection have been really Microsoft-exclusive titles. The first Mass Effect was launched completely for PC and the Xbox 360 and revealed by Microsoft Game Studios in 2007—only a few months after the blockbuster launch of Halo 3 on the console. It wasn’t till Bioware was acquired the 12 months after by EA that Mass Effect would turn into a multi-console franchise, however even then, there’s all the time been an Xbox connection between the 2 collection.

There’s additionally the truth that arguably we’ve been ready as lengthy for a live-action tackle Halo as now we have certainly one of Mass Effect. In the years for the reason that latter’s debut, there have been talks of potential film takes on the setting, and late final 12 months it was revealed that Amazon is within the works to show Mass Effect right into a streaming TV collection, akin to Paramount’s plans with Halo lastly coming to fruition this week. Maybe it was only a nod from one long-awaited adaptation to one other but to come back. But hey, it’s not even Mass Effect’s first TV nod this 12 months—Shepard obtained an excellent sneakier nod within the remaining episode of The Expanse as an unseen soldier, ID’d on a computer screen! The good Commander will get round, apparently.

Halo is now streaming on Paramount+.

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