Festive Feature #5 – Top Five Easter Eggs of 2023

Each and every year, we dig through all the games (the ones that came out during the past twelve months), and try to determine the best Easter Eggs. 2023 has proved to be particularly challenging, for one simple reason: there haven't been that many Easter Eggs this year. At least, not many particularly good ones. Nonetheless, Easter Eggs we did find, and we did our level best to compile the best ones.

This is our final Festive Feature for the year, and we hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as we did putting them together. We'll be back soon with our Game of the Year nominations, before seeing out 2023 with the winners. But for now, we're off for the holidays! Hope you all have a great time. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us here at XBA/PST.

Battlefield 2042’s Mirror’s Edge Nod – Tucked away in the Season 4 ‘Flashpoint’ map, at the summit of a crane, is a very dicey Easter Egg, indeed. Dicey in the sense that it pays homage to another game made by DICE, Mirror’s Edge, but also in the sense that slipping in nods to other games is always a risk – as they may remind people of things they would rather be playing. In this case, we get a pair of blood-red running shoes, worn by Faith in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. It would have been slightly better if DICE had gone for the split-toe red-and-white number from the first (better) game, but you can’t have it all. Will we ever get more Mirror’s Edge, and will enough people care if we do? If not, cheeky nods will have to suffice.

Image credit: YouTuber ‘Captain Eggcellent’

Dead Space’s Sea Shanty – One duty of a good Easter Egg is to subtly puncture the fiction of a surrounding world. In this year’s remake of Dead Space, one such Easter Egg did just that – letting a breath of humour into the bleak and murky corridors of the game’s setting. ‘Wellerman,’ the sea shanty from Nathan Evans, which became a hummable internet hit, shows up here – with a twist. The developer, Motive Studio, rewrote the shanty to better fit the ship of the setting, the USG Ishimura. The result? The hero, Isaac Clarke, is treated to a ninety-second blast of spirit-raising song. Not only does the Easter Egg touch on a popular hit, but it strangely suits the world of Dead Space, while poking a hole in it and letting some fun leak in. What is the Ishimura, after all, if not an updated galleon, dripping and cramped, with all manner of nastiness shivering behind its timbers.

Image credit: YouTuber ‘Captain Eggcellent’

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Droid Life Drawing Class – This one is unafraid to get weird. As Cal Kestis, you will be more than used to shimmying through narrow passes of rock. One such passage, located on Kobo, leads you to a very strange sight. After shimmying for a few minutes (seriously, minutes) you will find yourself in a cave that’s host to a life drawing class, attended solely by droids, gathered round and trying their clanking little hands at some art. The subject? A Wampa, in all its fur-covered dignity, sprawled out in seductive fashion. Who knew? Droids have a soul, they want to make art, they want to capture life in the galaxy in a manner that doesn’t involve cages! The next time you see one of these guys out in the field, before you slash them in twain, think twice. You may be felling the galaxy’s next Picasso or Pollock. Roger, Roger!

Hi-Fi Rush’s The Evil Within Robots – Hi-Fi Rush was a welcome jolt, back in January, giving us a dose of high-fructose colour and showing us that the developer, Tango Gameworks, ought not to be boxed in to the horror genre. Having said that, Tango is clearly not one to spurn its roots. Hence the two HR robots – one of them trenchcoated, with a jaw of stubble-brown metal, the other short and bespectacled, with a blob of black hair. This pair is a nod to The Evil Within, specifically to its two protagonists, Sebastian and his partner, Joseph. Keep an eye out, too, for the little snail that lurks in numerous levels. He is notable for his hands and for the bright shape painted on his shell: it’s the Tango Gameworks logo. Is it a metaphor for game development, slow and slimy work, engendering salty responses, that makes you want to crawl inside yourself? Probably not.

Image credit: YouTuber ‘Captain Eggcellent’

Halo Infinite’s Golden Sandwich – What is it with developer 343 Industries and its fascination with sandwiches? In 2021, Halo Infinite played host to a giant sandwich, and in 2023, we had a golden sandwich you can use to clobber opponents in multiplayer. Found on the 'Forbidden' Arena Map added as part of Season 5: Reckoning, the sandwich is harder to find than the golden idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but melee the map’s floor sigils in the correct order, and, lo, you will find the glorious stack of bread, tomato, lettuce, cheese, and whatever, secreted in a chamber and placed carefully on a plinth. Take the glorious toasted lunchtime staple, and you can charge around walloping rival Spartans, dispatching them with a single hit. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but in Halo Infinite, the sandwich is mightier than... well, almost everything else, apparently. Will we have another sandwich-related Easter Egg from 343 next year? We can only hope.