Now that Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out, it's the perfect time to comb through BioWare's trilogy and see what you missed the first time around. And if you missed an incredibly charming Easter egg in Mass Effect 3, don't worry — the rest of the gaming world did, too. After almost a decade, a BioWare developer has revealed how to meet a robotic rover on Mars, and once you know the secret, it's incredibly easy to do.
Information comes directly from Richard Boisvert, who was a cinematic designer at BioWare back when Mass Effect 3 came out. (He's now a technical writer at Epic Games.) Boisvert went on Reddit to explain how to find his well-hidden secret.
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"[Ten] years ago, I put an Easter egg in the Mars mission of ME3, and as far as I know no one ever stumbled upon it," he wrote. "At the beginning of the Mars mission, feel free to walk through the nearby solar panel array in the following way to see it." After the text, Boisvert posted a map. It's easier to just look at the map than to write out the instructions; you have to walk through the solar patterns in a very particular pattern.
Mass Effect fans in the comments have confirmed that the Easter egg works. After you make a loop through the solar panel array, you'll find yourself at the edge of a ridge. When you look down over the side of the ridge, a cute Mars rover with solar panels, treaded wheels and googly "eyes" will be staring back at you. The rover will give you a nod of approval for your efforts. That's the whole Easter egg. It's admittedly nothing huge, but then again, it's also not hard to activate, once you know the route to take.
YouTube channel xGarbett made a video showing how to find the rover.
The interesting thing about this secret is that it took almost 10 years to find. Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012, and in all that time, no one's ever discovered the proper path through the solar arrays. (Or, if they have, they haven't shared it with the rest of the Internet. And given how much Mass Effect fans love posting screenshots online, this seems unlikely.)
One fan did come close last year, however. Eurogamer points out that a Mass Effect player called Marcus Khaar found the rover on Mars, but only by playing with a mod that let him take the game's camera outside of its normal bounds. Up until today, there was no indication that players could find the rover through regular gameplay means.
In any case, Mass Effect 3 is a huge game, and stories like this suggest that it hasn't given up all of its secrets just yet. Perhaps there's even more to find in this expansive, recently remastered trilogy.
