The final, climactic battle on Sacrosanct in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy appears to be heavily inspired by the original Mass Effect‘s final confrontation with Sovereign and Saren on the Citadel Tower. Although the games are very different, and their universes only share a passing resemblance because of their interstellar civilizations, there is a surprising number of parallels between their endings. Mass Effect originally released in 2007 and 14 years later, the lead up to the fight against Grand Unifier Raker in GOTG feels like something of an homage to BioWare’s classic sci-fi RPG, only with a distinctly more cinematic flair.
After the Citadel’s biggest secret is discovered in Mass Effect, Commander Shepard has to confront the rogue Spectre Saren and the ancient Reaper Sovereign, who are attempting to take control of the massive space station at the top of Citadel Tower. In the middle of the long elevator ride to the top, Saren shuts down the lift, forcing Shepard and their squad to proceed on foot, walking along the Tower’s exterior in the vacuum of space. The player fights through legions of enemies as the massive Reaper looms in the distance
The final gauntlet of enemies near the end of Guardians of the Galaxy is tackled in almost the exact same scenario. While the eponymous heroes are tracking Grand Unifier Raker on Sacrosanct, a former mining colony that is now the headquarters for Raker and GOTG‘s Universal Church of Truth, their path is blocked by one of Lady Hellbender’s boarding parties crashing through the side of the giant vessel. Rocket leads the Guardians in a maneuver straight out of Commander Shepard’s playbook by stepping through a hole in the wall onto the exterior of Sacrosanct. This final battle has a similarly grand scale as that from Mass Effect, with players dwarfed by the massive structure they’re fighting on.
GOTG & Mass Effect’s Final Battles Have The Same Stakes
Both games, with their planet-hopping narratives, end up with the same consequence for failure – the indoctrination of the entire galaxy. The Reapers lean more heavily into the eradication of galactic civilization, but subsequent games will show that indoctrinating portions of species like Mass Effect‘s historical Prothean race is an integral part of their recursive, genocidal plans. Under the influence of Magus, the Universal Church of Truth is turning people into brainwashed husks by way of the Promise, a hollow lie that prays on the desire to be reunited with deceased loved ones. Although Magus is only killing those who refuse to succumb to the Promise, the outcome is essentially the same as Sovereign’s plan to topple interstellar society in favor of a homogenous collective.
The only major difference in the two climactic sequences comes from each game’s themes, and if Cosmo is saved from the Promise and weaponizes the Celestial head that houses Knowhere, both battles even have an astronomically ancient, bio-mechanical being involved. Despite Commander Shepard’s reputation as one of the Mass Effect series’ only known Spectres, most of the galaxy doesn’t believe in the Reaper threat. The Citadel Fleet is mustered to fight Saren’s legions of heretic Geth, but Shepard and two squad mates are closed inside the Citadel to thwart Sovereign practically alone.
Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, has a consistent theme of unification for a common cause. Much of the game’s narrative involves the Guardians themselves learning to become a better team, and even Lady Hellbender, a minor antagonist for most of the game, joins the fight against the Church. As such, the central heroes are surrounded by the simultaneous space battle in the climactic trek along Sacrosanct’s hull, rather than isolated from the warring fleets inside the closed arms of the Citadel. This leads Mass Effect to have a looming, ominous atmosphere in its final chapter as opposed to Guardians of the Galaxy‘s more bombastic approach, but the two climactic battles are still remarkably similar in structure.
