Mass Effect is one of the most beloved game franchises in recent memory, introducing players to an original, expansive and complex science fiction world over the course of its three games. Although fans were generally disappointed with the spin-off, Mass Effect: Andromeda, when it was released in 2017, the series as a whole has experienced a revival and re-entered the mainstream consciousness following the launch of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition earlier this year.
With the reintroduction of Mass Effect-related conversations on social media, developers and other employees who worked on the original games over a decade ago began to share some Mass Effect Easter eggs and previously unknown fun facts about the game, and fans also began to rediscover older tweets that had gone previously been glossed over.
One of these fun facts came from Jonathan Cooper on Twitter, who shared that the motion capture for the first Mass Effect game was shot in the same location as one of the Silver Screen’s most beloved classics, Gone with the Wind. Often considered a cinematic masterpiece, Gone with the Wind is a 1939 film that follows the life of Scarlett O’Hara, who lives on a Southern plantation during the American Civil War. The almost four hour runtime of Gone with the Wind is largely focused on O’Hara’s romantic life, although it is important to note that in a modern context, Gone with the Wind has quite a few problematic elements, including the stereotypical portrayal of Black Americans with characters like Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy.
Mass Effect’s Connection With Gone With The Wind
According to Cooper’s tweet from November of 2017, he flew to Giant Studios in the Culver Studio lot in Los Angeles to shoot the initial gameplay actions of Mass Effect in 2005. As fate would have it, this just so happened to be the original sound stage used for Gone with the Wind. Cooper also makes a joke that perhaps Gone with the Wind’s influence extended to the Mass Effect trilogy in more ways than one, also inspiring the well known and critically lauded romances in the beloved franchise.
For curious film buffs, other movies that were shot on the Culver Studio lot include the Skull Island scene in 1933’s King Kong, Carrie (1976), E.T. (1981) and RoboCop (1987), as well as Beetlejuice, Hook and The Matrix. Culver Studio has an enormous legacy in the film world, and while it may not say much specifically about Mass Effect’s gameplay and story quality, it’s interesting to know that the game was shot on the same hallowed grounds as many of Hollywood’s most influential movies.
