Famed actor, PC gamer, and sexy system builder Henry Cavill may soon be going to space—virtually, at least. The actor posted an image on Instagram earlier today with the cryptic message, "Secret project? Or just a handful of paper with random words on it.... Guess you'll have to wait and see."
But maybe not—running the image through a filter reveals a block of text with multiple references to Mass Effect.
The image is extremely blurry, but Gamepressure discovered that if you run it through Focus Magic and fiddle with the settings, you can extract some very meaningful words from that visible bit of text, including "Cerberus," "Tali'Zorah," and "Geth"—not the sort of language you're likely to see outside of the Mass Effect universe.
(And yes, I did run the filter myself, and the words come out clearly, so if this some kind of fakeout, it's a really good one. If you want to give it a shot, the Focus filter with Blur Width 18, normal noise removal, and highest accuracy gives good results.)
The site also realized that while the text in the image is incomplete, it matches up with a paragraph in the Mass Effect 3 Wikipedia entry:
"Following the events on Tuchanka and a failed coup by Cerberus to take over the Citadel, the quarians offer their support to the Alliance if Shepard helps them reclaim their homeworld, Rannoch, from the geth. Assisted by a quarian, either Tali'Zorah or Admiral Daro'Xen, Shepard boards a geth dreadnought and rescues a captive geth unit, either Legion or a facsimile occupied by a geth virtual intelligence (VI), then disables the Reaper control signal over the geth. Shepard then locates and destroys a Reaper base on Rannoch, which gives the quarians an opportunity to attack the vulnerable geth. However, the allied geth unit reveals that it intends to sacrifice itself in order to upgrade the geth using Reaper technology, which will enable the geth to achieve true sentience and free will, making them capable of defeating the quarians. Either Shepard negotiates a ceasefire to gain support from both sides, or is forced to support one side, which results in the other being completely annihilated."
It could be a hint that something is cooking—perhaps Cavill is lining up to take a role in the next Mass Effect game, which we know is in development, or maybe a new spin-off series on Netflix—or it might be nothing more than Henry having some fun with fans because he knows we're watching. I've emailed EA and BioWare to ask about what's going on, but we probably just have to wait and see.
