When playing Mass Effect, you had the option of going to a series of random planets and preforming side missions. These missions were never of the quality of the main missions (either in story, visual fidelity, level design or gameplay ingenuity), yet they gave the game world a sense of bredth and depth that the core game levels did not provide. They were essentially the matte painting behind a movie set changing what you see from a sound stage to an amazing vista.

In videogames little touches can elevate games from being meerly good to being great (or from being god-awful to acceptable). Some would be termed Easter Eggs, but all add a certain je ne sais quoi to thier game worlds. Here are my top five little touches that make the games they appear in great.

5. The awakened eye

In Super Metroid the game opens with Samus escaping an exploding space station. Soon after she makes her way to the planet Zebes, which seems abandoned at first. Making her way through the creepy, almost haunted looking empty corridors, it becomes clear that she’s re-traversing the escape route she took away from the planet at the end of the first Metroid. Upon claiming the Morph Ball enhancement, the level backgrounds begin to pulse to life and surveillance eyes start to track Samus’ movements. Enemies don’t attack until she has retraced her steps back several screens, but the build up to the attack is much more intense because of the background details showing that she has been noticed.

4. They spent time on this?

This next one is on here mostly because it’s so inexplicable. In the 1998 Square RPG Xenogears, certain portions of the game have an intense level of detail to them, specifically the market that appears about 7 hours into the game. In the market there are many extra curricular things you can do, from playing hide and seek to buying a balloon for a small child. If instead of giving the child the balloon you instead leave the area, when you appear on the map screen it shows the balloon flying away. This attention to detail was fairly amazing in 1998, especially considering that the last 10-15 hours of the game essentially consisted of an unfinished story walkthrough with little to no gameplay involved.

3. Mixing pills is bad

Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit everywhere outside of North America), had many exquisite details that fleshed out the world, for example when you’re tired and late for work, you have to press two buttons to get out of bed: one to sit up, and another to actually get out of bed. The best example of a little detail in the game is early on when the main character is bumming around his apartment. You can take a swig of alcohol and then chase it with some painkillers. The interaction will kill you.

2. The End waits for no man

Like Indigo Prophecy the Metal Gear series is filled with little details. One of the most notable was in Metal Gear Solid 3. When fighting the ancient boss The End, if you start the fight, save and then wait a week (in real time as denoted by the PS2’s clock), the boss will die of natural causes. Also their’s a scene earlier in the game where The End is being moved in a wheel chair. You have a split second in which you can shoot him, if you do so, you don’t have to fight him.

1. Clouded soul

Shadow of the Colossus is one giant little detail. In addition to the main character getting slightly darker and more demonic after each colossus is defeated, there’s a change to the environment around you as you beat each giant. It isn’t something that most players pick up on at first, but if you look into the sky you can see the sun shining down upon the earth, each in a place where a colossi fell. Each light beam is a small thing by itself, but as they add up, the foreboding over your ethical course increases.