Beast Tribe Meta References

[Alleluia]

Specifically, I’m wondering is N-7000 in the Omicron beast tribe supposed to be a reference to Legion in Mass Effect? He greatly admired, and learned to live as more of an individual from, Commander Shepard; whose military designation was N7 and whose armor plating designating such was fused on to Legion’s body.

If it’s not Legion, is he a reference to something else I don’t know about? And are there other interesting nods to outside source material in the beast tribes that ya’ll can think of? Cafe at the edge of the universe being a giant Douglas Adams reference notwithstanding.

[Cleretic]

It's been mentioned in other threads, but the Omicrons seem to be sort of a mashup of classic TV sci-fi: there's a bit of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, a bit of the Borg form Star Trek, and a bit of the Cybermen from Doctor Who. It's hard to tell how much of that is intentional and how much is just being in the classic sci-fi headspace of Ultima Thule's whole thing, though.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

It seems to be really a mix of various Sci-fi novels as well.
For example, the Ea folks are definitely based off of The Starry Rift by James Tiptree.

[Zero-ELEC]

Also note most of the Omicron names are classifications of actual constellations. M-017 is Omega's name, and the IRL Omega Nebula is classified as Messier 17, or M17, for example. Most other Omicrons similarly follow the naming conventions of the various real life astronomical catalogues. N-7000 in this case would be the North America Nebula.

[Cleretic]

It seems to be really a mix of various Sci-fi novels as well.
For example, the Ea folks are definitely based off of The Starry Rift by James Tiptree.

Perhaps the most overt of these is the AR-Caean materials and sets, named after The Garments of Caean.

It's all something I really like about Endwalker and Ultima Thule especially, honestly: they could've gone for 'high fantasy goes to space' which Final Fantasy has done before, or for a much more 'real' sci-fi like you see from more modern games, but instead they did their research and came up with a sci-fi extension of the setting that's at about the same level of 'hardness' as the high fantasy setting we're mostly in. It's all very classically-minded, in a form that sci-fi rarely is nowadays.

[ArcaneFocus]

Perhaps the most overt of these is the AR-Caean materials and sets, named after The Garments of Caean.

It's all something I really like about Endwalker and Ultima Thule especially, honestly: they could've gone for 'high fantasy goes to space' which Final Fantasy has done before, or for a much more 'real' sci-fi like you see from more modern games, but instead they did their research and came up with a sci-fi extension of the setting that's at about the same level of 'hardness' as the high fantasy setting we're mostly in. It's all very classically-minded, in a form that sci-fi rarely is nowadays.

I thought AR-Caean's joke was that it sounds like "archaic."

[Brightamethyst]

Same. I assumed AR-Caean was just a play on the word "arcane".

[Geriel]

I'm just glad I'm not the only one who thought of ME when I saw N-7000.

[Alpheus]

There's a legally distinct N7 reference on one of the PvP GNB weapons if you look at the model. I imagine SE has a soft spot for Mass Effect ever since that DLC collab in XIII-2 (that N7 armor was even featured in that FFRK gacha as one of Serah's relic armors along with Noel's).

[kaynide]

A lot of the tribes have some tongue-in-cheek jokes going on. I can't remember all of them, but the recent Arkasodara has street racing jokes, gang turf wars, etc. Nothing overt that I noticed, but I'm sure there was a bit of Grease, or Fast and Furious in there somewhere.

I can't really remember the others, but there is always something.