If the embed drifts off into time dilation, the gameplay demo is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_csy-zJhtM
A week after Electronic Arts closed BioWare and left the Mass Effect faithful staring at an empty galaxy map, a studio full of former BioWare people has put out forty minutes of something that looks remarkably like it. Archetype Entertainment has released a mission demo for Exodus, its science fiction RPG, called “Liberating the Kay”. It is very much a pitch to anyone currently writing petitions.
The Kay, according to Archetype, are “a species of Awakened frogs”. They have lived for generations on Khonsu, an orbital station that protects the player’s homeworld, Lidon, from space debris, and they seem to be born knowing how to keep ancient Celestial technology running, which is more than most of us can manage with a boiler. Khonsu is now under siege. The hero, Jun Aslan, asks Suliman Tenjin, leader of the Tenjin Dynasty, for help, and the price is a favour that drags Jun into a fight with the forces of Jun’s half-brother, Gideon Aslan, over who controls the station.
The choices are pure BioWare. Over the course of the mission you decide whether to give a valuable medipack to a wounded soldier, which annoys your new patron, or keep it; whether to buy an access card from a guard robot or simply take it; and, at the end, whether to sign the Kay over to the Tenjin Dynasty for generations or defend Khonsu without handing it over. Each decision moves Jun down one of two paths to becoming a Traveler, “the Paladin path, associated with virtue” or “the Immortal path, associated with ambition”. Or, as earlier generations of gamers knew them, Paragon and Renegade with a new coat of paint.
What makes Exodus more than a tribute act is its big science fiction idea. Travel between the stars causes time dilation, so friends and family back home age, or die, while you are away. That is the kind of hard SF problem most space operas quietly ignore, and it is no surprise to find a British name involved: Peter F. Hamilton is a writer and creative consultant on the game, alongside narrative director Drew Karpyshyn, who co-wrote the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Matthew McConaughey voices a character called C.C. Orlev, and he’d better be paid by the hour, given the time-dilation rate.
A correction for anyone who has lost track: Exodus is published by Wizards of the Coast, part of Hasbro. Co-founder James Ohlen stepped down as Archetype’s chief executive last December and stays on as a creative consultant. The game, built in Unreal Engine 5 and single-player only, arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on 7th April 2027. There is no price yet. The frogs, at least, look like they will be well worth the wait.
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