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0 Exodus, the upcoming sci-fi RPG from Archetype Entertainment, has received a new gameplay trailer. Since being revealed at The Game Awards 2023, the team at Archetype have diligently been releasing lore info and teasers via videos, blog posts, and even a pair of novels by Peter F. Hamilton. I’m really intrigued by this potential contender to Mass Effect, and the gameplay trailer has amplified this further.
I’ve been meaning to cover information around Exodus for a while, so bare with me while I give you some brief background on the project and lore.
The Exodus
Following the decline in habitability of Earth, humanity construct ark ships to set sail across the galaxy in search of a new home. A portion of the ark ships arrive in the Centauri cluster 16,000 years later and send the Green Signal to other ships, telling them it’s safe to arrive. Over the course of the next 6,000 years, these early settlers evolve into several trans-human species, collectively known as Celestials. These Celestials continue to evolve and dominate the new systems in the Centauri cluster over tens of thousands of years. Empires rise and fall, and unfathomably advanced technologies are both created and lost to time.
Due to time-dilation, ark ships receiving the Green Signal arrive thousands of years later. Humans who arrived after the evolution of the Celestials have not necessarily found a warm welcome waiting. These humans eventually settle a world and start to gain a foothold in the cluster, but the threat of extinction from the Celestials, who see humanity as nothing more than an inconvenient reminder of their past, looms ever large.
Become The Traveler
In Exodus, the player takes on the role of Jun, descendant of legendary Traveler Orion Aslan. Lidon, your home world, is dying — infected by an ancient Celestial techno-virus, known as the Rot. Your father, Orion, had realised that stopping the Rot was beyond the capabilities of any mere human. Therefore, he and your mother Ava, a Celestial, resolved to have a child, genetically engineered to bridge the gap between the species.
As a Traveler, your job is to explore worlds and unearth technology of past civilizations to aid humanities survival. Using these Remnants, maybe you can level the playing field in Centauri and give humanity a fighting chance. As a human-Celestial cross, you have the unique advantage of being able to interact with these strange technologies. These Remnants can be devastatingly dangerous, though, and many Travelers have lost their lives pursuing them. With the potential power of creation and destruction, the benefits of securing even one surely outweighs the costs?
Sacrifices
Every mission will require sacrifices and incur consequences. Your biggest enemy of all is one you cannot see or escape, time. Travelling on the edge of light-speed creates time dilation — a day for you might be decades back home. With every Exodus mission you take on, life moves on without you. Your actions will have impacts that span millennia and affect your entire species. You will need to live with those repercussions and the knowledge that you must leave loved ones behind to secure the future.
Sounding Familiar?
Exodus shares a lot of DNA with Mass Effect: Andromeda. The concept of humanity escaping the Milky Way, encountering advanced species inhabiting their destination, along with a strange environmental threat, features heavily in Andromeda. As does the concept of a special human tasked with finding humanities way forward, blessed with the ability to interface with ancient alien technology. There’s even a Mass Effect Relay equivalent in the Heavens Gates.
This is maybe not entirely surprising, given the team at Archetype is partially made of veteran BioWare staff. I’m not able to see if any were involved directly with ME:Andromeda. However, as that game was released in 2017, and Archetype was formed in 2019, it’s possible there’s some crossover between the two.
I really don’t mind any of this. Andromeda was overly criticised when it released, mainly due to issues with the Frostbite engine that made graphics a little janky. Having played through the game this year, I found it to be mostly enjoyable and a decent expansion on the world of Mass Effect. It looks like Archetype are really expanding on the foundations of the Andromeda story but ramping up the scale significantly. With the legendary Drew Karpysyn at the narrative helm, I’m confident we can expect great things.
So, Gameplay?
We’re roughly a year out from the initial reveal, so it’s nice to finally get our hands on an Exodus gameplay trailer.
The unique selling point of Exodus is definitely the time-dilation mechanic. It’s going to be fascinating to see just how far they can push this in terms of freedom and consequences for your choices. How different is each play through for each player able to be?
Alongside that, you can expect action-packed combat, facing off against multiple enemy types as seen in the Exodus gameplay trailer. These include Awakened Animals — technologically advance creatures sometimes used for military purposes — and Ghosts — mechanical constructs created by ancient Celestials to wage war on seemingly impossibly large scales.
Choice-based RPG staples are also present, with companions and a branching narrative featuring heavily. I’m a big fan of making difficult decisions in narrative heavy games and feeling the weight of those decisions impact the world around me. I also love to build relationships with companion NPCs, so I’m hoping for some well-developed characters.
Dig Deeper
Check out the Exodus gameplay trailer below, and visit the website, to uncover more information about the game. You can also sign up as a Founder until August 30th and receive additional in-game items on release. The website contains tonnes of in-universe history and lore that will give you a better understanding of the world of Exodus.
The first tie-in novel, The Archimedes Engine, is also out now if you want even more content to sink your teeth into. The second novel, The Helium Sea, is not yet dated.
I really hope we see more of Exodus, and maybe even a release, in 2025.
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