When I traveled to Archetype Entertainment’s headquarters in Austin, Texas last month to preview the studio’s debut title, a sci-fi RPG called Exodus, I had no idea what I was in for, although I did have an inkling that the game may not be quite to my taste. Prior to letting us get our hands on the game, Archetype co-founders (and former BioWare veterans) Chad Robertson and Drew Karpyshyn mentioned that Exodus featured talking animals. Internally, I groaned.
I’m generally someone who can look past talking animals in a fantasy setting, but I draw the line at sci-fi. According to Robertson and Karpshyn, Exodus isn’t just science fiction–it’s hard science fiction, and its world follows the laws of physics and nature. Humanity cannot travel faster than the speed of light, they cannot traverse low-gravity environments without magboots, and yet, somehow, I’m supposed to believe that the game’s protagonist, Jun Aslan, can communicate with certain animals. I’m also not supposed to find it painfully corny when he does so, or the animals talk back. For me, that’s a pretty tall order.
So no one was more surprised than I was when, at the end of the preview’s two-hour playtime, I found myself locked in a genuinely gripping boss fight with an enormous, talking grizzly bear–a task I only took on in the first place due to the fact that I had recently become very emotionally attached to a clan of talking frogs. But we’ll get back to Exodus’s talking fauna in a minute, because the unhinged bear fight at the end of the level certainly wasn’t the only aspect of the game that had me transfixed. What drew me in first was the story itself.
In Exodus, players step into the shoes of the aforementioned Jun Aslan, a resident of the planet Lidon. Lidon was terraformed by a race called Celestials: mysterious, ancient, high-tech beings who serve as the game’s main antagonists. Unfortunately, a technological blight called The Rot–which also seems to be the work of Celestials–is putting life on Lidon (and many other planets) at risk. The good news is that Jun (who can be played as a male or female character) has been genetically engineered to interact with Celestial technology. The bad news? Jun’s father has gone missing, and in his absence, Jun’s half-brother has overtaken Lidon, forcing Jun into hiding.
I previewed a two-hour mission set somewhere near Exodus’ midpoint, so by the time I met Jun, he’d already assembled a team, acquired a spaceworthy ship, and was well into investigating The Rot on Khonsu, an orbital space platform floating above Lidon. Khonsu is home to the Kay, a race of talking frogs who provide maintenance to Khonsu, which in turn serves as a shield protecting Lidon from meteors and other space debris. Everything was just peachy until some jerk (which seemed to be Jun’s brother) arrived on Khonsu, attacked The Kay, and imprisoned any survivors.
Presuming that the game’s intriguing atmosphere would soon be ruined by the presence of talking frogs (and probably some cringey, MCU-style dialogue to boot), I was determined to absorb as much of the pre-frog game as possible. I explored every inch of every room on Khonsu and chose my dialogue with care. But before I’d even encountered the aforementioned race of ribbit-less frogs, two things had caught my attention: the way Exodus looks, and the way its characters made me feel.
The game’s beautiful graphics were what first caught my eye. The world of Exodus is equal parts breathtaking and foreboding, with structures that appear unfamiliar and alien, yet still draw you in, beckoning you to explore deeper while making it clear that you’ll find danger if you do. But what really impressed me were the characters themselves, and I’m happy to report that the game’s NPCs can smile without showing me every single tooth in their head. In Exodus, characters move naturally, with lots of little mini-movements and micro-expressions that make them feel alive. In one tense scene, an NPC’s lips drew up into a lopsided, mischievous, and surprisingly human smirk as she considered Jun’s very reasonable request to please not blow Something Very Important to smithereens. Later, Jun’s companion, Suliman, shot him a sly little grin that oozed romantic tension. At no point did anyone make a strained grimace in lieu of a facial expression.
Because the preview did not include any of the game’s introductory levels, I didn’t get a whole lot of background on Suliman, but that didn’t stop him from stealing the show in every scene he made an appearance in. Based on some dialogue exchanges, it seems that Suliman may have helped Jun out after he was forced to go into hiding–rather than Suliman joining Jun’s team of misfit heroes, it appears that Suliman recruited Jun (after several months of secretly surveilling him). Jun is affiliated with a secretive organization called The Ravens, and while it’s not exactly clear what The Ravens’ purpose is, I imagine membership requires one to be skilled at both spying and stealing hearts. I was impressed by how quickly Suliman won me over and experienced a little hit of dopamine every time I made a dialogue choice that resulted in a “Suliman approves” notification popping up.
Of course, I’m not surprised that a studio co-founded by the minds behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Inquisition is capable of producing a compelling game with an interesting narrative and lovable characters whose approval players are eager to earn. What I am surprised by is the way consequences work in Exodus. While certain decisions may earn you companion approval in the short-term, their long-term effects are often dramatic and hard to predict, because unlike many other sci-fi RPGs out there, wormholes and warp drives don’t exist in Exodus, so Jun and his crew cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
There also appears to be some sort of black hole involved, resulting in gravitational time dilation–what feels like a few days for Jun and his crew are months, if not years, for everyone else back home. Unlike RPGs in which the consequences of your actions are usually quite immediate, the effects of the choices you make as Jun play out across generations, sometimes impacting entire civilizations. This can make certain choices more complex. Things aren’t as simple as just picking whatever dialogue option will make a particular companion like you more–because entire worlds are at risk with every decision you make, there’s a lot more at stake here than romance or friendships.
You can see this dynamic of societal consequence and companion approval play out in the Exodus trailer unveiled during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live. In the trailer, players meet Salt: a highly intelligent long-range combat specialist who pilots a mech suit and also happens to be a talking octopus.
As the trailer points out, three years in the field for Salt is equal to 87 years passing on her homeworld, which can obviously have heartbreaking consequences. For some of Jun’s team members, saving their civilizations from The Rot may mean they’re away so long that there no longer exists a home for them to return to. If this tear-jerking setup sounds oddly familiar to the plot of Interstellar, that’s no accident–Chad Robertson told me the Archetype team took a lot of inspiration from Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi hit. The team also borrowed Matthew McConaughey, who serves as a sort of spectral mentor for Jun, appearing as a ghostly cowboy and offering advice in his southern drawl. McConaughey didn’t make an appearance in the part of the game I played, though he can be seen in Exodus’ announcement trailer.
Many modern games struggle with something I call The Intellectual Property Problem. Games based on a beloved, pre-existing franchise must live up to the (often sky-high) expectations of their fanbase, while also trying to avoid repetition and staleness. On the other side of the coin are games based on a new, original IP, which has no built-in fanbase to capitalize on. These games may struggle to establish a strong identity, or feel too similar to games based on other, more established IP.
Exodus deftly sidesteps both issues in a way I’ve never quite seen before. Rather than digging up some unclaimed, pre-existing sci-fi IP to base the game on or simply dreaming up an entirely new one, Archetype developed Exodus alongside sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton, who released Exodus: The Archimedes Engine in 2024 as part one of a sci-fi duology. While working on the second book, Hamilton worked with Archetype’s development team to bring Exodus to life both on the page and in-game.
Exodus’ combat, too, is engaging. Jun has several special weapons and skills–including the ability to control a rocky substance called livestone, which can unlock hidden areas and speed up traversal. While there wasn’t much opportunity for me to explore things like the game’s skill tree, combat felt smooth and satisfying. Gunplay, too, feels great–there’s a noticeable difference between firing an energy weapon as opposed to one that fires regular ol’ bullets, and both are easy to get the hang of and control.
In addition to weaponry, Jun also has other special abilities that seem to stem from his specially engineered DNA (or from that time he touched a magic space rock, which is becoming a rite of passage for sci-fi game protagonists at this point). In addition to gear like a grappling hook, Jun also has Batman: Arkham Asylum-style “batvision,” allowing him to see highlighted items that may be worth interacting with–these items can even be seen through walls, making it easier to discover hidden loot caches and solve environmental puzzles.
Jun is agile and can easily dodge in combat, reposition behind cover, and return fire, though he will understandably be slowed down a bit when running around in low-g environments. His companions, too, have their own abilities that players control via a combat wheel, much like in Mass Effect. Suliman, for example, can cloak himself in some sort of techno-camouflage, then deliver a deadly stab to the backs of unsuspecting enemies. Salt can deploy an inky substance that blinds enemies and gives her time to retreat and reposition.
Speaking of Salt, I guess it’s finally time we addressed the (talking) elephant in the room: The Awakened, AKA the genetically altered talking animals players encounter all over Exodus. Despite the outright goofiness of it all, Exodus manages to make these encounters work. Thanks to great writing, voice acting, and animation work, I quickly transitioned from, “That’s an octopus in a mech suit, how weird,” to, “That’s an octopus in a mech suit, her name is Salt, and if anyone hurts her feelings I will kill them.”
The first Awakened animal I met in Exodus was not Salt–it was a member of the Kay, the clan of talking frogs. I was fully prepared to find these guys annoying as hell, but they took me by surprise. The first one I encountered was clearly a child, so I couldn’t be too annoyed with her. I later bumped into a Kay named 42C, who has a fondness for human music and was not at all amused when I changed the station on a nearby radio. 42C was greatly amused, however, when a legion of Celestial enemies descended upon me shortly thereafter, leading to an intense (yet genuinely funny) combat encounter with a killer soundtrack.
But what really caused me to change my tune when it comes to talking animals was the encounter with the bear. As I ventured deeper into Khonsu, Suliman and I encountered an antagonistic human with a very large grizzly bear, who observed the ensuing argument, but did not (or perhaps, could not?) verbally engage. For all his charisma, Suliman didn’t manage to end the encounter with the human peacefully, and this understandably pissed off their furry companion. But instead of yelling at Suliman–like I would expect from a character as goofy as a talking bear–the creature rose up on its hind legs, and let out a fearsome roar.
Oh s***.
The cutscene transitioned to a combat encounter, and a horrifying sight appeared at the top of my screen: a sizable health bar with the words “Captain Irina Bruin” hovering just below it.
Not only was this an Awakened bear who definitely could talk, Suliman and I appeared to have pissed it off so much it preferred to communicate by roaring and trying to eat my face. Even worse, this talking murder-bear had a name and a rank. I pissed off the captain of talking murder-bears.
This moment–and the ensuing boss fight–were an enlightening glimpse into the kind of game Archetype is cooking up: something gripping, emotional, clever, and refreshing. Yes, the animals talk, but each species speaks differently, and does so in a way that makes you think, “Yeah, that’s totally what this frog would sound like.” Exodus’ talking animals are deployed sparingly, and encounters with them feel special–even intimidating–rather than ridiculous or out-of-place. Like everything I saw during my two-hour preview of the game, Exodus’ talkative furry friends (and foes) fit seamlessly into its world alongside humans and Celestials.
“We didn’t want to make Rocket Raccoon,” Archetype general manager Chad Robertson told me when I asked him how the Exodus team managed to implement talking animals into a hard sci-fi game.
When speaking about Exodus, Robertson and Archetype co-founder Drew Karpyshyn didn’t shy away from identifying their sources of inspiration, which include Interstellar, Star Wars, Dune, and of course, Mass Effect. But Exodus never feels like a rip-off of the media it draws inspiration from. Instead, it feels like a breath of fresh air in a genre that has seen a lot of repetition. From what I saw in the two hours I spent in Jun Aslan’s magboots, Exodus is a game that pays homage to the works it draws inspiration from, but it stands easily on its own two feet, and seems to have tapped into something many new IPs struggle with: a coherent sense of identity.
Exodus launches on April 7, 2027 and is available to wishlist now on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
