Exodus, the upcoming game made by former BioWare developers who worked on the Mass Effect series, has been a long-awaited follow-up to the venerable action RPG. Now, a new trailer shown off at The Game Awards 2025 on Thursday night introduces the game’s characters, teases the dramatic, star-spanning story, and gives sci-fi gamers what they want most: the news that the game will be released in 2027.
First introduced at The Game Awards two years ago, Exodus will be the debut game from studio Archetype Entertainment, operating under Wizards of the Coast. Early trailers laid the groundwork of the game’s universe, a hard science fiction adventure where travel across the stars can take moments for one person or decades for another. Now that the game is closer to its release, I sat down with Exodus’ developers to chat about what’s in store for their newly revealed hero, Jun. We also chatted about companions, big choices and Matthew McConaughey.
McConaughey, previously confirmed to be in the game, plays a mysterious character named C.C. Orlev, explained Chad Robertson, co-founder and general manager at Archetype. He’s a blend of teacher and voice of the people, meaning players will likely hear a lot from the famed actor during their playthrough as Jun.
«Jun doesn’t really fully understand the origins of how C.C. comes into his life, effectively. And C.C. still serves as a bit of a mentor and advisor to Jun,» Robertson said.
McConaughey’s role in the hard sci-fi film Interstellar thematically aligns with Exodus’ implementation of time dilation — the physics theory that as objects go faster (like a ship approaching the speed of light), time slows down for them. Since there are no wormholes or teleporters in the game’s universe, explained Drew Karpyshyn, narrative director of Exodus at Archetype, players will have to make some tough calls. If they head out on a mission that’s 10 years away and takes 10 years to come back, that’s 20 years passing on the planet they left.
«Everybody’s aged. The world has moved on. Things have changed, and that puts some really interesting opportunities and some really interesting conflicts and dilemmas for the players to deal with, the emotional impact of what happens to the people you leave behind — your friends, your companions, the people you care about,» Karpyshyn said.
Time dilation is just one of the mechanics that sets Exodus apart from other sci-fi games. In Exodus, humanity left an uninhabitable Earth thousands of years ago to find refuge in the Centauri system, but their colony ships staggered in their arrival. The latest humans to make it, like Jun, are met by civilizations that have evolved over the millennia into other humanoids alongside «Awakened animals,» explained Chris King, game director of Exodus at Archetype.
«I think there’s similarities to games we’ve worked on in the past, but there’s a ton of things we’re doing that are pretty different,» King said.
Archetype has leaned heavily on player decisions in Exodus, which isn’t a surprise since its developers were behind the choice-heavy BioWare games. Expect plenty of morally ambiguous choices in the game that won’t make everyone happy, King said. Players will just have to go on Exodus missions — the titular sojourns that leave family and friends behind for years at a time — and see how they play out.
«For us, it’s all about trying to give players as much agency as possible. We think of them as co-authors in the story and experience,» King said. «We’re basically trying to cram in as many choices and consequential gameplay so that they can customize the experience and compare notes with a friend who’s playing the same game. Their experience can be pretty drastically different.»
Unlike the pure good and evil choices of games like Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, Exodus will veer away from a specific alignment system, Karpyshyn said. There will be mechanics in the game that honor and reflect choices, though the developers are trying to avoid the more artificial feel of picking options for, say, goodness points in favor of picking what’s best for their character. Gameplay choices, interactions and how players upgrade their hero will give them a reputation.
Companions also play a big part, and some of them will be romanceable, but not all. In the new trailer, we meet Salt, an Awakened octopus piloting a mech suit who simply isn’t interested in humans like Jun. These companion characters have their own stories and motivations that players can choose to explore, and they won’t always see eye-to-eye with each other.
While we’ll have to wait and see how Archetype incorporates all these sci-fi RPG elements, it’s clear that Mass Effect’s shadow looms large over Exodus. How much the new game resembles its spiritual predecessor will be clarified as more of it is revealed, but a clear divergence lies in inspiration. In addition to Interstellar, Archetype’s developers looked to another iconic sci-fi saga to pattern its new game after: Frank Herbert’s epic Dune novels, which were recently adapted to the screen by Denis Villeneuve.
Archetype took specific inspiration from «the scope and timelines of consequences, the idea of dynasties, family politics, rising up to become a leader and sort of savior of your people,» Karpyshynsaid.
At Archetype’s studio space in Austin, Texas, posters line the walls from films and media that also inspired the game, like Interstellar and Edge of Tomorrow. Other properties, like the Star Wars show The Mandalorian, evoke the desperate fights players will find themselves in in Exodus — outnumbered, outgunned and flanked by a couple of companions. The developers took a page out of Horizon Zero Dawn’s elemental combat, too.
For all that they’re working to step out from Mass Effect’s shadow, the developers acknowledge its impact on fans — and their desire that Exodus rise to a similar place in gamers’ esteem.
«Mass Effect gets brought up pretty frequently for us. We humbly aspire to deliver something that will resonate with fans at the scale of Mass Effect. We’re super excited and confident that what we’re building is going to put us in that direction, but we’ve got to earn that with fans and deliver something that they’re excited about,» Robertson said.
