Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Exodus, the upcoming game made by former BioWare developers who worked on the Mass Effect series, was a long-awaited follow-up to the action RPG. Now, a new trailer has been released in Game Awards 2025 On Thursday night, it introduces the game’s characters, teases the stars’ extended backstory, and gives sci-fi players what they want most: news that the game will be released in 2027.
Exodus was first introduced at The Game Awards two years ago, and will be the first game from studio Archetype Entertainment, which operates under Wizards of the Coast. Early trailers laid the groundwork for the game’s world, a challenging sci-fi adventure where interstellar travel can take moments for one person or decades for another. Now that the game is close to release, I sat down with the Exodus developers to chat about what they have in store for their newly revealed hero, Jun. We also talked about companions, big choices, and Matthew McConaughey.
Chad Robertson, co-founder and general manager of Archetype, explained that McConaughey, who was previously confirmed to be in the game, plays a mysterious character named CC Orlev. It’s a combination of teacher and people’s voice, meaning players will likely hear a lot from the famous actor while playing as Jun.
“John does not fully understand the origins of how CC effectively came into his life. CC continues to serve as a mentor and advisor to John,” Robertson said.
McConaughey’s role in the hard sci-fi film Interstellar is thematically aligned with Exodus’ application of time dilation — the physical theory that when objects are traveling faster (such as a ship approaching the speed of light), time slows down for them. Since there are no wormholes or teleporters in the game world, explained Drew Karpyshyn, narrative director for Exodus at Archetype, players will have to make some difficult decisions. If they go out on a mission 10 years away and it takes 10 years to return, that’s 20 years on the planet they left.
“Everyone grows up. The world has moved on. Things have changed, and that sets up some really interesting opportunities and some really interesting conflicts and dilemmas for players to deal with, and the emotional impact of what happens to the people you leave behind — your friends, your comrades, the people you care about,” Karpyshyn said.
The Exodus occurs in the Centaur system and beyond, far from Earth.
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 its colony ships stagger when they arrive. Chris King, game director of Exodus at Archetype, explained that the most recent humanoids who created it, like Jun, were met by civilizations that evolved over thousands of years into other humanoids besides “awakened animals.”
“I think there are similarities to games we’ve worked on in the past, but there are a lot of things we do that are very different,” King said.
In the Book of Exodus, humans stagger through the cosmos, some arriving thousands of years after their ancestors had evolved.
The archetype relied heavily on players’ decisions in Exodus, which isn’t surprising considering its developers were behind BioWare’s choice-heavy games. Expect a lot of morally ambiguous choices in the game that won’t make everyone happy, King said. Players will just have to go on Exodus missions — titular sojourns that leave family and friends behind for years at a time — and see how they’ll play.
“For us, it’s all about trying to give players as much power as possible,” King said. “We view them as co-authors of the story and the experience.” “We’re basically trying to cram in as many choices and ancillary gameplay as possible so they can customize the experience and compare notes with a friend playing the same game. Their experience can be completely different.”
Unlike the pure good and evil options of games like Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, Karpyshyn said Exodus will veer away from a specific alignment system. There will be in-game mechanics that respect and reflect choices, though the developers are trying to avoid the artificial feeling of cherry-picking, say, goodness points in favor of choosing what’s best for their character. Gameplay options, interactions, and how players upgrade their hero will give them a good reputation.
Jun, the player character, will meet and bring companions with him during the game – some, but not all, of whom are romantic.
Companions also play a big role, and some of them will be romantic, but not all of them. In the new trailer, we meet Salt, an awakened octopus who pilots a mech suit and is simply not as interested in humans as 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 of these sci-fi elements into an RPG, it’s clear that Mass Effect’s shadow looms large over Exodus. How similar the new game is to its spiritual predecessor will become clearer as more is revealed, but the clear difference lies in the inspiration. In addition to Interstellar, developers Archetype looked to another popular sci-fi saga to model their new game after Frank Herbert’s epic Dune novels, which were recently adapted to the screen by Denis Villeneuve.
The archetype was particularly inspired by “the scope and timelines of consequences, the idea of bloodlines, family politics, and rising to become a leader and sort of savior of your people,” Karpyshyn said.
Interstellar travel is possible, but time dilation complicates matters – who are you leaving behind for years on a journey that could take only moments?
In Archetype’s studio space in Austin, Texas, posters line the walls from movies and media that also inspired the game, like Interstellar and Edge of Tomorrow. Other properties, like the trailer for Star Wars The Mandalorian, evoke the desperate battles players will find themselves in in Exodus – outnumbered, outgunned, and flanked by two of their comrades. The developers took a page from Horizon Zero Dawn’s initial combat as well.
For all they’re working to emerge from Mass Effect’s shadow, the developers acknowledge its impact on fans — and their desire for Exodus to rise to a similar place in players’ respect.
“Mass Effect comes up a lot for us. We humbly aspire to deliver something that will resonate with fans on the Mass Effect scale. We’re very excited and confident that what we’re building will put us in that direction, but we have to earn that with fans and deliver something they’re excited about,” Robertson said.