Exodus, the sci-fi role-playing game that looks more than a little like Mass Effect, has had its release pushed back a bit. It’s now expected in early 2027 rather than 2026.
Developer Archetype Entertainment revealed the early 2027 date at the end of a new Exodus trailer aired at The Game Awards. Exodus, remember, stars Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey in his first video game role. The video showcased the game’s main character Jun Aslan and outlined his overarching task to find the right ship and the right crew and save the world. It’s a montage of gameplay footage that seems visually improved from the Exodus reveal trailer aired last year.
Prior to The Game Awards, I attended a press presentation for Exodus to learn more about the game, which I’ll share fuller thoughts from soon – particularly as it relates to the game’s key point of difference: time dilation.
As a teaser: “As you progress throughout the game you will go on missions where you leave the world. And as we’ve mentioned, time dilation is a big part of our IP, so when you leave the world, a few days will pass for you, but years will pass for everyone back home. That’s a known fact of science,” explained narrative director Drew Karpysyn, who was the lead writer of the first two Mass Effect games.
“So the faster you travel in space, the closer you get to light speed, the slower time moves for you. So by the time you get back home, years will have passed. So you will see the impact of the choices you made before you left. All the things you’ve done will change the world in very dramatic ways. And every time you come back, you’ll see these changes sort of propagating across the game, across years, across generations.”
But I also wanted to share something Karpyshyn said about the way Exodus will handle companion relationships and romance, because they absolutely will be here, presumably involving some of the characters seen in the new trailer for the game. Though not, apparently, the octopus in the space suit, Salt – they’re off limits.
“One of the appeals of companions is the romances,” said Karpyshyn. “We definitely have worked hard to make as many of them available as possible. We do have quite a few options. We let you, for want of a better term, play the field a little bit. You do have to work for it a little bit but they can be pretty thirsty, let’s put it that way. But of course it’s a game of consequences too so you have to be careful. You can get yourself into a sticky situation where maybe you have to make some choices.”
He said there were also people we could have more platonic relationships with, and that the game might even cater to more business-minded relationships, or political relationships, potentially even of the arranged kind. “We are about Traveler dynasties,” he said, “which gets into some interesting relationship prospects. The idea of arranged couplings to further the broader goals of your dynasty is something we touch on.
“It’s hard without getting into specifics but I think the folks who are looking for some interesting action are going to find it,” he added.
Archetype co-founder Chad Robertson, also formerly of BioWare, made an interesting comment in relation to being consistently compared to Mass Effect. “Many of us hail from BioWare and certainly are proud of our time there and the contributions we made there,” he said. “We would be honoured to be compared to a game like Mass Effect. It’s certainly one of the hallmarks of space opera science-fiction trilogies. If we can achieve that ourselves, we’d be thrilled to be in that space. And certainly that’s our goal, to be a standout science fiction RPG that fans love for many decades to come.
“If you look at the talent base that we have at the studio, it’s much more than just BioWare, though,” he added. “We’ve got talent from some other marquee studios in the industry that I think have helped shape Exodus into its own form and its own game that we hope stands out, even above and beyond some of the things that you experience in a traditional BioWare game. But we also don’t want to leave those lessons behind that we learned there too.”
Exodus is in development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.
