Exodus might have an uphill struggle escaping the shadow of Mass Effect. Archetype Entertainment’s sci-fi RPG immediately invited Mass Effect comparisons when it was first shown off, and those comparisons have continued and, if anything, become more obvious.
It’s understandable, of course. Archetype was founded by BioWare veteran James Ohlen and the team includes other former BioWare devs. And Ohlen isn’t shy about acknowledging the impact Mass Effect has had on the upcoming game.
“Mass Effect had a big influence,” he tells us. But now that Ohlen has left Archetype, and for the time being the games industry entirely, he’s better able to voice his regrets. Specifically, that visually he “failed to get us to go further away from [Mass Effect]”.
There really is an uncanny similarity, right down to the armour design. But Ohlen still has faith that the team can make Exodus stand out. “The team is still doing a good job at moving it away so that it has its own look,” he says.
He did at least manage to “successfully [fight] against Star Wars”, specifically aping the look of Disney’s all-consuming sci-fi property. “We can’t look like Star Wars,” he says.
“I shouldn’t really talk much about Exodus,” he jokes, “I’m not supposed to. I’ll be murdered.” Despite this fear of assassination, he does want to emphasise Exodus’s more unique properties, which he believes will set it apart from Mass Effect and other sci-fi games.
One of those elements is the concept of the Awakened—”the animals who have been bred to have intellectual capability”—which arose out of the challenges inherent in designing a unique alien species.
“The thing about science fiction I’ve always felt is that it’s so hard to do a unique alien,” Ohlen says. “They’ve all been done before.” The Awakened were the solution to this conundrum. “When have you seen a science fiction game where you have intelligent wolves and tigers and frogs and all that? It gives it a different feel and look.”
Granted, science fiction has given us intelligent or genetically altered critters before, and in games this goes as far back as Star Fox. But it’s certainly not as overdone—not even close—as aliens.
Then there’s the time dilation concept, which Ohlen had actually wanted to include in Mass Effect—though it never made the cut. Interestingly, time dilation doesn’t just set it apart from Mass Effect, it also complements the BioWare-inspired elements that the team wanted to keep.
“Time dilation is just the big defining feature of the whole universe,” Ohlen says. “Because you can’t break the speed of light, every time you go on a journey, years or decades pass. And that’s really good when you combine that with BioWare-style choices, where you have to see the [impact of your choices].”
It’s actually a pretty brilliant solution to a problem that a lot of BioWare and other choice-laden games have—where the long tail of your choices isn’t really felt until the game’s epilogue, or even a sequel. In Exodus, the impact of time dilation as the game unfolds means you’ll see how your choices echo across the years, without ending the game as a geriatric in an assisted living facility.
Exodus is due out in 2027.
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