It’s been almost ten years since we got a new Mass Effect game. In that time, BioWare as we knew it has come to an end, with widespread layoffs, convoluted development – both narratively and technically – on Dragon Age: The Veliguard, and slow progress being made on the next Mass Effect.
It’s no wonder that so many Mass Effect fans have thrown their weight behind Exodus. This sci-fi RPG is being made by some big former BioWare talent, most notably, James Ohlen (who has since left the studio) and Drew Karpyshyn, who both worked on KOTOR and the original Mass Effect trilogy.
The latest trailer shows just how Mass Effect-y Exodus will be, at least in terms of its presentation. We have a party of up to two companions at a time, and we can bark orders at them during combat. We get new abilities for them and ourselves through skill trees. There’s even a Paragon and Renegade system (here given the legally distinct nomenclature Paladin and Immortal), and you can gain points on either side by unlocking different abilities.
But of course, Paragon and Renegade were mostly there for roleplaying in Mass Effect, and Exodus’ version is no different. You will choose whether you’re a Paladin or Immortal in the character creator, and earn points in either side depending on the decisions you make. The devs stressed that our choice in the character creator doesn’t lock you in from the get-go, and they expect some trial and error before players land on either side.
Yet, even with that in mind, I worry that this still has the trappings of Mass Effect’s binary morality. In conversation, we only ever saw two or three basic dialogue options. When faced with a (seemingly) life-or-death decision for one of our companions, there are only two options. And none of it seems more in-depth than deciding how violent you want to be.
That life-or-death scenario was presented with a lot of fanfare in the trailer, with the preview ending before we could see the fallout of this decision. The decision in question is whether or not you try to diffuse a situation with violence or words, a conundrum typical of Paragon and Renegade’s game design.
While it might be too early to judge, that doesn’t scream Mass Effect or KOTOR successor to me, but a rehash of similar mechanics. A similar scenario in Mass Effect 3 – where you have to talk a former companion down from shooting you – depends on a wide variety of factors. How you talk to them is important, but so is how you’ve engaged with the politics of the setting. And sadly, a feel for the lore and how we interact with it was somewhat lacking here, too.
There was no way for Exodus to cram anything like that scene from Mass Effect 3 into a brief look at the first game in this new IP, but I’m yet to see the foundations of it either. The character moments might be there, but what about the politics? What about the ideological conflict? Where, more simply, is the sauce?
How Customisable Is Our Character In Exodus?
Another concern revolves around our player character, Jun Aslan. In the preview, the devs quickly reiterated that Jun can be male or female, but we didn’t get a good look at the female model. Then, throughout the entire presentation, Jun was referred to as male.
This, ironically, is something of a break from Mass Effect traditions, with many hardcore players favouring Femshep, even if overall player numbers still gravitate towards the male option.
Jun has a set backstory as the child of a famous human and a celestial; a group of highly evolved humans. Their older half-brother cheated them out of their inheritance, so they had to go into hiding. When you start the game, Jun is a Traveller, trying to utilise ancient celestial technology to save humanity.
Right off the bat, that’s much more of a set background than the games Exodus draws upon. Shepard can even have one of three backstories and three different kinds of service history, before even touching on the Paragon and Renegade system. Couple that with how Dude Jun clearly has much more work put into him than his female counterpart, and this feels like much more of a pre-written protagonist than fans of BioWare’s games of old would like.
Much of the game could hinge upon how much we like Jun as a character, rather than how we build our own Jun, and right now, I’m not convinced. The backstory is interesting and shows that the devs are inspired by things other than Mass Effect (Dune was named as a touch point, for instance), but I just didn’t feel the weight of it in the dialogue we saw.
Even putting Jun aside, this approach puts more pressure on the companion to shine through, and I’m still waiting to be gripped by them. Tom Vargas and Elise Charroux, our first companions, have potential – but what we saw was very derivative. Tom is sad about his dead wife, and Elise is a “no-nonsense” soldier. It’s giving store brand Kaidan and Ashley. We even have someone to fill the Liara role of the cute, socially awkward science-type through Phaedra.
The One Thing That Gives Me Hope Is The Time Dialation Mechanic
If Jun isn’t our Jun, the morality options are just about how violent you want to get, and the companions are looking like tropes, where does that leave us?
Really, it means that something else is going to have to do the heavy lifting to elevate this to anything resembling Mass Effect’s strengths. Luckily, Exodus does have that through its time dilation mechanic.
Time dilation is where another of Exodus’ inspirations comes into play: Interstellar. The expeditions that our characters embark on will take hours or days for them, but months or years back home. I would certainly hope that this is enough to invoke some passion, some emotion, beyond some guy on the ship talking about his dead wife.
After all, Mass Effect 2 – largely seen as the series’ finest hour – revolved around a suicide mission. The game was written around the fact that anyone who agreed to this either believed in the cause that much, or had no choice but to accept the call. That baked conflict right into the narrative, and let us roleplay what kind of approach we were taking with the mission, and if we bothered to care about those we dragged along for it.
Time dilation has the potential to do just that, and inject some fire into a cast of characters who desperately need it. What kind of people are desperate – or passionate – enough to agree to this? How does it impact everyone’s relationships? How does whoever is in charge of humanity work around the fact that Travellers from the past regularly pop back from missions years later? This is what I want to know now, not how combat works, and not how much of a badass I can be in dialogue.
With this latest trailer, Exodus has proven that it has the makings of a solid shooter and sci-fi romp. But if it wants to live up to the games that brought attention to the project in the first place, we now have to be sold on the potential of its narrative and world-building – and reassured that there will be enough room for us to explore that through Jun and their companions.
- Released
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2027
- Developer(s)
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Archetype Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
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Wizards of the Coast
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
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Unknown
