Exodus, the new game helmed by BioWare veteran James Ohlen, finally reveals some gameplay, and it sure looks like Mass Effect

On December 18, 2024By Littum

EXODUS Gameplay Trailer: ‘The Traveler’s Creed’ – YouTube
EXODUS Gameplay Trailer: 'The Traveler's Creed' - YouTube

Exodus didn’t do much for me when it was first revealed at the 2023 Game Awards, but my interest in it started to grow after Matthew McConaughey started dropping daily Exodus trailers as a sort of deep space David Attenborough. Today we got our first look at some actual Exodus gameplay, and I hate to say it, but I’m left feeling pretty ambivalent about the whole thing, which in my eyes looks nothing so much like an alt-universe Mass Effect.

To be fair, you can’t take too much away from an individual trailer: they’re little snippets of hour-long games meant to build hype above all else. But there’s just so much going on here that so closely echoes Mass Effect, right down to the glowing neon space magic gauntlet. You can call it “celestial tech” all you want, but come on, it’s an Omni-Blade.

Exodus gameplay trailer still - a guy who is definitely not Commander Shepard wielding a weapon that is definitely not an Omni-Blade is about to stab a giant angry space bear — (Image credit: Archetype Entertainment)

Even the very short pieces of dialogue leave me cold. There’s a lightness to it that reminds me of Fraser Brown’s thoughts on how Dragon Age: The Veilguard has “been” BioWare’s Avengers“, takes conversational cues from a Marvel formula that has grown very close to wearing out its welcome. “Loaded weapons is one hell of a way to greet your new partner,” says our hero, before the grizzled veteran throws out—presumably after that everyone has figured out that it’s all just a big misunderstanding – “Now that we’re all best friends, let’s make each other rich.”

I, along with pretty much everyone else at PC Gamer, also have questions about why we’re fighting the bear. “The Space Bear should be this game’s Wrex,” said news writer Lincoln Carpenter, and he’s absolutely right. But I also think there is a better than good chance that the space bear is this game’s Wrex, and much like the earlier “loaded guns” encounter, this entire fight turns out to be a misunderstanding, with the space hero and space bear reluctantly earning each other’s respect and becoming steadfast partners in countless future adventures. Or maybe there is another space bear. Regardless, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Baldur’s Gate 3 it’s that bears are friends (sometimes with benefits) and I’ll be totally surprised if Exodus doesn’t give you a space bear buddy at some point.

There’s no doubt that at least some of my lack of enthusiasm for this trailer stems from the lead up to it. McConnaughey’s gritty tales of a truly horrifying galaxy where humanity is little more than a prey species, hovering between sources of food and shelter while desperately trying to avoid the attention of the true predators of the cosmos? That’s the good shit. This new trailer looks so unremarkable by comparison that I can’t help but feel a little let down.

EXODUS Cinematic — ‘The Mara Yama’ Reveal Trailer – YouTube
EXODUS Cinematic — 'The Mara Yama' Reveal Trailer - YouTube

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It’s far from a final verdict on Exodus, which I hope lives up to the promise of the previous narrative videos, and there are certainly some unusual twists in it. In a stream with Coh Carnagefor example, creative director James Ohlen, a former BioWare veteran whose credits run from the original Baldur’s Gate to Mass Effect: Andromeda, said there are “no aliens at all” in the game.

“Everything descends from – it has an earthly origin, whether it’s the celestial bodies that come from human tribes or whether it’s some of the really really weird stuff that actually also either comes from animals or humans that have been modified over tens of thousands of years,” Ohlen said. “I always like to say, if people without any technology can take a wolf and turn it into a chihuahua in a thousand years, what will we be able to do with all the technology over 40,000 years for us and others animal.”

Time dilation, a physics headache that tends to be skirted around in most sci-fi video games, also features prominently in Exodus, a point driven home in a cinematic story trailer released last year.

EXODUS | “Become The Traveler” Cinematic Trailer – YouTube

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“From a character and emotional arc, I mean, imagine leaving your family and everything you love and coming back and they’ve all lived their lives while you’ve lived nothing,” said Blur Studios creative director Tim Miller during the stream. “I think the whole story we were trying to tell in that opening trailer was, you know, for the young man, it’s been six months since he lost the woman he loved and she was living her whole life. It’s hard to imagine the emotional impact of that on the character.”

It’s still exciting, and so I hope that Exodus will ultimately deliver on its promise. I just wish this first look at gameplay wasn’t so conventional.

Also absent from today’s trailer is any sign of a release date, but considering the gameplay is labeled “pre-alpha,” I’d expect a long wait yet.