Exodus Hands-On Preview — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] When the team at Archetype Entertainment showed us the latest trailer for Exodus before the premiere at Opening Night Live, it seemed like they had understood the assignment. Emotional, character-driven stories that felt natural for a space opera RPG in the vein of Mass Effect.

[00:12] It was the reveal of the party member's fault, an awakened octopus who pilots a mech to fight and protect her home. Her contentious attitude toward the player protagonist, June Aslan, contrasts with the deep care she has for her species,

[00:24] and through a brief trailer, showed us how it's channeling the sentiments of interstellars. outside of Matthew McConaughey being in this too. But that's one piece of what a game like this needs, albeit an incredibly important one. So, I played a little over an hour of Exodus and saw for myself

[00:38] how the gameplay piece of that puzzle comes into place. Punchy, third-person shooting with two party members whose tech and biotic-coded abilities you command through a wheel as time flows, it's like I was playing a legally distinct firework game.

[00:52] Archetype isn't shy about the parallels here, nor should they be, because from my brief time with Exodus, it seemed to be filling that massive void effectively.

[01:06] I played an entire mission where we had to infiltrate a construct in space called Khonsu, which orbits humanity's new home planet, Lydon. Khonsu is also where a species of awakened frogs, called the K, have established their home and maintained Lydon's defenses.

[01:19] For context, awakened are hyper-intelligent animals found across Exodus' universe. They've been enslaved by a hostile human faction run by Gideon Aslan, June's half-sibling, the ruler of Lydon, and one of Exodus' main villains.

[01:32] It was our job to free the K, and maybe not entirely out of the goodness of our hearts, but in hopes of them becoming key allies at least. I would like to invite the K to join the Tension Dynasty. After a few cutscenes to build the mission's tension, I'm immediately thrust into combat

[01:47] and within seconds of touching this new game I've never played, muscle memory kicked in as if I'd been here before. Elise, who controls a hulking mech, focuses on boot force and has attack second break

[01:59] armor, while Solomon is an agile agent who can incisively inflict heavy damage. I largely relied on calling in their abilities whenever they were ready, while blasting away with my standard arsenal of rifles and shotguns.

[02:14] But there's also a synergistic system that paves the way for a primer-detonator type of dynamic if you can line things up. There's a little bit of stealth if you want to get the jump on a few unsuspecting foes,

[02:28] and Solomon's abilities can take out standard targets in one go when used undetected, but Exodus thrives off of this chunky combat. Having Leece fire off a barrage of knockdown missiles or using my own ground ability that shoots a line AOE and sends targets into the air yeah that the good stuff June himself has a mix of tools like EMP grenades homing pulses or shield piercing weapons

[02:51] that are crucial against barriers and a suite of special moves called glyphs through his sci-fi powers broadly. Even as June, you can create combos such as freezing an enemy with petrify and following it up with an erupt to break them.

[03:04] The cover system is a little iffy, especially for a game that relies pretty heavily on it, but what matters more to me is that Exodus offers the tools you'd want out of an action RPG and pairing it with solid, impactful gunplay.

[03:17] As I made my way through Khonsu, a few stand-in encounters against future human enemies were broken up with battles against alien-esque mechanized freaks, and more intimidating foes in Wobo suits in specific combat arenas where cover spots are clearly raised high.

[03:33] Some felt more like bullet sponges, although I didn't mind in the moment as it let me touch the extents of my party's powers. The mission concluded with a boss fight against an awakened bear named Captain Irina Bruin.

[03:45] Clever. Armor clad and beastly, charging at me and casting huge AOE electrical shocks. However, I was of pure mind. Boss fights are nice ways to stretch the limits of your combat prowess, but can feel like

[03:58] fitting a square peg through a round hole if the encounter isn't really a design for gameplay systems. This fight was more about constantly dodging, with a little verticality sprinkled in thanks to the battery-charged pillars that would spawn in the arena, and

[04:10] it flowed a little bit like a war of attrition more than anything. Granted, this was a fairly early game mission, and I did enjoy the challenge, but my hope is that other boss fights play more into the strengths Exodus clearly exhibits.

[04:24] You can expect Exodus to have hub areas and cities to explore, of course, but on missions In missions like this, there are things to find off the beaten path and optional objectives along the way. Some of June's abilities also work as tools for exploration, such as Petrify being used

[04:37] to freeze obstructions or erupt for clearing obstacles in the way. And you also have shapes to raise floors and a grappling hook to reach specifically marked points to reach optional areas.

[04:49] What's more is that you can come across unique interactions with characters you wouldn't have seen otherwise, which may lead to decisions that can come back around, sway your alignment with your party members, or give a little backstory for the mission. This is in addition to you finding more tangible rewards, like additional gear, crafting materials,

[05:04] or knowledge points to upgrade June's capabilities. This is an RPG after all, and Exodus's progression system looks to be pretty robust from what I was able to gather from looking at the menus. I had a prearranged build centered around the soldier branch but there were so many more directions you can spec into Knight prodigy oracle operative and specialist which lean into perks and buffs for different play styles I can see a few other gauntlet glyphs lost at this point in the story so I looking forward to seeing if there

[05:31] an element of build crafting here because so far, combat feels like it has the saw. When talking about optional objectives, there was one where I was tasked with liberating one of the Ks stuck in a test tube by defeating a wave of enemies and finding a battery to

[05:46] to get the power on back in the room. I was rewarded with a goofy dialogue sequence, a little more lore on the K, an approval boost from Solomon, and an upgrade for my gear. Goodbye, change your leg. Good luck. Much earlier in the mission, I had to decide the fate of a dying zealot who only just realized

[06:01] the wicked ways of the faction he was working for. You think I want to be here? I'm just a grunt. Give him a health pack and hope he changes his ways in the future, or just let him die out. I didn't see the results of this in the demo, but when it comes to choice and consequence

[06:15] in Exodus, the most indicative moment was in the decision you had to make at the end of this mission. Gotcha. See, while Solomon is an ally, he is also an operative of the Tenjin dynasty, and he

[06:29] would prefer to have the Kay under their direct influence after liberating them. When Solomon proposes altering the Kay's communication beacons to fully guarantee loyalty across generations, you can either push back or go along with this plan.

[06:41] I chose to push back, questioning the idea of manipulating them after restoring their independence, to which Solomon simply says, And June replies,

[06:53] June continued to imply that he was misled and that this is what Gideon would have wanted. They go back and forth about how loyalty ensures protection, and the K leader you saved isn't entirely opposed to it.

[07:09] And so you're left with a simple choice. Make the alteration, or leave the beacons alone? What good is security if you give up freedom, right? I chose to leave the beacons alone, promising to protect Kansu as a matter of principle, and Jun concludes,

[07:22] I get to call the shots for sentient beings and claim to realm good. Solman abides by the decision, and is surprisingly supportive in the end. It's a bit textbook in the choice-based RPG playbook, and the dialogue tees this up quite predictably,

[07:35] but I think what's important here is how it's contextualized for the broader story, and in the writing itself. This particular scene gives me hope that Exodus knows how to frame these big moments in their delivery and in the in-game impact, hinted in the visual bubble next to the choice showing

[07:49] June's predictive powers, even if they sometimes boil down to a binary choice. This is also the first big moment where I saw Exodus' version of the Paragon Renegade morality system. Here it denoted as Paladin Immortal Narrative director Drew Cartesian who you may know as a renowned narrative designer on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect described the system as more of a push and pull between preserving your humanity versus embracing the cold and calculated ways of Celestials

[08:15] a transhumant effect that plays a big role in the story, rather than simple good versus evil. It may look and function similarly, shown as blue and red choices respectively, but I expect the system to grow more nuanced as the story goes on,

[08:29] and more decisions compile into varying consequences that are reflected in the June Yule shape. Exodus has a clear goofy edge to it, especially with the K being silly frogs with names derived from the number and section of the ship

[08:44] in which they were born in. Early in the mission, you meet 42C, who's listening to loud rock music and greets you with an irreverent attitude that contrasts with the serious tone of the initial infiltration cutscene.

[08:57] It's kind of cute, and I like that levity, but I am also wary of characters being too quicky, like Elise, who keeps commenting on every little thing that happens in battle. Or how things kind of lean into the cheesy sense of humor

[09:09] you'd see in a CW show. I'm not entirely off-put by that. I just hope it knows when to rein it in and strike the right balance for a story that seems to wield the gravity of

[09:21] humanity's survival and space. The consequences of the decisions you make will be exacerbated by the fact that Exodus' story abides by the scientific theories of relativity and time dilation. We'll see characters affected in different ways by the passage

[09:33] of time, and going back to the trailer I mentioned at the beginning, it feels like archetype knows the material it's working with in order to win the hearts and minds of those who are looking for that emotional space opera adventure. From my conversation with Drew, I get the

[09:46] impression that even with a little levity to take off the edge, there's a greater emphasis on trying to deliver on impactful storytelling. The inclusion of romance options, regardless of gender, being able to play as male or female June,

[09:58] and having a relationship system all folded into your alignment as time warps in a journey to find humanity's new home, Exodus is ambitious in the same way that Mass Effect was, and now I'm expecting it to live up to that ambition.

[10:11] April 7th, 2027 can't come soon enough, as that's when Exodus launches for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. Now, if I had a penny for every Mass Effect light coming out in Spring 2027, I'd have two pennies, which isn't much, but it's funny that it happened twice.

[10:25] And who knows when we'll see Bioware's perennial franchise again, so be sure to check out our hands-on preview of The Expanse Osiris Reborn, and read my interview with Exodus narrative director Drew Karpyshyn on IGN.com, where we dig deeper into the romance and relationship

[10:39] systems. Link in the description below. And for everything else, stick with IGN. you