Magical earth-bending powers? Mutated blue-skinned humans? Angry, intelligent bears who punch you in the face?! This all might sound like the stuff of fantasy, but Exodus, a forthcoming action RPG that just got an “early 2027” release window in an action-heavy 2025 Game Awards trailer, is squarely in the realm of science-fiction. In fact, as its creators tell it, the concepts underpinning Exodus are rooted in real-world science and put it in the “hard sci-fi” genre.
Exodus is the debut of Archetype Entertainment, a studio under Wizards of the Coast that’s fronted by former top talent from BioWare. Archetype announced Exodus at the 2023 Game Awards with a splashy trailer starring Matthew McConaughey. (The implicit Interstellar connection wasn’t lost on fans.) Imagery of futuristic tech and celestial bodies called forth immediate comparisons to other big franchises rooted in hard sci-fi, like The Expanse and, of course, Mass Effect.
But as Mass Effect itself seems a more uncertain quantity than ever, Exodus stands poised to fill some seriously big magboots. It all comes down to if Archetype can nail the balance of presenting heady concepts to an audience that is often more preoccupied with blowing things up than with Einsteinian physics. Key here is a system in which you see how the choices you make in-game pay off in the long term — for better or worse. “We take hard science fiction seriously, but we want it to be fun and accessible,” Archetype general manager Chris Robertson told Polygon in an interview ahead of the Game Awards announcement.
Image: Archetype Entertainment/Wizards of the Coast
At the root of Exodus is the concept of time dilation, a cornerstone of Einstein’s theory of special relativity that suggests time moves slower for faster-moving objects. In the world of the game, humans decamp Earth in the 23rd century for the Centauri Cluster, some 16,000 light years away. But thanks to time dilation, different humans reach Centauri at different times. (If you’ve read The Archimedes Engine, Peter F. Hamilton’s excellent 928-page tie-in novel, forgive me for brushing over approximately 927 pages of details.)
The humans who reached Centauri first got way too into genetic modification, to the point where they’re barely recognizable as humans; to you or me or, say, anyone living in the 23rd century, they’d look like aliens. The mutated population rebranded as “Celestials” and, you’ll never guess, aren’t exactly welcoming to the humans who arrive millennia later, who they see as “primitive, unevolved, beneath them,” as Exodus narrative director Drew Karpyshyn put it.
Image: Archetype Entertainment/Wizards of the Coast
“They’ve evolved so much, they’ve almost become alien. Their lifespans, because of time dilation, operate on a scale we can’t really comprehend,” Karpyshyn said. “They have motivations we don’t really understand. And again, they see humans sort of, if we’re lucky, they see us as an annoyance, and if we’re unlucky, they see us as a threat that needs to be dealt with. So we really do see them as not human anymore. They sort of transcended so far that they don’t really fit into what we consider humanity.”
Time dilation also plays a critical role in the mission structure of Exodus. You play as Jun, a human known as a “Traveler.” Travelers shoulder the burden of taking on missions across the cluster, requiring one to travel near light speed to efficiently cross the distance. Though a Traveler’s expedition might only last a few days or weeks, back home, years or even decades may pass, meaning Travelers often return to a world that looks very different than the one they left. Family members may have died. Romantic partners may have met someone new. A favorite ramen spot may have closed.
Image: Archetype Entertainment/Wizards of the Coast
As for how that actually pans out in the game? You won’t have to weigh such choices all the time, but you will have to do so at certain junctures in the game — think chapter or act breaks.
“From a high level, how we think about it is this choices and consequences loop. So try and get players to queue up a whole bunch of choices, and then they’re going to have to go on an ‘Exodus’ mission periodically,” Exodus game director Chris King said. “You can travel in space and you don’t always travel at light speed, where time dilation comes into play, but when you go on these huge ‘Exodus’ missions, that’s where it comes into play.”
Image: Archetype Entertainment/Wizards of the Coast
These missions can even change your companions in ways Roberston said “Jun can’t predict.” So far, Archetype has revealed two companions, and teased silhouettes for an additional two, suggesting a total of four companions. (With release approaching, Roberston noted additional companions as one big thing that’s been left on the cutting room floor. “At some point the game has to ship and be amazing. But we think we’ve picked some of the coolest ones to introduce in this first game and hopefully there’s a bunch of new expressions of it to follow thereafter.”)
You can see how the paths start to branch. The Archetype team declined to share just how many endings Exodus will have, but the sheer breadth of established canon — novels, tabletop materials, and additional short stories by Adrian Tchaikovsky, all published years before the game is even out — suggests a galaxy of possibility.
So, yes, as seen in the trailer aired at the Game Awards, there’s plenty of punching and lasers. There’s plenty for the sci-fi sickos, too.
“We have a mechanic where you interact with the world and kind of can dig deeper into things,” King said. “We sort of joke this will probably be the biggest codex.”
Exodus will be released for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X in early 2027.
