Exodus preview: KotOR and Mass Effect fans are in for a treat, and some surprises too — Gaming

Given that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is my favourite game of all time, I was very much already in the bag for Exodus.

If you’re unfamiliar, Exodus is a new sci-fi RPG from a number of BioWare alumni that previously worked on KotOR and the Mass Effect games back in the day.

On paper, Exodus sounds like exactly my cup of tea: it’s a spacefaring role-playing game where you’ll assemble a crew of characters, undertake a series of missions, and ultimately have to make some tough choices about how it all goes down.

I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into, when I sat down to play an hour-long Exodus demo at Gamescom, but my hands-on experience actually surprised me in a number of ways, all but one of which I’d class as huge positives.

The demo began with a scene-setting dialogue moment, and I immediately scribbled the word “tone” on my notepad. And then four more words, excitedly inscribed: “Serious, not too quippy!”

I actually asked the developers about this tonal choice in my interview, which took place after the demo. You can watch below or over on YouTube.

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While a lot of modern games seem insistent on every third line being a pithy quip in the post-Joss-Whedon-writing-The-Avengers fashion, Exodus seems to be looking more at the Dune films for inspiration.

While there might be moments of dry humour, the characters take the situation they’re in seriously, which instantly makes the player feel like the stakes are a bit more real, even if there are some properly otherworldly goings-on all round them.

That is very much the case with Exodus. Despite the serious tone, the developers are not worried about introducing concepts that could be plain old silly if handled differently.

For instance, at the core of the Exodus story are a number of animal-based species that have become ‘awakened’. You may have seen an octopus in a mech suit in the recent Gamescom: Opening Night Live trailer, which is a perfect example of what this means.

Alien species, based on Earthly animals, have become enlightened and gained the power of speech. They’re all over the gaff in Exodus, with the hour we played putting the human cast into a mission scenario involving a talking frog with a deep love of loud music.

An octopus in a mech suit, against an orange background, in an official promo image for Exodus.

Before we even started the demo, we were told that Exodus uses time dilation in its plot, meaning that decisions you make in one mission could have serious long-term ramifications that you’ll get to see play out.

By the end of the demo, after a gunfight with a giant bear, when we’d won the frog’s trust and were given the option to strong-arm his species into an eternal pact of fealty with the player-character’s familial tribe, we could see exactly what the developers meant.

I certainly didn’t show up to the Exodus demo expecting to create generational trauma in a whole lineage of talking frogs, but, nonetheless, I did end up picking that option. And that’s another thing that surprised me about Exodus.

Throughout the demo, I was defaulting to picking the ‘nice guy’ options in every little interaction that came up. I wasn’t in this mission looking to make enemies, and it was immediately obvious that there is some kind of morality system at play here. Even in a demo environment, where I knew I’ll never be able to access this save file again, my people-pleasing tendencies were still present and correct.

But, when it came to the choice at the end, where another character made a strong case that recruiting the frog-people in a long-term fashion was the best way to shore up my own family’s safe and secure future, I was convinced. It was the right thing to do for my clan, although the frog was clearly unhappy about it.

Two humans look towards a tank containing a large frog in this Exodus promo image.

Have you ever had one of those moments at work where your boss reminds you of the party line, so you stop being a nice guy for a minute and force yourself to make the decision that the higher-ups want? That’s what it felt like. Morally murky, but the right thing to do for my own faction.

This was a way deeper choice than I was expecting. The KotORs and Mass Effects have trained me for choices where one person might live or die based on my decision, and perhaps one planet's population will hate me, but I’ve never felt like I had the weight of such a huge responsibility on my shoulders, and that an entire species might be subjugated for centuries... even if I do what feels like the ‘right’ thing. I wonder if I’ll make that same choice when I have the full game to play and all the context to back it up.

Moving on from that depressing thought, another thing that surprised me in a good way was the combat. I wasn’t expecting much more than some basic pointing and shooting, and the game delivered much more than that.

As well as boasting BioWare and Naughty Dog alums, Exodus also has some former 343 and Bungie people on its staff, meaning that Halo and Destiny developers have had a hand in this, and you can totally tell.

I was really impressed by how good the gunplay felt, how involved the bear-based boss battle was, and how many different special attacks were available for each of your companion characters. It was much deeper than any of the old BioWare games, feeling much closer to a AAA shooter than an old-fashioned RPG with guns.

And finally, I did tease at the top that one thing about the game surprised me in a less positive way. This was the character models, and specifically the human faces.

While I don’t want every game I play to aim for photorealism, the human faces have been stylised a bit too much for my taste here, sometimes veering towards anime levels of chiselled cheekbones and floppy hair.

There was something uncanny about the faces, and I’m really hoping that the final look of the characters is a little more natural and little less… yassified, for want of a better term.

Saying that, when I look at Exodus overall, it’s a big ol’ yass from me. I was already keen on this game, but now that I know how deep its choices go, how grounded its tone is, how out-there its alien species can be, and how impressive its combat is, I now feel like I’ll be actively recommending to people left and right. Starting with you.

Exodus launches 7 April 2027 and you can wishlist it now on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

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