If any game is going to have a chance at being crowned a Mass Effect killer, it’s the sci-fi RPG Exodus. To be fair, Exodus is already something of a spiritual successor to Mass Effect due to the developer’s brand-new studio, Archetype, being composed of former BioWare talent, and it’s easy to see how unabashedly Exodus is wearing Mass Effect inspirations on its sleeve. Notwithstanding, Exodus boasts a lot that make it unique, too, including a feature that’s sure to make players’ choices regarding the story and companion characters much more poignant.

Gameplay looks sensational in Exodus and resembles how gameplay looks when commanding Mass Effect’s companions on a battlefield. It’s bound to be twice as cinematic, considering how great its visuals and art direction are, and being published by Wizards of the Coast will likely give it an added RPG flair. However, it’s Exodus’ Time Dilation that is sure to be more than a mere gimmick and define how progression in the story is achieved.

As per the game’s Steam store page, as well as Exodus’ Gamescom 2026 trailer, fans now have a closer look at the octopus companion Salt, who pilots a mech suit in combat. It’s obvious from this trailer alone that companions will play as big a role in Exodus as they do in Mass Effect’s colossal space opera franchise, and constantly fearing how Time Dilation could impact their lives should ensure that every mission players take a squad member on will be full of paramount choices to make.

In this sense, Exodus may also turn out to share some similarities with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s devastating story, wherein these games’ protagonists must embark on an expedition that they might not come back from, but that could mean the survival of humanity and everyone they hold dear.

Maybe the most hauntingly captivating hook of this game is Exodus’ Time Dilation storytelling feature, with players traveling through the galaxy to find any hope for humanity’s survival amid everything that is “ravaged by the effects of time.” This manifests in the same way as Interstellar, where characters’ exploits in deep space take place at a fraction of the time that they do elsewhere; for example, Exodus’ Gamescom 2026 trailer reveals that what has been “3 years for Salt” is a whopping “87 years back home,” ensuring that nothing is the same as they left it once these characters decide to embark on their pilgrimages.

Time Dilation should hopefully make every decision painstaking and suspenseful (far more so than in any Mass Effect game, anyway), since a decision made at one point in time may ripple decades into the future. Exodus’ rich worldbuilding and original sci-fi universe has already spawned a tabletop RPG, a novel duology, and an episode of Amazon Prime’s Secret Level series, and it will be fascinating to see how players’ choices affect this world when Exodus launches in spring 2027.

Systems

Released

May 14, 2021

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence

Developer(s)

BioWare

Publisher(s)

Electronic Arts

Engine

Unreal Engine 4