Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has been turned into a stop-motion animated short film, kind of.
08.12.2023 - 03:05 / pcgamer.com / Matthew Macconaughey / Johnny Silverhand / James Ohlen
As the Greater Chicagoland Area's number one Matthew McConaughey fan and one of its notable BioWare-likers, having him pop up at The Game Awards to announce he'd appear in a new RPG from some BioWare old hands feels tailor-made to make me freak out. The True Detective actor will have an unspecified role in Exodus, the debut game from Archetype Entertainment.
Archetype was founded by James Ohlen, whose BioWare bona fides date back to the Baldur's Gate days, and Exodus will also likely feature the work of Drew Karpyshyn, a former BioWare scribe with an outsize influence on both Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect universe who joined Archetype shortly after its founding. Knowing the BioWare connection makes everything else fall into place with Exodus—not only does it look like a Mass Effect type of deal, its story synopsis makes it sound like Mass Effect Andromeda 2.
«Having fled a dying Earth, humanity has found a new home in a hostile galaxy,» reads the topline summary from Exodus' official website. «Here, we are the underdogs, fighting our final battle for survival. You are the Traveler, humanity’s last hope.»
The Exodus trailer chops through a ton of dense lore in just a little bit over 150 seconds, but here are the highlights: humanity's at war with bad guy aliens, our astronaut/space marine protagonists may have found the key to beating them (a Crucible, maybe, or a Prothean Beacon?), and faster-than-light travel in this setting includes a lot of general relativity-related time dilation wonkiness a la The Long Morrow episode of The Twilight Zone, or indeed, the McConaughey-led Interstellar.
Exodus' trailer and website make a big deal about that last bit, seeming to imply that FTL travel will have major story implications like characters dying offscreen or entire plotlines resolving themselves due to the effects of interstellar travel. Whether this will turn out to be an open-ended, systemic sort of thing or a bespoke narrative beat is unclear at this point, but it's an interesting concept to bake into a game.
While most of Exodus' trailer was pre-rendered, we did get some gameplay juice at the end: third-person, over-the-shoulder shooting with some spiffy-looking powers—all extremely Mass Effect-y. It's unclear what else Archetype has up its sleeve on a gameplay front, but a fresh take on Mass Effect's core ideas from developers who worked on the original classics certainly has my attention.
Curiously, despite presenting Exodus at The Game Awards, McConaughey himself does not feature in the trailer at all. He did say on stage that he will «have a unique relationship with every player,» which sounds like both a promise and a threat. I'm hoping for a Johnny Silverhand deal where he's a
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has been turned into a stop-motion animated short film, kind of.
Announced at The Game Awards, Exodus, from developer Archetype Entertainment, caught the eye of many RPG fans desperate for anything that remotely resembles the original Mass Effect trilogy. That's no accident; Archetype boasts some of BioWare's most storied talent, people responsible for games like Baldur's Gate I & II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins. Oh, and Matthew McConaughey is in it.
Revealed during last week's Geoffening, Exodus is the first game from Archetype Entertainment, a new studio that includes former members of BioWare and Naughty Dog. It's a sci-fi odyssey with third-person shooting that looks and sounds a lot like Mass Effect, but it has one differentiating Big Idea (aside from Matthew McConaughey): time dilation, whereby time passes different in different places, depending on relative velocity and local gravity.
Game developers have a problem with this year’s Game Awards.
Among the announcements at The Game Awards 2023 came an exciting new sci-fi role-playing game (RPG) from Archetype Entertainment: Exodus. This intriguing title is made all the more promising by the wider experience of many developers behind the game, which includes veterans from Halo, Mass Effect, andThe Last of Us.
James Ohlen is no stranger to intriguing RPG worlds, having worked at developer BioWare for two decades on everything from Baldur’s Gate to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He’s now working to create “the best possible science fiction universe” at an entirely new studio, Archetype Entertainment, but the team's first game Exodus “isn’t trying to compete against Starfield.”
If you missed The Game Awards 2023 livestream, as it was on overnight here in the UK, and are looking for a one-stop shop on what the big celebrity cameos and new game reveals were during the three-hour-plus event, we’ve got you covered.
Exodus was giving off some big Mass Effect vibes during its reveal at The Game Awards 2023, and in a full circle moment, the game now has the seal of approval from Mass Effect 5’s director.
Larian Studios and Remedy led The Game Awards last night, with Baldur's Gate 3 winning six awards including Game of the Year, and Alan Wake 2 taking home three of the eight it was nominated for.
Archetype Entertainment, the Wizards of the Coast studio founded by BioWare veteran James Ohlen, unveiled its debut game called Exodus at The Game Awards 2023.
If Alan Wake 2 didn’t completely melt your face, Poets of the Fall are back to finish the job.
As actual play continues to mature, Larian Studios basks in the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, and Warhammer 40,000 gets its deepest video game treatment yet, it’s not a stretch to claim that we’re on the cusp — if not already in the throes — of a role-playing game renaissance. Seen one way, it could mean stiff competition for the next developer to throw its hat in the ring. Through another lens, however, it could be the perfect time for a symbolic comeback. The creative minds at Archetype Entertainment are hoping for the latter.