Exodus has Mass Effect's combat nailed, but I'm worried about the roleplay

It's been almost ten years since we got a new Mass Effect game. At the time, we knew that BioWare was coming to an end, with extensive layoffs, complex development—both story-wise and technically—on Dragon Age: The Wellguard, and slow progress on the next Mass Effect.

It's no wonder that many Mass Effect fans have thrown their weight behind Exodus. This sci-fi RPG was created by some great ex-BioWare talent, notably, James Ohlen (who has since left the studio) and Drew Karpyshyn, who worked on KOTOR and the original Mass Effect trilogy.

The latest trailer shows how Mass Effect-y Exodus will be, at least in terms of its presentation. We have a party of two friends at a time, and we can order them during battle. We get new abilities for them and ourselves through skill trees. There's also a Paragon and Renegade system (here legally given the different nomenclature Paladin and Immortal), and you can earn points on both sides by unlocking different abilities.

But of course, Paragon and Renegade were there to play a role in Mass Effect, and the Exodus version is no different. You'll choose whether you're a paladin or an immortal in the character creator, and you'll earn points for either side based on the decisions you make. The devs emphasized that our choices in the character creator won't lock you in from the get-go, and they expect some trial and error before landing players on either side.

However, even with that in mind, I worry that it still has the trappings of Mass Effect's binary morality. In conversation, we only see two or three basic dialogue options. When faced with a life or death decision for one of our friends, there are only two options. And none of this seems more profound than deciding how violent you want to be.

While that life-or-death scenario was presented with much fanfare in the trailer, the preview ends before we can see the consequences of this decision. The decision in question is whether or not you try to diffuse the situation with violence or words, a common problem with Paragon and Renegade's game design.

While it might be too early to judge, it doesn't scream Mass Effect or KOTOR successor, but a rehash of the same mechanics. A similar scenario in Mass Effect 3 – where you have to talk to a friend before they shoot you – depends on a variety of factors. How you talk to them is important, but so is how you engage with the politics of the setting. And sadly, the feel for the lore and how we interact with it, was somewhat lacking here as well.

There was no way to cram something like that scene into an abbreviated version of the first game from Mass Effect 3 to this new IP for Exodus, but I still haven't seen the foundation of it. There may be character moments, but what about the politics? What to do with the ideological conflict? Where, more simply, is the sauce?

How customizable is our character in Exodus?

An Exodus screenshot showing a character emerging from a grappling hook.

Another concern is our player character, which revolves around Aslan. In the preview, the devs quickly reiterated that June could be male or female, but we didn't get a good look at the female model. Thereafter, throughout the presentation, June was referred to as male.

This is, ironically, a break from Mass Effect traditions, with many die-hard players favoring the femcep, though overall player numbers still gravitate towards the male option.

which has a backstory set as the child of a famous human and a celestial; A group of highly evolved humans. Their older half-brother cheated them out of their ancestral property, so they had to go into hiding. When you start the game, you are a traveler, trying to use ancient celestial technology to save humanity.

Right off the bat, it's more of a set background than the games Exodus draws from. Shepard can have three backstories and three different types of service histories before even touching the Paragon and Renegade systems. Jodi Jun clearly has a lot more work put into her than her female counterpart, and it feels like a pre-written hero than fans of older Bioware games would have liked.

A lot of the game may depend on how we like Jun as a character, how we build our own Jun, and right now, I'm not sure. The backstory is interesting and shows that the devs are inspired by things other than Mass Effect (for example, Dune was named as a touch point), but I didn't feel the weight of it in the dialogue we saw.

Even with June aside, this approach puts more pressure on a friend to shine, and I'm still waiting to be caught by them. Tom Vargas and Alice Charroux, our first friends, have potential – but what we saw was too derivative. Tom is sad about his dead wife, and Alice is a “no-nonsense” soldier. The store is offering brands Kaidan and Ashley. We have someone to fill the cute, socially awkward sci-fi-type Lyra role via Phaedra.

One thing that gives me hope is the time dilation mechanic

Exodus screenshot showing a character taking cover from a large mechanical-like creature during a boss fight.

If June isn't our June, the morality choices are just about how violent you want to get, and friends seem like tropes, where does that leave us?

In fact, this means that something else has to do the heavy lifting to raise it to anything resembling the forces of Mass Effect. Fortunately, Exodus does Its through time dilation mechanics.

Time dilation is where another inspiration from Exodus comes into play: interstellar. The expeditions our characters embark on take them hours or days, but months or years back home. I certainly hope it's enough to evoke some passion, some emotion, beyond some guy on a ship talking about his dead wife.

After all, Mass Effect 2 – largely seen as the series' finest hour – revolved around a suicide mission. The game was written around the fact that anyone who agreed to it either believed too much in the cause, or had no choice but to accept the call. That conflict baked into the story, and what kind of approach we were taking with the mission, and if we cared about caring for those who were drawn to it, let's role play.

Time Dilation has the potential to do just that, and inject some fire into a cast of characters that desperately needs it. What kind of people are desperate – or passionate – enough to agree to this? How does this affect everyone's relationship? How does someone in charge of humanity work around the fact that past travelers regularly pop up from missions years later? This is what I want to know now, not how the combat works, and how badass I can be with the dialogue.

With this latest trailer, Exodus proves it has the makings of a solid shooter and sci-fi romp. But if it wants to live up to the games that brought attention to the project in the first place, we must now be sold on its story and world-building potential – and assured that there will be plenty of room for us to explore through June and their friends.