The Game Awards 2025 was in full swing last night with sneak peeks, trailer reveals, and more geeky video games than you can shake a custom dual-shock controller at. We've done a full round-up of all the space and sci-fi games at The Game Awards 2025, but it's no secret that one of the most anticipated releases coming in 2027 is Archetype Entertainment's sci-fi adventure RPG, "Exodus."
"'Exodus' is our new 3rd person action adventure role-playing game, and it's set in a brand new science fiction universe," Robertson shares.
"It takes place in the Centauri Cluster, which is about 15,000 light-years from Earth, which is a really long way. But the origins of what happens start on Earth as we know it in the 23rd century, when humans are forced to flee what's a dying planet. So they embark on arkships searching for a new home, and that ultimately leads to them settling in the Centauri Cluster. This is where 'Exodus' takes place, in this far future from Earth time we know today.
"We put a lot of time early in our days focused on developing the IP and the universe, so they're super rich. There are some things in there — including the background on the evolution of humanity and the Celestials and other things — that are part of that. We try to honor hard science fiction, but not in an obtuse way that's difficult for people to grasp, but try to do so in a really accessible and fun way. Specifically, taking science as it manifests through time as another big factor in the way Jun deals with time as an additional antagonist in the challenges he faces. The way that works is through time dilation. It plays a central role in our story, with some complex choices for Jun along with heavy consequences that come from that."
Karpyshyn further elaborates on the choice-driven range of character motivations, obstacles encountered, and certain quests Jun sets off on.
"You play the game as Jun and begin as a lowly salvager scrambling to survive on your homeworld of Lidon," he adds. “But you do have a connection to a powerful traveler dynasty, the Aslan Dynasty, and you have unique genetic modifications that allow you to interact with Celestial technology in ways other humans can’t. It gives you a huge advantage. As the game progresses, you'll rise up and reclaim your Traveler heritage, become champion and leader of your people, and ultimately the only hope for your homeworld to avoid complete destruction."
Game Director Chris King goes on to explain how players feel the power fantasy of growing and developing Jun as a satisfying character via the gameplay portrayal and dense narrative.
"Internally, the mantra we repeat over and over again is that we want players to feel like co-authors of the overall experience, and that applies to everything from the story to the gameplay to exploration," he notes. "When it comes to the story side, you’ll have to make a ton of really difficult moral choices along the way. The thing that's most interesting about 'Exodus' is you make these choices, and you travel at lightspeed on a mission, and when you come back, you get to see the ramifications of all those choices you've made, played out over generations.
"In terms of Jun's personality and appearance, in the trailer, we only feature a male version of Jun, but we do have a character customization system, so when you start the game, you can play as a female version of Jun as well," explains King.
You won't just be choosing their appearance, though — you'll also be shaping who they are as a person.
"Over time, you'll make choices that will impact Jun's reputation," notes King. "And you'll build up influence, and you can choose or not choose how you want to exert that influence. On the combat and gameplay side, we embrace a 'Play It Your Way' philosophy. When you run into an encounter, there's no right or wrong way to play it. You approach it from a bunch of different angles. We offer Stealth Loop if you want to be sneaky. If you like outsmarting enemies, you can do that. If you hate stealth and like kicking doors down and shooting dudes in the face, you can do that as well."
The central conflict teased in the trailer is that Jun's world is affected by an infection called The Rot, an unknown technological virus that’s corrupting all advanced technology and machinery.
"All the terraforming equipment that keeps your world alive is starting to break down and degrade," Karpyshyn adds. "Out of that crisis have arisen various factions trying to seize control. As you're trying to find a way to stop The Rot to save your world, you’ll come into conflict with these other factions. Some of them are human, some of them are Celestials. Celestials are the primary enemy of humanity. They're not too fond of us."
As intimidating adversaries in "Exodus," Celestials might seem like extraterrestrials at first glance, but their origins were humans who, over thousands of years, evolved into a genetically altered race.
"This evolution of humanity into some advanced forms we think is really cool," notes King. "You’ll meet several different variants of Celestials, but there's some others that, if you’ve read any of the other material we've already put out — whether it's the book by Peter Hamilton or some of the tabletop RPG stuff — you can see that it's more expansive than just a single class of Celestial."
Matthew McConaughey, in his very first video game role, voices the mysterious character of C.C. Orlev, and the team added more details of McConaughey's involvement and how Orlev fits into the storyline.
"We're a bunch of nerdy game developers, and the opportunity to work with somebody like Matthew McConaughey was the most amazing surprise," Robertson admits. "From the very gestation of the idea to actually seeing it materialize is still something that I think we all smile about because it’s worked out so nicely. C.C. Orlev is a really important part of Jun's story and serves as a sort of mentor or voice of wisdom, with a lot more experience as a Traveler. Somebody who can advise Jun at times. C.C.'s background is a little bit mysterious. Jun doesn’t understand or know where he came from early on, and they start to build a connection, and that’s part of what grows with you as a character over the course of your journey throughout the game."
As a real-world phenomenon and component of existing physics, time dilation is one of the game’s definitive nods to the realistic sci-fi that they're approaching in the "Exodus" universe.
"You cannot travel faster than light, it's impossible," explains Karpyshyn. "So if you're going to another system, it's going to take years and years before you get there. But the faster you travel, the slower time goes for you. Even though it takes you maybe five years to get to another world, it only feels like a few days for you. For everyone else, five years have passed. That makes for some interesting storytelling opportunities. I think it's one of the defining features of our universe. We really stick to that rule hard and fast. There's no teleportation. You can’t use a wormhole. Every adventure comes with a cost to pay. It's a sacrifice Travelers have to make."
The genesis of "Exodus" was formulated not only from the fertile imaginations of its creators but also from a multitude of sci-fi influences.
"If you were to walk the halls of our studio, you'll see 'Interstellar' as a prominent movie poster that we've had up since the beginning. just because of its obvious tangible touch points to what we're doing," Robertson reveals. "These are all things that are cornerstones that we've built on and used as inspiration, whether it's 'Dune' or 'Star Wars' or 'Interstellar' or video games from the sci-fi space, we love the aspect of it being real science fiction, but we’re making a video game and we still want it to be super fun."
Karpyshyn echoes those same sentiments when it comes to fortifying the game's DNA with essences of personal favorites.
"I was a child of the '80s, so it was things like 'Alien,' 'Aliens,' 'Terminator,' but also older works like 'Dune' and the Asimov stuff,” he concludes.
"As we've evolved into the 20th century, a lot of other interesting sci-fi has come along. We're trying to use those as broad inspirations, but also honor the spirit of classic sci-fi, and put a hard sci-fi spin on it. There's a little 'Interstellar' in there with time dilation and Matthew McConaughey, of course. We combined those things into something that's the evolution of sci-fi RPGs and deliver something that will feel fresh and unique to players in a world we spent a long time developing, a deep and vibrant universe."
Archetype Entertainment's "Exodus" lands in early 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).
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