Archetype's Exodus: An Exploration for the True Science Fiction Enthusiast.

For a particular breed of science-fiction devotee, the announcement of Exodus stood as the most significant reveal from a recent gaming awards ceremony. It's worth noting, those very fans could have missed grasped its full importance during the initial showcase.

Exodus, the debut title from a new studio staffed with veteran talent from a famous RPG developer, was first unveiled a couple of years prior. At the latest event, the development team provided an projected release window of 2027, accompanied by a spectacle-filled trailer. Ahead of this showcase, the studio's leadership discussed some of the grounded scientific ideas that serve as the basis for the game's universe: relativistic time effects, genetic alteration, and galactic expansion. These are all appropriately dense ideas, which are notoriously difficult to express in a brief, cinematic trailer.

“I wish some of those intriguing and new ideas were featured in the trailer. All I saw was ‘stereotypical man in space,’” wrote one viewer. Another replied, “My impression was ‘we have a well-known space opera RPG at home.’” Feedback in community spaces were similarly varied.

The trailer's focus certainly is logical from a commercial angle. When attempting to make an impact during a lengthy deluge of game announcements, what is more marketable: Scientists contemplating the complexities of relativity? Or massive robots blowing up while more mechs fire lasers from their armor? However, in opting for loud action, the developers neglected to include the quieter details that make Exodus one of the more intriguing hard sci-fi games coming soon. Let's explore further.

Evolved or Alien?

Does Exodus include aliens? Perhaps. It depends. Recall that scene near the beginning of the trailer, depicting a being with ashen skin and metal components integrated into their body. That was certainly an alien, correct? The truth hinges on your interpretation regarding one of the game's central philosophical questions: If you applied gradual replacement reasoning to the human genome, is what remains still a human being?

“We want the Celestials... for a player not intending to dedicate significant amounts of time into learning the backstory, to still understand the fundamental idea that they're transhuman descendants, understand that they’re an antagonist you have to deal with... But also, ultimately, make sure it's fun and that they're compelling and that they function effectively to fight against,” explained the studio's head.

Comprehending how these alien-seeming beings aren't by definition aliens requires grappling with vast expanses of both the cosmos and history. Time dilation — the scientific principle that time moves slower for faster-moving objects — is an fundamental core tenet of Exodus’ narrative setting. Here are the fundamentals: Humanity leaves a depleted Earth in the 23rd century for a remote corner of the Milky Way. Due to time dilation, some human colonists arrive centuries before others. Those firstcomers extensively engineered their genetic sequences and adopted the “Celestial” title.

“There’s various stages of evolution. The people who got to the Centauri cluster first... had many thousands of years of evolution into the Celestials... They really see unaltered humans as essentially unevolved, beneath them, not really worthy for the dominant positions of society,” stated the game's lead writer.

Exodus is set approximately 40,000 years in the future. Ponder that scale — that's essentially all of human civilization repeated ten times over. Now imagine what humans would evolve into if they spent ten entire human histories mastering the boundaries of biotech. You would not possibly recognize the outcome as human. You might even believe you're observing an alien. The most vicious lineage of Celestial, known as the Mara-Yama, can adopt diverse forms. Some possess sharp teeth and blades and stand towering tall. Others are protected in exoskeletons. According to supplementary lore, when Mara-Yama travel between stars, their physical forms can atrophy into little more than a collection of organs attached to a head.

Technology and Lore

Amidst the detonations, lasers, and combat creatures, you might have noticed snippets of seemingly magical technology in the trailer. The protagonist, Jun Aslan, uses a chrome machine that produces a purple glow. A spaceship jets into a portal and disappears at relativistic velocity. This all seems beyond human achievement, the kind of tech ascribed to a Kardashev Scale-topping civilization. Yet, these are further examples of concepts that look alien but are ultimately derived in our species' own evolution.

Beyond the core development team, the Exodus lore is being authored by what the narrative lead called a duo of “sci-fi giants.” One acclaimed author has already published a doorstopper novel set in the universe, with another planned, while another esteemed writer has penned a series of short stories. Enlisting such legendary science-fiction writers into the fold years before the game's release has allowed the studio to develop a layered fictional universe as a foundation for the game.

“It was really a collaborative effort. We had set some foundations, and working with him, he would have ideas... and we would work to see how they all meshed... With someone as established, you don't want to handcuff him. You want to give him creative freedom,” the narrative director said of the collaboration.

One key scene shows Jun seemingly mold the ground beneath him, forming stone into a temporary bridge. This material, called livestone, reacts to neural commands from Celestials or a specific human subclass — descendants of later human arrivals who were given certain technologies by the Celestials. Since Jun exhibits this ability, questions are raised about his status.

“Jun's not specifically a Uranic human... Jun is sort of a hacked version, for want of a better term,” clarified the writer, adding that the ability to interact with Celestial technology is a “key part of the game.”

The sheer scale of the Exodus setting — both in the galaxy and temporal scope — means there is abundant room for diverse stories to be told, pulling from the same established rules without causing overlap.

Stories Within the Void

Although Exodus has been on the radar for a couple of years and isn't releasing, several stories have already begun to be told within its universe. The first major novel delves into the connection between a Uranic human and a woman whose ship arrived an aeon later than planned, making Celestials utterly alien to her experience. An episode of a sci-fi anthology recounts a heartbreaking story about a father chasing his daughter across star systems, with time dilation resulting in devastating effects on their family; by the time he finds her, she has aged many years.

The game itself is centered on “Jun’s story,” set on the planet Lidon — a world largely abandoned by Celestials that has become a bastion. A consuming plague known as “the Rot” has begun eating away at everything, including essential life support systems, and Jun must master his Celestial-like powers to {find a solution|stop