Archetype Entertainment may be a brand new studio, but with its ranks full of industry veterans from BioWare, Naughty Dog and others, it certainly has the talent to back up its AAA ambitions. The studio unveiled its first game, the AAA sci-fi RPG Exodus, last December, turning the heads of many Mass Effect fans, and has been revealing new details about it piece by piece ever since.
The studio recently released a new Q&A video in which Archetype Entertainment co-founders James Olen (who also serves as executive creative director) and Chad Robertson (who also serves as executive producer) reveal new details about the Exodus setting.
In particular, the developers talked about the inhabitants of the Exodus universe. In the Omega Centauri Cluster, the remnants of humanity, having fled a dying Earth, confront the Celestials, a dominant species descended from the ancient humans of Earth. However, they won’t be the only non-human species you’ll encounter in the game.
According to Olen, although all species in Exodus will have “earthly origin“, due to the way they have evolved over tens of thousands of years, in the game they will be “incredibly strange, wonderful and mysterious creatures“
“You typically call something that evolved on a planet other than Earth an alien,” said Archetype Entertainment co-founder and executive creative director James Olen. “Everything in the Exodus universe is of Earth origin. However, they have evolved over tens of thousands of years, so some of them have evolved into incredibly strange, wonderful and mysterious creatures that are often much stranger than the classic aliens you see in other sci-fi franchises.
This also includes things like the Awakened – sentient animals from Earth. There are a lot of interesting things here for you to encounter, interact with, and obviously fight. So yes, there is a huge variety of species beyond the Celestials.”
Olen provided a little more information about the aforementioned Awakened Animals, revealing that several “alien” species in Exodus evolved from what were once animals on Earth.
“There are many strange creatures in Exodus, sentient and non-sentient, and, as I said, they are all of Earth origin,” he said. “This does not mean that they all originated from humans, as some of them will originate from what we call Awakened Animals—animals whose intelligence was enhanced and then evolved over tens of thousands of years into creatures that are sometimes nothing alike.” on the animals from which they came.”
And will players have the option to play as one of these non-human species, or will Exodus only allow you to play as a human protagonist? Executive producer Chad Robertson did not give a specific answer, only saying that the answer is “a little yes and no“
“The answer is not trivial, in fact it is something of a yes and no. We’re really excited about some of the things you’ll be able to do as a player, but we’re not going to reveal all the details anytime soon.”
Exodus is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
