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

It's been almost ten years since we got a new Mass Effect game. In that time, BioWare as we knew it has come to an end, with widespread layoffs, complicated development – both narratively and technically – on Dragon Age: The Veliguard, and slow progress being made on the next Mass Effect.

It's no wonder so many Mass Effect fans have thrown their weight behind Exodus. This sci-fi RPG is being made by some great ex-BioWare talent, most notably James Ohlen (who has since left the studio) and Drew Karpyshyn, who both 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 presentation. We have a party of up to two companions at a time, and we can bark orders at them during battle. We gain new abilities for them and ourselves through skill trees. There's even a Paragon and Renegade system (here given the legally distinct nomenclature of Paladin and Immortal), and you can score points on both sides by unlocking different abilities.

But of course, Paragon and Renegade were mostly there for RPG in Mass Effect, and Exodus' version is no different. You'll choose to be a Paladin or Immortal in the character creator, earning points on either side depending on the decisions you make. The developers emphasized that our choice in the character creator doesn't lock you in from the start, and they expect some trial and error before players land on either side.

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

The life-or-death scenario was presented with much fanfare in the trailer, with the preview ending before we could see the ramifications of this decision. The decision at hand is whether to try to diffuse a situation with force or words, a conundrum typical of Paragon and Renegade's game design.

While it may be too early to judge, it doesn't scream Mass Effect or KOTOR sequel to me, but a repetition of similar mechanics. A similar scenario in Mass Effect 3 – where you have to talk a former companion out of shooting you – depends on a variety of factors. How you talk to them is important, but so is how you have engaged in the politics of the environment. And sadly, a sense of history and how we interact with it was missing here as well.

There was no way for Exodus to squeeze something like the scene from Mass Effect 3 into a brief look at the first game of this new IP, but I've yet to see the basis for that either. The character moments might be there, but what about the politics? What about the ideological conflict? Where, more simply, is the sauce?

How customizable is our character in Exodus?

Exodus screenshot showing a character swinging from a grappling hook.

Another concern revolves around our player character, Jun Aslan. In the preview, the developers were quick to reiterate that Jun can be male or female, but we didn't get a good look at the female model. Then, throughout the presentation, Jun was referred to as male.

This is ironically something of a break from Mass Effect traditions, with many hardcore players favoring Femshep, even though the overall player count still gravitates towards the male option.

Jun has a background as the child of a famous human and a celestial; a group of highly developed people. Their older half-brother cheated them out of the inheritance, so they had to go into hiding. When you start the game, Jun is a traveler trying to use ancient celestial technology to save humanity.

Right off the bat, it's much more of a set background than the games that Exodus is based on. Shepard can even have one of three backgrounds and three different types of service history, before even touching the Paragon and Renegade system. Combine that with how Dude Jun clearly has a lot more work put into him than his female counterpart, and this feels like a lot more of a scripted protagonist than fans of BioWare's old games would like.

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

Even putting Jun aside, this approach puts more pressure on the companion to shine through, and I'm still waiting to be caught by them. Tom Vargas and Elise Charroux, our first companions, have potential – but what we saw was very derivative. Tom is sad about his dead wife and Elise is a “no-nonsense” soldier. It gives the store brand Kaidan and Ashley. We even have someone who can fill the Liara role as the sweet, socially awkward science type through Phaedra.

The only thing that gives me hope is the time dial mechanic

Exodus screenshot showing a character taking cover from a huge, mechanical-like creature in a boss battle.

If Jun isn't our Jun, the morality options are just about how violent you want to be, and the companions look like tropes, where does that leave us?

Really, that means something else is going to have to do the heavy lifting to elevate this to anything like Mass Effect's strengths. Fortunately, Exodus do has it through its time dilation mechanic.

Time dilation is where another of Exodus' inspirations comes into play: Interstellar. The expeditions our characters embark on will take hours or days for them, but months or years back home. I really hope this is enough to evoke some passion, some emotion, beyond some guy on the ship talking about his dead wife.

After all, Mass Effect 2 – largely the series' finest hour – revolved around a suicide mission. The game was written around the fact that everyone who agreed to this either believed in the cause so much or had no choice but to accept the call. It baked conflict right into the story and let us role-play what kind of approach we took with the mission, and whether we cared to care about those we dragged along for it.

Time Dilation has the potential to do just that and inject some fire into a group of characters that desperately need it. What kind of people are desperate – or passionate – enough to agree to this? How does it affect everyone's relationships? How does whoever is in charge of humanity deal with the fact that travelers from the past regularly return from missions years later? This is what I want to know now, not how combat works, and not how bad I might be at dialogue.

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