James Ohlen, the creative lead for the original Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars KOTOR, and Dragon Age Origins, some of the best Western RPGs, is working on a new, narrative-driven space RPG where your choices make all the difference. Ohlen’s new game is Exodus, developed with his new studio Archetype Entertainment, and Matthew McConaughey brings one of the lead characters to life.
It’s an ambitious step forward for the genre. In Exodus, you play as a squad of humans who fled Earth to save their loved ones in the face of an onslaught from hostile aliens. Everything you do matters, and not just in the moment.
That’s a pretty big claim that many games make and don’t necessarily follow through on, though it sounds like Ohlen’s ambitions go a bit further than usual. The repercussions from your choices stretch across the years and into new generations. What seemed like a good idea in your time might lead to an entire sun getting snuffed out 20 years later.
Exodus ’s announcement couldn’t come at a better time. The genre and style Ohlen helped pioneer is more popular than ever, thanks in large part to Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3. While demand for in-depth CRPGs never really went away – fans funded Pillars of Eternity, and its popularity sparked an even bigger sequel – but developers just… stopped making them.
EA and BioWare moved away from the choice-driven narratives of Dragon Age Origins with DA Inquisition, and single-player games fell out of fashion as heavy-hitter multiplayer games such as Fortnite grew in popularity.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF