A Matter of Time

I am not surprised to see that Archetype Entertainment, a company led by people who used to work at huge triple-A game developers, could make a game like Exodus. Just take one look at the gameplay, and you’ll see how elements from the team members’ prior games, like Halo, The Last of Us, and (perhaps most notably) Mass Effect, made their way into this new project. Thematically, it makes sense as well: In Exodus, humanity has left Earth behind, and 40,000 years later, they’ve settled in a distant star system. Archetype is also a new star system of sorts, and like the humans in Exodus, these developers are hoping to establish it as a thriving, sustainable place to live.

The studio was founded by Wizards of the Coast (the owner of Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) to add a sci-fi property to its IP library, according to Archetype co-founder and general manager Chad Robertson. “The idea was to establish a really big IP that could be used in a bunch of different ways and make the universe believable and real,” Robertson tells me within the team’s Austin, Texas, studio. He optimistically compares the potential breadth of Exodus’ worldbuilding to Star Wars, which isn’t surprising, since he spent many years working on Star Wars: The Old Republic while at BioWare.

The other two developers I talk to also have history at BioWare: Exodus’ narrative director Drew Karpyshyn was also lead writer on Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2, while game director Chris King worked on gameplay systems for Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, though he previously worked on series like Halo and Saints Row. Karpyshyn, King, and Robertson all left BioWare between 2018 and 2020, a time when the studio was reportedly experiencing internal and external pressure around the tumultuous development and releases of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Looking for a fresh start, they made their way to Archetype.