WotC Reveal Exodus, a New Video Game from the Decelopers of Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights


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Getting the feeling that this game might turn out to be alright.
Unfortunately history relates that good SF concepts, good story/character ideas, good setting and so on does not reliably translate into good game in the AAA sphere.

Given they have Peter F. Hamilton, among others, working on the setting (including the quasi-aliens and so o), the conceptual backdrop is likely to be excellent, which puts it ahead of some games (Civilization: Beyond was notably hamstrung by having a terrible SF setting and weak concepts), but from about 2006 to to 2016 or so we saw a lot of games appear with good SF concepts and the like, and then just sink without a trace because the gameplay and/or story just weren't there. Some didn't even make it to release.

But at least it seems unlikely that it's going to be held back by a bad setting and/or a lack of SF ideas. That is something!

Let's be real though, this is an AAA RPG, not an indie. As such, it is going to live and die on exactly three things:

1) How good the gameplay loops are - small and large, but particularly small.

2) How much people like the characters, and how fun they are to interact with (not just the companions, NPCs as well).

3) How compelling and engaging the in-game plot is, how well the story is told and so on.

The setting interacts with these, but it itself isn't as important as them. An AAA RPG doesn't need to nail absolutely all of them, but it needs to do extremely well on at least one, and pretty well or better on the others. And there's no way to tell as this stage. So whilst I definitely like the setting, I'll care when we see a lot more.

Oh wow I see in fact not only did Peter F. Hamilton come up with a lot of the setting specifics and history, he wrote a novel, and it's out! Exodus: The Archimedes Engine. Given it's Hamilton it's pretty much guaranteed to have some really cool ideas and concepts, but 50/50 if the human characters err on the side of "annoying but fun" or "annoying and boring". So I'm hesitating on picking it up, but I might.

Glad to see from intro that evil regimes are still taking people for "helicopter rides" 40000+ years in the future! Humans always up to the same idiocy!

EDIT - Got it on Audible because I was nearly on 6 credits lol, will let you know how it goes!
 
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