It’s been a while since we’ve seen much from Wizards of the Coast and Archetype Entertainment’s Exodus, the upcoming sci-fi role-playing game from former BioWare developers. Sure, the studio has been dropping lore and concept art since revealing Exodus at last year’s The Game Awards, but a new trailer for the game released Wednesday offers a much-needed reminder of Archetype’s upcoming project.
Archetype’s latest reveal for Exodus is timed to Spooky Season — and is thus appropriately terrifying. The game’s new cinematic trailer introduces the Mara-Yama, an alien threat that travels in fleshy ships and relentlessly pursues and overwhelms its victims. Think Star Trek’s the Borg, but instead of voyaging through space in black cubes, Exodus’ unrelenting predator species gets around in ships that use grotesque extremities like a physical tractor beam.
According to some moody narration, courtesy of actor Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar), the Mara-Yama “feed on fear, delight in cruelty, and revel in the agony of their prey. They aren’t just hunters — they are sadistic predators who savor every moment of psychological torment they inflict.” The name Mara-Yama is a reference to the deities Mara and Yama, representations of death and the underworld in Dharmic religions.
While these cosmic horrors may not be appealing, necessarily, they have stoked my interested in Exodus. I’m digging the coldness-and-cruelty-of-space-demons thing that McConaughey’s vibing about here.
Apparently, we’re going to be hearing a lot more from McConaughey; he’s portraying a character named C.C. Orlev for Exodus. The developer describes him as a “self-proclaimed spokesman” for Exodus, and an infamous character in the game’s fiction.
Exodus does not have a release date. It’s currently in development for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, and, according to executive creative director James Ohlen, is just the start of a new universe.
Archetype’s debut title is part of a billion-dollar bet on internal game development at parent company Hasbro. In addition to Archetype Entertainment, Hasbro has Atomic Arcade, which is working on a G.I. Joe game starring Snake Eyes; Invoke Studios, which is developing a Dungeons & Dragons game; and Skeleton Key, which is working on “something spooky.”
