Last year, a group of BioWare veterans unveiled Exodus, a new space RPG made by former developers from Halo, The Last of Us, and, of course, those classic BioWare RPGs. While hopping around the galaxy in BioWare is a pretty speedy affair, though, Exodus takes a substantially more scientifically accurate approach.
In a new FAQ, the developers attempted to explain that approach. One of Exodus’ key ideas is Time Dilation - the principle that the closer you get to Light Speed, the slower time moves for you. In Exodus, that means that “while you may experience only days or weeks passing by on your own journey, years or even decades will pass for everyone and everything else in the galaxy.”
That idea is key to Exodus’ choice-based gameplay and multiple endings - the decisions you make in the present could be felt years, decades, or even centuries down the line, after you return from your spacefaring adventures. And developer Archetype is keen to make sure that you know there’s no way to reduce the effects of Time Dilation.
The devs describe the phenomenon as “an inescapable fact of our universe,” and “an immutable law of physics.” That means that “there is no possible way to prevent, avoid, or alter the effects of time dilation.” No items, abilities, or technologies will protect players from the long-term consequences of their actions, because Time Dilation is stitched into our understanding of the universe, and Exodus is taking a pretty ‘hard sci-fi’ approach to its world, the core facets of the game based on Einsteinian physics.
That hard sci-fi is also based around the understanding that it’s not possible to travel at the speed of light, but to help with that, Exodus relies on a technology known as the ‘Gates of Heaven’. A hyper-advanced technology left behind by a missing race known as the Elohim, these Gates allow Travelers - those who explore the galaxy and will have to deal with the effects of Time Dilation - to accelerate instantly so close to Light Speed that interstellar travel becomes possible.
There are some hints around the narrative of Exodus hidden within the description of the Gates. The Elohim’s absence from the galaxy seems a likely plot point, and there are also mentions of what happens if the Gates are attacked or otherwise destroyed, as well as in-universe rumors of a virus capable of damaging the Gates. If I know anything about galaxy-spanning time-based sci-fi, it’s that if a character can get trapped on the other side of the known universe with no obvious way of getting home before being Deus Ex Machina’d back to civilization, they will.
As yet, there’s no word on when Exodus will release, but as it’s planned for release on PS5 and Xbox Series X, as well as PC, it shouldn’t be more than a few years away.
Mass Effect 5 director gives props to Exodus, the new time-hopping sci-fi game from BioWare RPG veterans.
That hard sci-fi is also based around the understanding that it’s not possible to travel at the speed of light, but to help with that, Exodus relies on a technology known as the ‘Gates of Heaven’. A hyper-advanced technology left behind by a missing race known as the Elohim, these Gates allow Travelers - those who explore the galaxy and will have to deal with the effects of Time Dilation - to accelerate instantly so close to Light Speed that interstellar travel becomes possible.
As far as plot goes, this isn’t sounding all that innovative. They couldn’t think of anything except going with the old “we’re using
StargatesJump GatesMass RelaysGates left by a mysterious missing race calledPrecursorsAncientsProtheansElohim”?They had to do something there. It takes about a year to approach light speed with constant 1G acceleration, and at that point you’ve already traveled half a light year. But how boring of a game would that be?
They had to do something there.
Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t mean that their only options are either warming some leftover Protheans in a microwave and calling it Elohim with Gates, or a “boring” game.
They could have come up with literally anything other than the same subplot they had in Mass Effect. If they want near-instantaneous acceleration that won’t turn humans into mush they require effectively magical technology anyhow for their acceleration, but why not have humans invent it? Nothing says it has to be Precu… sorry, I mean Anci… sorry, Elohim. Or why not lean into the hard scifi aspect where acceleration does take a long time? Doesn’t mean it absolutely 100% has to be a boring game, just that they’d need to design around that somehow.
The Expanse’s approach, pre-gates, is pretty cool. Someone invents an engine that provides similar thrust to modern rockets but which can burn pretty much indefinitely. As such, ships can accelerate constantly at 0.3-1 G to provide “gravity” for passengers. At the same time, doing this actually gets you around the Solar System pretty damn fast as well, with journeys between planets typically taking between a day and a week. That limits you to one solar system, but you can do a lot with a whole solar system
Yeah it’s a shame they had to use the same Ye Olde Gate plot, but it was nice that the Epstein Drive wasn’t as magic as scifi drives usually are. Not that it’s not a bit magic, but it’s not a warp drive at least.
If they want near-instantaneous acceleration that won’t turn humans into mush they require effectively magical technology anyhow for their acceleration, but why not have humans invent it?
If its a technology humans understand then there would be hundreds or thousands of other applications of that same technological principles across other disciplines. If its not used elsewhere, they have to explain plausibly why it isn’t. If it is used elsewhere, the authors of the story have to define the science as, well, science and that isn’t their endeavor. They want to tell time dilation stories, and that’s fine.
Example:
Where are the in-game near-FTL bombs?
How is it explained in the story where humans would have a technology to create the massive amount of energy in a single moment to accelerate a whole space ship to relativistic speeds, but we haven’t made bomb out this same technology? Its the first things that humans do with new tech is find the most horrible way to use it against other humans. We didn’t do that? Well to be consistent you’ll have to explain why.
In short, its an unnecessary distraction.
So if Aliens Did It™ you’re fine with handwaving the details away, but otherwise you demand a plausible explanation for every single detail?
Ok, you win, all scifi games with any sort of non-FTL intestellar travel have to include Protheans and Mass Relays, because otherwise it’s just not believable
So if Aliens Did It™ you’re fine with handwaving the details away, but otherwise you demand a plausible explanation for every single detail?
That seems to be what you’re doing, isn’t it? The authors of the game clearly didn’t want to try to come up with a plausible scientific explanation for how the jump to near FTL happens in moments, so yes “aliens did it”, and instead the authors wanted to tell a story about the result of that, but you’re not satisfied because you’re demanding them build story they weren’t interested in telling because they were telling a different story.
Feel free to write your own story about human’s discovery of near-FTL. I’d be interested in reading that too, but I can’t demand that of you. Nor can you of them.
Oh no, storytellers would have to to explain things, how horrible!
All I’m saying is that it’d be nice if we could have frickin’ anything else except Ancient Aliens: Dude Where’s My Gate for the 16868162851th time, it’s getting a bit old.
Oh no, storytellers would have to to explain things, how horrible!
Hard science fiction requires realistic scientific explanations for things claimed to be understood by science.
How do you propose they do that and maintain a consistent scientific universe? How do you answer the question of “where are the bombs”?
All I’m saying is that it’d be nice if we could have frickin’ anything else except Ancient Aliens: Dude Where’s My Gate for the 16868162851th time, it’s getting a bit old.
They’re not trying to tell a story about how near FTL acceleration works. They’re trying to tell a story in a universe where it does. That isn’t overplayed. I can think of maybe a dozen good sci fi stories that take relativistic travel into consideration in the story as a major plot shaping device.
Gotcha. I took your post as ‘but that’s not sciencey!’, not that your main point was that they are just putting another coat of paint on the same tired plot device. And that’s an excellent point.
Ha yeah, while I’m a sucker for hard scifi, I don’t mind science fantasy at all, which – let’s face it – the vast majority of scifi is at least partially if not wholly. Star Wars and Star Trek both are way more fantasy than science, for example. Techy jargon does not a science make.
But yeah, it’d be nice to see something actually fresh instead of the same plot device that’s been absolutely done to death. At least their take on FTL is new, which is definitely nice, but I mean come ooooonnnnnnnnn
I mean your options are vessels that can travel at those speeds under their own power or vessels that require something else to move them. The latter is easier to do but they’re both very common and at the end of the day is the means to an end. Having realistic time dilation on the other hand is super interesting both from a narrative and mechanical perspective and has me genuinely excited for this game.
Oh yeah it’ll be really interesting to see how they pull it off, it’s a great twist on an otherwise tired trope
Fetch quests would be weird in the game.
NPC: Kill 10 rats.
You: Kill 10 rats, then travel the universe, and come back 100 years later to meet NPC’s grand child. “I killed the 10 rats! Give me 10 gold!”
NPC’s Grandchild: “Whaaat?”
If there’s any interest accruing, they could owe as much as millions.
You don’t collect interest if you fuck off for 100 years and never pick up your payment though
That’s not really true if you set things up with the correct legal structure. It would be easy to create a trust that you could withdraw from a century later. I mean, assuming that the government and banking structure doesn’t fall apart in that time period, which isn’t guaranteed.
Sell all your gear, take a long trip, come back to profit?
Put one penny in the bank, come back rich
I mean, that might be pretty funny lol.
I really hope that this is a more focused RPG and not a free roaming game. I don’t really see a way to do time dilation and have open world planet hopping at the same time.
You can visit closer systems without too much time pass. But if you want to go real far out… thats when the issues happen. Say you left home and explored, the farther you went out the more the story would change. That could work in rpg sense. Its interesting tho imo.
It would make for some interesting game play mechanics if there were certain events that would always happen in “history”.
- Perhaps the fall of civilization galaxy wide.
- Maybe resource exhaustion after a certain date.
- The virus spoken of could disable the gates at some point so if you “burned through” the elapsed time when the gates were still active too quickly you’d be marooned in a part of space you did your last near-FTL travel.
All of these things would mean you’d have to restart to order events in the most beneficial with the limited non-relativistic time available to you. Essentially the game would have “The Great Filter” programmed in as part of the story line, and you had to prepare yourself for it with whatever you could collect/accomplish before too much near-FTL travel would put you on The Great Filter’s boundaries.
If it’s anything like Mass Effect, you can hop around planets within a solar system relatively quickly without huge effects on dilation, recall we’re mere minutes from the Sun. Traveling between solar systems however will result in far greater effects due to the much larger distance between them.
Sounds like it will either be gimmicky, or very constrained and not open-world.
I imagine that it will be constrained to fixed parts of the main story.
They talk a big game, but bioware was never as good as people made them out to be. If nothing else though it’ll be better than mass effect 5.
While it sounds kind of gimmicky, the Time Dilation bit seems like it has a lot of potential. One aspect of a lot of open-world games that always gave me a “That’s absolutely ridiculous” kind of chuckle is being able to slaughter all of the NPCs, walk away, and when you come back it’s as though nothing happened.
It’d be neat to see that my murder-hobo rampage in 2030 has consequences later down the road in 2230 or something. Maybe I murdered the great-great grandmother of a quest NPC that changes how that bit goes…
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Former developers of Halo, The Last of Us, and Mass Effect.
Let’s see, Halo is a dumpster fire, The Last of Us 2, and the illusion of choich.
Who knows? Maybe they’ll create an incredibly intricate web of possibilities, leading to incredibly different stories and outcomes depending on your choices? I don’t have any faith that a product like that will come from a AAA dev but I’m open to being surprised.
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