Mass Effect fans have had a lean decade. After Andromeda dropped to a middling response in 2017, the wait started for Mass Effect 5, and that clock has kept ticking louder every single day. Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks believes that sci-fi RPG Exodus can fill the gap.
"We just had this great team of people who are a bunch of former BioWare folks, some of the people responsible for my favorite games of all time," Cocks says of Exodus's, erm, genesis in a wide-ranging interview with GamesRadar+. "And they had a fantastic idea for basically, D&D in space. And I was in."
Cocks notes that "they're a great team," and "they have a great idea. And then to top it off, there was a clear market need, because it's been a long time since we had a great Mass Effect game. And so I think they're going to hopefully deliver that. Certainly, based on my playthroughs, they're scratching my itch [...] I think people are going to like it, particularly if they're Mass Effect fans."
"Long time" is a pretty substantial understatement. It's been nine years since we had a Mass Effect game of any quality, and few fans would argue that Andromeda was on the level of the trilogy that preceded it, and even then, well… Was Mass Effect 3 truly "great," or have we been waiting since Mass Effect 2 in 2010 for the series to once again live up to its potential?
Certainly, Exodus has the look of a contender, though the developers have been reticent to show it off in too much detail. We've been getting a slow drip feed of gameplay clips over the past few months and – would you believe it – it looks a lot like Mass Effect. The footage has been too sporadic to get a great sense of whether Exodus can fill Mass Effect's shoes, but it does at least seem to have the right foundations.
For its part, Hasbro has learned the value of a hit video game in the wake of the massive response to D&D adaptation Baldur's Gate 3, and it's been pumping big money into game development over the past few years. But Larian's game was a rare kind of hit, and only time will tell if Hasbro's able to replicate its success with other RPGs.
Here's hoping Exodus earns a spot among the best sci-fi RPGs out there.
